Who Is Tom Robinson's Coming Of Age In To Kill A Mockingbird

Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird depicts the childhood and coming of age of a young girl named Jean-Louise “Scout” Finch. The main focus of this novel is the trial of an African-American man named Tom Robinson, who was accused of raping a white woman, and Scout’s father, Atticus, who has been assigned to defend him. Written during the Civil Rights Movement, Lee’s purpose is to highlight the racial prejudice that had permeated throughout the Southern culture. She achieves this in the trial scenes, where she embeds Atticus’s strong dialogue into the context of the vivid imagery she presents of the trial. During the trial, Atticus argues calmly but adamantly for Tom Robinson’s innocence, but also for the jury to give him fair trial. In his closing argument, Atticus reminds the jury that the “case [was] as simple as black and white” (Lee 207), and he also dispels 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, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber” (Lee 208). For Tom Robinson, the case would have never gone to court if he was not black. This is a clear critique on the racism of Maycomb, which is only supported by the fact that Atticus had to remind the jury that African Americans are human beings of the same moral
fiber as whites.
Atticus’s firm pleas to the jury to deliberate without bias contribute to the vivid imagery Lee presents of the trial, which also highlights the racism of the era. Part of this imagery includes a description of Scout, Jem, and Dill’s seating arrangement during the trial. As they attend the trial, they get left behind by the Idler’s Club, which is “a group of white-shirted, khaki-trousered, suspendered old men who [have] spent their lives doing nothing and passed their twilight days doing same on pine benches under the live oaks on the square” (Lee 165). They take up all the room in the courtroom, so Scout, Jem, and Dill can’t get inside. But then the black reverend that they had met last week invited them upstairs to the colored balcony, and they accepted.
[They] went up a covered staircase and waited at the door [until] Reverend Sykes came puffing behind [them], and steered [them] gently through the black people in the balcony. Four Negroes rose and gave [them] their front-row seats. The Colored balcony ran along three walls of the courtroom like a second-story veranda, and from it [they] could see everything (Lee 166).
Lee includes this scene to remind readers of the racial segregation that was prevalent throughout the South at that time, with the white folks of the town sitting or standing in the courtroom itself, while the black folks were delegated to the balcony. This imagery then serves as the backdrop of Atticus’s attempts to convince the jury to “review without passion the evidence” (Lee 209) and “do their duty” (Lee 209). Harper Lee uses the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird to showcase the racial prejudices harbored by white Southerners.
She does so by having a respected lawyer from the town defend an innocent black man from a potential execution, while having his children and their friend see up close how the black folks of the town are discriminated against. And in the end, the town’s racial prejudice won out, with the “mockingbird” that was Tom Robinson, whom Atticus said was “a sin to kill” (Lee 93), being killed for a crime he did commit, something that was far too familiar in the South during that time
period.