The Ultimate Killer of Tom Robinson
...tus is even lower, solely because he is black. During the 1930s when the story took place a white man was always superior to a black man. Because of this, “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.” (p.241) However, the accusation that Tom had raped Mayella was only the beginning in a series of events that eventually led to Tom’s death. After Tom had been accused of rape, the case went to court. “’The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow…’” (p.220) says Atticus. However this is not the case. After a long and intense trial, the fate of Tom Robinson lay in the hands of 12 men-the jury. The jury had no physical evidence to look at, no complicated facts to review; only a simple decision to make based on the testimonies given by the Ewells versus the testimony given by Tom. As Atticus puts it, the trial was “’…as simple as black and white.’” (p.203). It became a case that would determine if a black man was the equal of a white man. After several long hours of debate, the jury finally comes to an unanimous decision: Tom Robinson was guilty. This decision only solidified a known fact: “’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.’” (p.220) Even though the evidence proved Tom’s innocence, the jury still found Tom guilty, sentencing him to death. The jury knew deep in their hearts that Tom Robinson is innocent, but they could not allow the Ewell’s accusations to go unanswered. To do so would have made the two races equal, a concept which was unthinkable at the time. Tom Robinson’s death occurred soon after the trial in prison. He was shot by the guards who claim he was attempting to escape. However they did not shoot Tom Robinson to just keep him from escaping, they shot to kill him because he was black. They didn’t see Tom as a human being but as a creature that had to be stopped at all costs. They did this by shooting him sev...