Mockingbird Essay #4

      In How to kill a Mockingbird Tom Robinson overcomes a lot of obstacles. Everything that Tom Robinson goes through really changes him. Here are a few ways Tom Robinson overcomes obstacles throughout the book.

    One obstacle Tom Robinson faces is the court case. He was very honest throughout the entire case yet was continuously accused of rape and giving her a black eye.

“Then what happened?”

“Mr. Finch, I was runnin‘ so fast I didn’t know what happened.”

“Tom, did you rape Mayella Ewell?”

“I did not, suh.”

“Did you harm her in any way?”

“I did not, suh.”

“Did you resist her advances?”

Page.104

The plaintiff made up many different realistic scenarios that could have been possible and made it seem like Tom actually did them when in reality he didn’t. One of the things he said was that tom was strong enough to lift up Mayella with one hand. Even though his left arm was crippled and Mayella’s dad is left handed they still made it seem like it was Tom.

Another obstacle Tom faced in To Kill a Mockingbird was racism. Throughout the entire book there was tons of racism mostly against Tom. Especially in court when Tom was clearly not guilty they would still say he is guilty because he is a black man. Whether it was in court or anywhere else people did not treat Tom right throughout the entire book.

"Scout," said Atticus, "nigger-lover is just one of those terms that don't mean anything—like snot-nose. It's hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody."

"You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?"

"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody... I'm hard put, sometimes—baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you."

Pg.107

One last obstacle Tom faced was the aftermath of the trial. He was facing jail time and he came to the realization that he would never be treated fairly and attempted to escape the prison but died.

“To Maycomb, Tom's death was typical. Typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.”

Pg.128

Those are a few obstacles Tom faced in the book To Kill a Mockingbird.