At the same time, Mrs Merriweather was pitying and sympathising with the poor natives. She says “I said to myself, when I go home I’m going to give a course on the Mrunas and bring J. Grimes Everett message to Maycomb.” To the reader, it doesn’t seem reasonable if she thinks that for her to give a black person some money for helping her keep her house clean is something that is seen as superfluous while she couldn’t do more to help the poor natives.
Atticus takes up Tom Robinson’s case and “aims to defend him” although he knew that he wasn’t going to win the case. He tells Scout, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we were started is no reason for us not to try to win.” This shows the reader that Maycomb was an area in which prejudice towards the blacks could be traced back to their ancestors and this prejudice had been passed from generation to generation.
At that time, people in Maycomb didn’t like the fact that Atticus was trying to win the case. Because, what people had expected him to do was to take up the case just as a formality. They didn’t expect him to try to get Tom acquitted. Although the people in Maycomb showed displeasure at him for defending Tom, they were actually letting Atticus do something that in their hearts of hearts some of them wanted to do but didn’t dare to do it. Aunt Alexandra says, “They’re perfectly willing to let him do what they are too afraid to do themselves.” The people of Maycomb were afraid of doing it because they didn’t want to be ostracized by society and be seen upon as unfit to live with.
One important quotation which showed exactly what Atticus believed in was this: “some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around woman- black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.” While Atticus knew this, the rest of Maycomb chose to stereotype the whole black community as people they had to distrust.
Atticus also respected Mayella Ewell even thought she was his opposition and called her “Miss Mayella”. Evidently Mayella hadn’t received that kind of politeness before as she thought that Atticus was trying to “sass” her. At this point the author is trying to use language to show that Atticus is has no prejudice in him at all. The author also creates a contrast for the reader to look at. Mr Gilmer addresses Tom Robinson as “boy”, using it as a degrading term while Atticus just calls him by his first name. This emphasises the point that the author was trying to make: Atticus was different from people because of his lack of prejudice.
The nature of Atticus’s job in itself distances him from the rest of the people in Maycomb. Atticus held a white collared job and worked in an office. Most of the people in Maycomb didn’t actually work in offices but instead, their jobs mainly consisted of hard labour. In Scout’s words, “Atticus did not drive a dump truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone.” Scout, along with the majority of Maycomb, looks upon men with jobs that were associated with what a man should be doing or labelled as something manly to do, with admiration. On the other hand, Atticus doesn’t view this as a shortcoming and is happy to read his paper and watch the football team on the sidelines instead of playing in the game. Harper Lee wants us to admire Atticus for his intellect and his dry humour. Atticus often makes us laugh with small things he says which makes us like him. For example when Jem said that Mrs Dubose’s house was creepy. Atticus said “That should appeal to your imagination. Just imagine you‘re inside the Radley house.” But it’s also because of Atticus’s job that he is so highly respected.
Although he didn’t always have the same ideals as people, he always respected the opinions of other people. When Scout said that most people thought that he was wrong to try to defend Tom, he answered that “they’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions.” As a reader, we don’t agree with this as if faced with the same position, we would probably think that they were very wrong to be so prejudiced. Therefore, we admire Atticus’s magnanimousness in believing that they could believe in anything they liked.
Atticus also looks past people’s faults. Although Miss Dubose often hurled abuse at Atticus for defending Tom, he still saw her as a great and brave woman. She wanted to die free of morphine and she did it. Atticus said to Jem: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.” As readers, we admire the way which Atticus is bringing up his children. Most fathers would categorize “a man with a gun in his hand” as a brave man. Thus the name, “one-shot Finch” given to Atticus in his younger days as a commendation on his shooting skills. Atticus however, teaches his children that there is more than one form of bravery. We also admire the way in which he simplifies complicated matters when he’s explaining it to the children. In Scout’s words, “Jem and I were accustomed to or father’s last-will-and-testament diction, and we were at all times to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding.” For example, when he told Scout that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view”, and she didn’t understand it, he simplified his words to “until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
Maycomb was a place at which tradition was very important. At the start of the story, the author introduced the Finch family by showing the ways by which they were linked to the rest of the Maycomb community. The author helps the reader see how important tradition is to Maycomb by creating the character Aunt Alexandra who was meant to be a typical lady in Maycomb of that time. Maycomb had a caste system by which people were characterized by which family they came from. These people were then attributed certain characteristics which they were supposed to have. For example, “No Crawford Minds His Own Business” or “The Truth Is Not In The Delafields”. Jem said that “our kind of folks don’t like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don’t like the Ewells, and the Ewell hate and despise the coloured folk.” This was the unspoken rule that was used in Maycomb but Atticus again, differed from this. When Jem and Scout brought Walter Cunningham home for lunch, he spoke to Walter about subjects he knows that Walter has considerable knowledge about to make him feel comfortable. “While Walter piled food on his plate, he and Atticus talked together like two men”
Maycomb had one family which was surrounded by an aura of mystery and myths. The Radley family had so many stories told about them that nobody was sure of what was the truth anymore. It was rumoured that Boo Radley was a violent creature who even attacked his own parents and thus, he was locked up. The people of Maycomb didn’t like this family because they didn’t conform to what a normal family should be like. Scout said that “they did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal recreation, but worshipped at home.” “The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another thing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather only.” Because of these points, the people of Maycomb saw them as different and so, disapproved of them. Atticus however, sees that this prejudice is wrong and tells the children that they were wrong to make up a play about Boo Radley and his doings. Instead, he wanted them to sympathise with Boo Radley. ”What Mr Radley did was his own business. If he wanted to come out, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had the right to stay inside free from the inquisitive children, which was a mild term for the likes of us.” We see Atticus’s point of view by Scout reporting what Atticus said to them after they were caught trying to make Boo Radley come out.
