Although he is linked by name to Robert E. Lee, an honored Southerner, Harper Lee’s characterization of Robert E. Lee "Bob" Ewell presents him as a loathsome and repulsive person. She achieves this through descriptions of his physical appearance, his cowardly actions, and through the cross-examination of his eldest daughter in To Kill a Mockingbird. A suggested alcoholic who spends all of his welfare money on whiskey, it is ironic that Bob Ewell, a hateful man from a disgraced family, shares a name with the revered Civil War commander. During the trial, the first time the reader is formally introduced to Bob Ewell, Lee describes him as a, “bantam cock of a man” who struts up to the witness stand and crows as he swears in (227). A bantam cockerel
