How is Tom Robinson significant to the novel (by Patrick Duffy and Sharmin Zunita)
1.
Show injustice in Maycomb society (between white and black)
· In our court, when it’s a white man’s words against a black man’s the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life.
2. The case/trial of Tom built curiosity in Scout.
· Page 99: “Do you defend nigger, Atticus” I asked him that night.
· “What’s rape?” I asked him that night.
(page 99: Cecil Jacobs had announced in the schoolyard the day before that Scout’s Finch daddy defended niggers)
3. Scout questions the responsibilities of a white lawyer towards the Blacks
· pg 100: “Do all lawyers defend n- Negroes, Atticus?”
4. Maturity of Scout and Jem
· They are exposed to the trial
· Force to face the reality of Maycomb
· They are in the courtroom to see how the process of the trial takes
· Built maturity in their way of thinking; understand the ways of life in Maycomb, kind of folks in Maycomb, questioning their father, make their own perceptions
5. Racism
· Informs the readers that the Blacks should never feel sorry for the Whites
page 264: “Yes suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n the rest of’ em-“
“You felt sorry for her, you felt sorry for her?” Mr Gilmer seemed ready to rise to the ceiling.
6. Atticus successfully reveals the injustice of a class conscious society that confines blacks to the colored balcony and allows the words of a despicable (very unpleasant and evil), ignorant man like Bob Ewell to prevail without question over the word of a man who happens to the black.
7. Judge Taylor names Atticus to take the Tom’s case because he knows that Atticus will defend Tom the best he could
· If Atticus is not a lawyer who defends Tom, the story will end early as for sure, other lawyer will not have done justice to him (Page 289)
8. Racist jury will never end if the Maycomb people do not change their way of thinking
· Irony (page 295)
“If you had been on that jury son and eleven other boys like you, Tom would be a free man” said Atticus
9. Symbol
· The mockingbird and Tom are in the same class of beings
· Tom disability-his left arm is “hardly nothing” because it was caught in a cotton in at age 12
10. Perhaps Tom’s innocence of the crime he is accused of makes him similar to the mockingbird (does not harm anyone, tries to make others happy: mockingbird sings, Tom befriends Mayella)
11. The messages meant by the writer (Harper Lee) about the mockingbird through the trial of Tom Robinson are successfully delivered (How people can be unjust even when after they are shown the truth)
No comments:
Post a Comment