Appearance versus Reality in To Kill a Mockingbird
...le of Maycomb, the reader forms the opinion that she is a cruel and hateful person. As the book progresses this opinion is sustained until Jem is forced to read to Mrs. Dubose and learns that the morphine addiction has made her so cruel. Learning that Mrs. Dubose was not hateful and cruel but a symbol of true courage, the readers find their earlier opinions to be incorrect. Mr. Cunningham came to the jail with a mob intending to kill Tom Robinson and the reader forms an opinion from this show of hatred. Despite his rage and the effects of alcohol, he stops himself and proves he is still a good person. The reader formed an opinion that Mr. Cunningham was a horrible person but finds out that he is not so bad because he stopped the mob. At the end of Tom Robinson court case the jury convicted him even though the evidence showed him to be completely innocent. The reader believes the jury convicted Tom because they were blinded by their hate. Atticus later explains that it should have taken the jury only a few minutes to reach this conclusion because of their underlying hatred of blacks. In fact, the jury stopped to think through their hatred which is why it took them a few hours to decide the “‘inevitable verdict’” (222). The time it took them showed that they found their reason and compassion to know it was wrong to convict him but still did because of...