To Kill a Mockingbird Essays - Atticus Finch :: Kill Mockingbird essays

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, Harper Lees, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior, to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, and the struggle between threatenings and whites. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and single parent in a small southern t take in the 1930s, is appointed by the local judge to defend tomcat Robinson, a black man, who is accused of raping a white woman. Friends and neighbors object when Atticus puts up a strong and spirited defense on behalf of the accused black man. Atticus renounces violence only if stands up for what he believes in. He decides to defend Tom Robinson because if he did not, he would not only lose the respect of his children and the townspeople, but himself as well.In addition to being a lawyer, Atticus enjoys being a father to Jem and Scout. When Jem and Scout found out that their father would be argue a black person, they knew immediately that there would be much controversy, humi liation from the people of Maycomb and great difficulty keeping Tom alive for the trial. It was not extensive when Atticus had to leave the house very late to go to jail, where Tom was kept because many white people wanted to kill him. Worrying intimately their father, Jem and Scout sneak out of the house to find him. A self-appointed lynch mob has gathered on the jail to take justice into their own hands. Scout decides to talk to Walter Cunningham, one of the members of the mob. She talks about how her father Atticus thought that  entailments are bad (154 ) and that his son Walter is a real nice boy and tell him I said hey(154). Upon hearing this, the mob realized that Atticus cannot be all bad if he has such a nice female child as Scout. Atticus, with some unexpected help from his children, faces down the mob and cause them to break up the potential lynching of the man behind bars.  Having gone to a black church earlier, the children found out that Tom is actually a ki nd person, church-going and a good husband and father to his children.The town of Maycomb in the 1930s was recess into two sections, the white section and the black section. This was a time of racial segregation, where blacks were not permitted to go to the same schools as the whites.