To Kill A Mockingbird Argumentative Essay

Maycomb has fallen into the norms of segregation, steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy — the mere, simplistic idea of status and power, where your socio - economic class solely determined who you were. I had already entered the war, when I took the case of a negro, when I decided to bypass the status quo. Tom Robinson — a black man charged with the rape of a white girl, in a town blindly divided by race, which story is the jury going to believe — one that falls into the town's notion and expectations or one that breaks the code of acceptable race relations ?

There was one thing I was sure about and that was Tom Robinson's innocence for in it all, in the quietness of the court, there rose the faded image of a mockingbird, but the only question
A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. For I had done all I could and all I could do now was wait, for Tom's fate was in the hands of the jury. The old court - house clock struck the hour. The jury had reached the foregone conclusion of a guilty verdict. I had taken Tom Robinson's case, but in the heart of the town it was never a real case, or simply one that could never do justice. The only thing we had was a black man’s word against the Ewells‘. The evidence boiled down to you - did — I - didn’t. Tom Robinson's trial was a fate already predetermined, but simply because we never had a chance before we started was no reason for us not to try to win — for that is what real courage is. For the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class is not something that can be taken so leniently — as to extend so far at the expense of human life. For me, Tom's trial meant more than the fate of a single man. The case was about the fairness of the American legal system, which in turn was about the impartiality of American people — which