What is the significance of bob ewells legal name

After the trial, Ewell isn't satisfied to have gotten Tom sentenced to death; he wants revenge on those that would give him a fair trial. It's likely that Ewell is the shadow Judge Taylor sees at his house one night, but Atticus and Helen get the brunt of his rage. Atticus doesn't say much about his confrontation with Ewell, so his kids get the Miss-Stephanie-enhanced version: "Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr.

Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened to kill him" Well, when we put it like that, it's probably not enhanced at all. We can definitely buy that Ewell would say that. While the Maycomb community is happy enough to return to ignoring the Ewells after their day in court, Ewell won't go quietly back to the dump. He's had a taste of power, and he wants to keep asserting it through threats of violence to anyone associated in his mind with Tom Robinson.

It's as if what Tom did in Ewell's mind is so horrible that destroying Tom himself isn't enough. Or maybe it's just revenge—after all, Scout and Jem don't have much to do with Tom directly, but attacking them is a powerful way to hurt Atticus. If we believe Tom's testimony that Mayella approached him, and that Ewell's anger was directed first at her rather than Tom, why is Ewell so determined to prosecute Tom and persecute those involved with him?

Especially since it would have been pretty easy just to hush that whole thing up? Scout gives us one clue: "All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white" Ewell's "nearest neighbors" are African-Americans, so racism and sexism is the only way that Ewell can feel superior to anybody. There's not a single white man in Maycomb who's not above Ewell in the community hierarchy, so he turns venomously on anyone he can put below him: African-Americans and women.

What would it take for Ewell to overcome his background and become a more tolerant person? Short of a miracle, it's hard to say. Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. By Harper Lee. Previous Next. Robert E. Lee Ewell Bob Ewell is the current head of a family that has been "the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations" 3.

Poor Widower On the one hand, Bob is an object of pity. Walter Cunningham Jr. Tired of ads? Bob Ewell and his children live behind the town garbage dump in a tin-roofed cabin with a yard full of trash. No one is sure how many children Ewell has, and the only orderly corner of the yard is planted with well-tended geraniums rumored to belong to Mayella.

An extremely rude little man, Ewell testifies that on the evening in question he was coming out of the woods with a load of kindling when he heard his daughter yelling. When he reached the house, he looked in the window and saw Tom Robinson raping her.

Robinson fled, and Ewell went into the house, saw that his daughter was all right, and ran for the sheriff. Ewell why no doctor was called it was too expensive and there was no need , and then has the witness write his name.

The trial is the most gripping, and in some ways the most important, dramatic sequence in To Kill a Mockingbird ; the testimony and deliberations cover about five chapters with almost no digression.

Additionally, the courtroom scene, with Atticus picking apart the Ewells as the whole town watches, is the most cinematic portion of the narrative, and it is the centerpiece of the film version of the novel.

In the trial conducted in the courtroom, Atticus loses. In the trial conducted in the mind of the reader, it is the white community, wallowing in prejudice and hatred, that loses. All three lack the racism that the crowd of white faces in the courtroom propagates. Jem, Scout, and Dill are segregated even from the other children, who have taunted Jem and Scout for loving Black people.

No matter what evidence is presented at the trial, the racist jury would never, under any circumstances, acquit a Black man accused of raping a white woman. He believes that the irrefutable implications of the evidence will clinch the case for Atticus. Atticus, like Mrs. Lee, who fought valiantly for the Confederacy in the Civil War despite his opposition to slavery. If Robert E. Lee represents the idealized South, then Bob Ewell epitomizes its darker and less respectable side, dominated by thoughtless prejudice, squalor, and meanness.

The irony, of course, is that Bob Ewell is completely unimportant; he is an arrogant, lazy, abusive fool, laughed at by his fellow townsfolk. Ace your assignments with our guide to To Kill a Mockingbird! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. How is Tom Robinson a mockingbird? What does the rabid dog Atticus shoots symbolize? How did Jem break his arm? What is the significance of the gifts Boo Radley leaves in the knothole? Why does the jury find Tom guilty? What role does Calpurnia play in the family and in the novel?