Examples Of Justice In To Kill A Mockingbird

From the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, we will see how the examples of Atticus and Judge Taylor show their fight for justice. On the other hand, however, those of the jury and Mayella Ewell represent those who were caught in the prejudice “norm” of society back in the 1930s. Harper Lee thus expresses how justice is served by those who want it. One event that shows how justice is served only by those who want it is when Judge Taylor assigns Atticus to defend Tom Robinson, making sure he gets a fair trial with someone that will truly defend him. This account is brought out by Aunt Alexandra when she says, “‘Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons …show more content…
How the jury acted is one instance of this. The group of people chosen to be the jury in this case were all white men. Atticus brings out a very despairing, yet true, quote that applied to that time in a conversation after the conviction saying of the jury, “‘There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads-they couldn’t be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life’” (295). This shows that justice is not served by those who do not work it because it brings out the state of society in the 1930s, especially in a little town like Maycomb. Atticus says how juries of all white men in court, just like in this case, will always convict against a black man, no matter how wrong it is. Another place in the story that supports this is the overall case against Tom Robinson, and the person behind it, Mayella Ewell. The reader can only assume the reason Mayella frames Tom Robinson is due to his race and background. Nonetheless, Tom is shown injustice that caused the loss of his life. The case is based off of Atticus’s statement found in his closing court speech. “‘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’” (273). In this scene, the caliber of justice shown in that time period is questioned by Atticus. The beginning reason that Tom Robinson was taken to court, the reason he was jailed and put on trial, is because of the racist generalizations of Mayella Ewell, society, and the jury in the case. As we can see, justice was not served in some major aspects of the novel, by characters not wanting true