Tom Robinson Symbolism

Tom Robinson, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, symbolize the unjust treatment the black residents of Maycomb county face. Using the case that question Tom’s innocence, Lee paints a picture of justice, morality, and ethics examined through the eyes of young white female Scout. Tom Robinson also symbolizes the innocence of the Mockingbird portrayed in the title of the book. Readers learn from the book that to kill a mockingbird, is a sin.
“Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.” (328) this is Scout’s definition for ‘Democracy’. The class is discussing Hitler when they confront the issues surrounding a dictatorship, and explaining that, “We are a democracy,” (328) and as a democracy, “we don’t believe in persecuting anybody.”
However, in Maycomb county, Tom Robinson in being prosecuted for a crime he did not commit. Automatically accused as the likely perpetrator to commit such a crime, raping a young white woman based primarily on the fact that he is a black man, Tom has to fight for his. He is the liar and she is telling the truth. “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed,” (323) it didn’t matter even if he was proven innocent. Miss Gates lesson about how dictators prosecute others, and how we, as a democracy, “don’t’, confused the young Scout. What Scout didn’t understand was Miss Gates Martin 3 how could go from saying “they were getting way above themselves,’ after the trail, to telling the children that Hitler was prejudiced.
Scout didn’t understand how someone could “hate Hitler so bad and’ turn around and be ugly to folks right at home”
To Kill a Mockingbird is set during the early parts of the Great Depression, which was going on throughout the 1930’s. Jim Crows Laws were predominant during this time period, breaking them would mean “serious danger of being killed by segregation fanatics,” whether a person’s white or black. With such laws as, “ No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed” in Alabama, any personal relations between a white woman and a black man was forbidden. Atticus calls these Laws “code’ as he explains how and why the codes are “broken”. Tom Robinson is “Guilty,” because the girl allegedly raped has done the ‘unspeakable’ in the ‘society of Maycomb’, and kissed a ‘strong’, ‘young,’ ‘black
man’.
Scout recalls a time when her father told her that “cheatin’ a colored man is ten times worse than cheatin’ a white man.” and that it’s the “worst thing you can do.” It’s the worst thing you can do, as a white person, because it is the easiest thing to do.
Tom Robinson is cheated out of his freedom, out of his life, because a young white woman “tried to put the evidence of her offense away from her.”(272) No one should cheat any who is lesser than themselves. Under the social ladder the black people of Maycomb are right at the bottom next to people like Mayella Ewell and her father. It’s so easy for them to be belittled, because they are socially beneath them. To the white citizens everyone beneath them is bad, and it’s easy to lie on someone who already assumed bad. Atticus says it best to the gentleman of the jury. The jury would go along with what the young white women and her father told them based on the “the evil assumption- that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women.”(273) Killing a Mockingbird is a sin because it’s like snatching away a life because of it innocence. The events leading to Tom’s death happen simply because he was a black man at the wrong place and time. Tom was innocent, The all the facts proved this
statement.