Mr. Gilmer, the prosecutor, used Tom’s race and physical strength to imply that Tom was just another stereotypical black man who targeted a fair skinned female. Mr. Gilmer hinted that because Tom was strong and coloured, Tom would rape and beat a white woman. Not only was Tom discriminated against on the stand, but after Tom was sent to the slammer, Tom was killed and shot at multiple times after he was already dead. “ ‘Seventeen bullet holes in him. They [the police] didn’t have to shoot him that much.’ ” (235).
As our country has becomes more desegregated, we learn more and more about equality, no matter what your skin color. In the movie, To Kill Mockingbird, bigotry is a huge factor that affects many lives. While watching the movie, I began to wonder how the outcome of the story would have been different had one character’s skin color been white. The movie starts off with narrator talking about a knowledgeable story from when she was little. Her father Atticus, a lawyer, had a choice to defend a black man, Tom Robison, who was being accused of raping and beating up a young white women.
Dylan Fiolek Prejudice in the South Racial prejudice was beyond horrible in the 1960s. A time to kill was a movie about a white lawyer who defends a black man for shooting to white woman. The black man raped and beat his daughter. To kill a Mockingbird was a book about a white lawyer who defends a black man. They accuse him of raping and beating a young white woman.
Atticus was his lawyer and it was a completely scandal because he is a white man defending a black man, no one would do that because the black people did not had rights in that time. But we can see that there were descent people like Atticus, that have clear that everyone is equal and he had to make justice in Maycomb; He would fight until the end, and he did, he showed enough evidence to expose Ewell….”Did you Called a doctor, Sheriff? Did anybody call a doctor? Asked Atticus, No sir, repeated Mr. Tate, Why not? Asked Atticus, Well I can tell you why I didn’t.
Civil rights marches were led by Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the 1960’s. The novel shows us how one single incident of persecution can effect a whole community. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was charged with raping Mayella Ewell, found guilty by a racist jury, and was killed whilst trying to escape prison, even though Atticus proved to the jury that it was obvious that he was innocent. He was found guilty, however, because he was a Negro and seen to be less than human. Even though all of the jury were racist, some members of Maycomb County began to see that the unfair way in which they treated the Negroes was wrong.
This lead the jury to declaring Tom guilty, despite there being no doubt of his innocence. This verdict was the act of slaying a mockingbird; he was nothing but kind hearted, yet discriminatorily lost his life due to the town’s predisposition towards his skin
“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.” – Thomas H. Huxley The novel To Kill a Mockingbird told an unforgettable story of doing what a person thought was right no matter what the cost. Author Harper Lee used the character Atticus Finch to show a rejection of authority when he went against the social codes in his town and defended a black man in court. Lee showed Atticus’s penetrating defense that ended up revealing the town of Maycomb’s inherit racism. Atticus Finch challenged social justice and prejudice by defending Tom Robinson just as he would any other person. Atticus’s whole town went against him because he was defending a man of a different race.
The people of Macomb’s jury during the trial choose to find Tom Robinson guilty even thought the evidence strongly suggests he is innocent. They do this because of their racist opinions and hatred towards the African American community. In contrast Atticus stands up to a mob for what he believes because he holds no prejudices. During the summer night when Jem, Scout, and Dill get shot at, Mr. Radley automatically assumes that it was a black man who was trying to steal from his garden. This shows that even thought Mr. Radley had no proof he assumed that it was an African American only because of his racist opinions towards blacks.
In the 1930s, African Americans were already treated unfairly, but, Tom being accused of raping a white woman made his life awful. Tom was ruled guilty in the trial even though all the evidence pointed toward him being innocent. For example, in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus makes a point to ask the sheriff what side the bruises on Mayella's face were. After he told her that they were on the right side, Atticus knew that Tom's left arm could not move so, how could he have hit her? Anyways, even Tom knew that he would be guilty, for example, in chapter 19 it says "'Mr.
Justice is shown in Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in an ironic sense when Bob Ewell who is the cause of the climax of racial tension in the novel, falls on his own knife. The context of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is very similar to that of ‘The Tracker’ in that there was racism from the beginning and the story is about a peak in this racism and one man who tries to challenge the respective status quos of their societies. Where Atticus and the tracker differ is in their contexts. Atticus is not responsible directly for the death of Bob Ewell but in a way by Atticus making people think as he stood up for Tom Robinson in the court case, people began to look down on Bob Ewell even more than they had previously, the opposite reaction to what Mr Ewell had hoped for, which ended up killing him. Strangely enough the antagonist in the Tracker is also dead at the conclusion as penance for the evil deeds he has committed however the Tracker is directly responsible for his death as he hangs him to avenge the Aboriginal victims he killed as well as his own white colleague.