Atticus destroys the ewells

Basically what happened in the court trial is Atticus "totally REKT" the Ewells and their case against Tom R. He went through and in an organized fashion appealed to the Jury while totally schooling Mayella and Bob by disproving their claims.

An example of this in the trial are several quotes throughout the trial that all came together pretty nicely that proved how Tom couldn't have done it because of his only working hand being his right and Bob's dominant hand being left which is the side of Mayella's face with the injury's.


He used what Heck Tate said on page 192, "Oh yes that'd make it her right . It was her right eye, Mr. Finch." Which he said when he was specifying where Mayella's black eye was.

On page 201 Atticus makes Bob show everyone how he is left handed with, "Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of the envelope and looked complacently...
"What's so interestin'?" he asked.
"You're left-handed, Mr. Ewell," said Judge Taylor.

On page 211 Atticus ties it all together when he make's clear to everyone that T.R.'s left arm just didn't work, "His left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right, hung dead at his side.


But in the end justice did not prevail and atticus and tom lost the trial because the jury with no factual evidence convicted Tom (because of course). The largest issues in this tie much more into racial issues than gender but there is still relevance. At various points in the book it talks about how rape is a capital offense and a man who rapes a woman reguardless of race (even though black men were like 700% more likely to be convicted) could be sentenced to 20 years or more in prison or even death. This shows how highly woman were valued in society, but not as people or anything reasonable like that, but like delicate flowers who weren't to be touched out of marriage and stuff. Not in defense of men or anything, but a man raped at that time in contrast to women wouldn't have such a high penalty from conviction simply because of how women were seen.

In an ideal society, or even just today what would've happened (or probably would've) would be what really should've happened, being that T.R. wouldn't have been convicted and Bob and possibly Mayella would've been punished for lying (if that is a thing, which I'm pretty sure it is).