The Ewells are also examples of isolated characters but in very different ways from Atticus.
Bob Ewell is isolated because many people in Maycomb regard him and his family as the “disgrace of Maycomb”. Atticus’ apt description of them was “They were people, but they lived like animals.” A widower with eight children, he is jobless and a reputed drunk. It is said that he drinks away most of his relief checks. Although it is against the law, he is allowed to hunt and trap out of season. As Atticus says, “when a man spends his relief checks on green whisky his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don’t know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit.” Maycomb provided help in this way but they didn’t trouble themselves to take in the Bob Ewell’s children, to bring up in their own homes. Had they provided this assistance, Mayella Ewell wouldn’t have had to crave affection and care from Tom Robinson which meant that the whole matter of her trying to kiss Tom Robinson wouldn’t even have had to happen
Bob Ewell also doesn’t have any basic respect for others. He doesn’t really know how to convey his feelings and opinions through words and so turns to using actions to express himself as we can see when Miss Stephanie told Scout that “Mr Bob Ewell stopped Atticus on the post office corner, spat in his face and told him he’d get him if it took him the rest of his life.” Bob Ewell did this because Atticus “destroyed his last bit of credibility at that trial” and he had to find some way to take it out on somebody. Bob Ewell couldn’t take the shame and embarrassment in knowing that most people in Maycomb didn’t believe his story at the trial and to try to heal his wounded ego, he threatened Atticus and challenged him to a fight. This just made it clearer to the people of Maycomb that Bob Ewell had been telling lies at the trial and the people would be disgusted by the means to which he resorted to regain his pride. This also caused him to be isolated in the eyes of people in Maycomb because it would have made him seem different and separated from mainstream society.
And the last and most important point to his isolation was his extreme hatred for the blacks. Although most people in Maycomb were prejudiced towards the blacks, Bob Ewell was an extreme case. Despite the fact that Helen had lost her husband due to Bob Ewell maligning him, he didn’t have the decency to show her some manners. Instead, he tried to scare Helen. “All the way to the house, Helen said, she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words.” Through this incident, the reader sees that Bob Ewell tries to pick on and bully on people weaker than him to feed his self esteem. This makes the reader look upon Bob Ewell as a person who tries to act strong and tough but in actual fact, is nothing more than a coward.
Mayella Ewell was also isolated from the rest of Maycomb’s mainstream society because she tried to get attention from a black man. In Atticus’s words, “she was white and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man.” This, to Maycomb was unacceptable and wrong.
Mayella Ewell was also isolated due to the family she came from. Scout says that”Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world.” “She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem called a mix child: white people wouldn’t have anything to with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she was white.” She lived differently from people, in different conditions and so she was seen as a person of lower class to most of the white people and the black people wouldn’t go near because as a white person, she could blame anything or say anything on them and her word would be taken against theirs.
Bob Ewell’s children are also different from the usual children found in Maycomb. They don’t seem to have any principle of what is right and wrong ingrained into them at all. One example of this is when Burris Ewell came to school only on the first day of school. “The whole school’d full of ‘em. They come first day every year and then leave.” Part of the reason he only goes to school on the first day is because he craves attention just like his father. He probably picked up this trait from his father. Part of the reason why Bob Ewell brought the Tom Robinson case to court because “he thought he would be a hero”.
Bob Ewell’s attitude towards bringing up his children was also very different. He didn’t really care about the welfare of his children. “It was everyone for himself as far as keeping clean went: if you wanted to wash you hauled your own water; the younger children had perpetual colds and suffered from chronic ground-itch”
Although both Bob Ewell and Atticus Finch were both isolated from the mainstream society, they were isolated in very different ways. Atticus was isolated because he followed what he believed in; but Bob Ewell was isolated because of his conduct and behaviour towards people in general. The reason why Harper Lee created these characters might perhaps, have to do with the social standings of these two men. With Atticus at the top and Bob Ewell at the bottom of the social ladder, the reader then can see the different ways in society isolates various people. Harper lee might have also wanted to create a contrast for the reader. Bob Ewell’s isolation is one where the reader is meant to look upon as something he deserves, while Atticus’s isolation is not meant to be seen as something which is difficult to live with as its self imposed and doesn’t bother him much.