The presence of injustice in the world is certainly a very dominant theme all throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. One example of injustice can be seen the moment Atticus describes Tom Robinson's death.Tom Robinson's trial is a clear example of injustice. As Atticus states in his closing remarks, his "case should never have come to trial" due to lack of evidence that the crime of rape even took place (Ch....
The presence of injustice in the world is certainly a very dominant theme all throughout Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. One example of injustice can be seen the moment Atticus describes Tom Robinson's death.
Tom Robinson's trial is a clear example of injustice. As Atticus states in his closing remarks, his "case should never have come to trial" due to lack of evidence that the crime of rape even took place (Ch. 20). As a result of the unfairness and even unlawfulness of the trial, Robinson's guilty verdict and death sentence are equally unjust. That being the case, Robinson should never have been sent to prison. Though Atticus tried to calm him by asserting they stood a good chance of overturning the case upon appeal, as Atticus phrases it, Tom got "tired of white men's chances and preferred to take one of his own," which he exercised by trying to escape prison (Ch. 24). As a result of his unjust prison sentence, Robinson's death was equally unjust. Atticus states that the prison guards shot Robinson 17 times when Robinson did not stop attempting to climb the prison gate; Atticus expresses the injustice of shooting him so many times in the following:
Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoot him that much. (Ch. 24)
Hence, all in all, Atticus is asserting that Robinson's treatment, including the "seventeen bullet holes," is a prime example of injustice.
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