Saturday, December 29, 2012

Describe how the trial affects Scout, Jem, and Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Although the trial of Tom Robinson is alluded to on the
first page of the novel, the subject is not mentioned again until Chapter 9 when Scout
gets in a fight with Cecil Jacobs after he claims that Atticus "defended niggers."
However, the trial quickly becomes the primary focus of Part Two of the novel. Atticus'
decision to take the case turns the family's life upside down. Scout is forced to defend
the family name at school, usually by fighting, and the children have to endure the
gossip they hear on the streets of Maycomb. Atticus takes the case only because he knew
he wouldn't be able


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"to face my children otherwise. ... I'd hoped to
go through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, '
You're It. '"



It is a case
Atticus knows he cannot win, considering the fact that Mayella Ewell is white and Tom
Robinson is black, and how a white man's word is always accepted over the word of a
black man. Jem is mightily affected by the guilty verdict, and he questions the validity
of a jury that can allow jurors to overlook the evidence they are presented. Scout
understands about the "secrets courts of men's hearts" who have made up their minds
before the trial begins. The death of Tom Robinson doesn't end the matter, since the
children  nearly forfeit their lives at the murderous hands of Bob Ewell, who Atticus
disgraced on the stand.

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