Underwood snorts when he sees Scout, Jem, and Dill Gilmer rises as Mr. Judge Taylor throws Mr. Deas out. Scout pulls Dill back into the courthouse. Judge Taylor is almost finished with his cigar and Atticus is already halfway through his speech to Calpurnia passes Atticus a note. Atticus asks Judge Taylor to go, since his children are missing, but Mr. Underwood interjects that Scout, Jem, and She half expects to see Atticus raise an unloaded rifle.
Atticus packs his things, whispers something to Tom, and Miss Maudie Ewell gets a job with the WPA, but they fire him within days. Second, while Judge Taylor is home one Sunday night while his wife is at church, he hears an odd He says that Judge Taylor made him look like a fool and treated him contemptuously. Merriweather accuses Scout of ruining her pageant, but Jem makes Scout feel Bob Ewell could've let the whole thing drop, but he'd rather be responsible for an innocent man's death than risk having his family further diminished in the town's eyes.
Truthfully, Tom's testimony actually embarrasses the Ewells more. Tom tells the court that Mayella asked him to kiss her saying, "'what her papa do to her don't count,'" which informs the whole town that Bob Ewell sexually abuses his daughter. He further tells the court that Bob called his own child a "goddamn whore. Tom is a compassionate man, and ironically, his acts of kindness are responsible, at least indirectly, for his current situation.
In Maycomb society and, truthfully, the Southern United States at this time , basic human kindness from a black person to a white person is impermissible. The consequences are deadly when the "lesser" show their compassion — and then have the audacity to admit it — for the "greater. The all-white jury is in an awkward position. If they acquit a black man who admittedly pities a white person, then they're voting to lessen their own power over the black community.
However, if they convict Tom, they do so knowing that they're sentencing an innocent man to death. Mayella makes their choice very easy when she looks at the jury and says, "'That nigger yonder took advantage of me an' if you fine fancy gentlemen don't wanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards. The remaining question about Tom's innocence is why did he run from the Ewell property if he did nothing wrong?
Atticus explains that Tom was truly between a rock and a hard place: "he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live long, so he took the first opportunity to run — a sure sign of guilt. Dill, a child who has not yet reached Scout's level of acceptance about societal prejudices, reacts strongly to the lack of respect African Americans are shown.
As Dill and Scout leave the courtroom for a few minutes, Dolphus Raymond explains his own disdain for "'the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people, too. The white community excuses his behavior because they believe he is an alcoholic who "can't help himself. With that conversation, Scout is further educated about prejudice and the negative consequences that result from it.
When Bob Ewell takes the witness stand, Scout notes that the only thing "that made him better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white. Ewell testifies with the confidence of someone who knows he's already won.
If his case weren't so clear cut in his eyes, he wouldn't make lewd jokes when being questioned on the witness stand. The more sophisticated white people in Maycomb at least try to pretend that their prejudices don't run so deep, but Ewell is beyond this sort of genteel pretense.
He boldly tells Judge Taylor that he's "'asked this county for fifteen years to clean out that nest down yonder, they're dangerous to live around 'sides devaluin' my property — '" If a man's life were not at stake, Ewell's testimony would be laughable.
No one — not even a neighborhood of "lower-class" blacks — can devalue a piece of property that is basically an extension of the town dump. In these chapters, Scout and Jem continue to mature as they begin to understand the importance of respect and integrity. From the moment Atticus was assigned to defend Tom, he's been telling the children that he couldn't face them or God if he didn't try to free this man.
But as the trial ends, the children gain new insight into their father. Scout is quite surprised when Reverend Skyes makes her stand along with the rest of the balcony as her father passes by. Lee deftly adds to the impact of the respect the African American community has for Atticus by ending a chapter with this action. The children are bitterly disappointed by the loss, but Miss Maudie helps them see it in a new light when she says, "'I thought, Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long on a case like that.
The importance of respect is further delineated when Atticus tells the children that having a Cunningham on the jury actually helped his case, mainly because Scout earned Walter Cunningham's respect at the jail. And, Atticus changes Jem's definition of bravery, equating it with integrity, by his reaction to being spat on and threatened by Bob Ewell. Mockingbird symbolism runs throughout these chapters, as well.
Scout compares the ominous feeling in the courtroom when the jury returns to "a cold February morning, when the mockingbirds were still. In this situation, Atticus sees the African American community as a flock of mockingbirds who are only trying to make their way in a world that is often hostile. In the courtroom: Jem simply can't understand how the jury could convict Tom, and Atticus shocks him with the revelation that "'when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins.
Jem is so angered by the injustice of Tom's case that he vows to somehow make a difference when he grows up. Atticus' response allows Lee a nod to the modern civil rights movement: "'Don't fool yourselves — it's [white treatment of blacks] all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it.
In the community: Miss Stephanie is full of questions about why Scout, Jem, and Dill were sitting in the "Colored balcony. Dolphus Raymond, a wealthy eccentric who owns land on a river bank, lives near the county line, is involved with a Black woman, and has mulatto children. Only Miss Maudie refuses to go, saying that watching someone on trial for his life is like attending a Roman carnival.
The vast crowd camps in the town square to eat lunch. Afterward, Jem , Scout , and Dill wait for most of the crowd to enter the courthouse so that they can slip in at the back and thus prevent Atticus from noticing them. However, because they wait too long, they succeed in getting seats only when Reverend Sykes lets them sit in the balcony where Black people are required to sit in order to watch the trial.
From these seats, they can see the whole courtroom. Judge Taylor, a white-haired old man with a reputation for running his court in an informal fashion, presides over the case. The prosecutor, Mr. Gilmer, questions Heck Tate, who recounts how, on the night of November 21, Bob Ewell urged him to go to the Ewell house and told him that his daughter Mayella had been raped. When Tate got there, he found Mayella bruised and beaten, and she told him that Tom Robinson had raped her.
Tate leaves the stand, and Bob Ewell is called. Bob Ewell and his children live behind the town garbage dump in a tin-roofed cabin with a yard full of trash. No one is sure how many children Ewell has, and the only orderly corner of the yard is planted with well-tended geraniums rumored to belong to Mayella.
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