Killing the Birdo

The lyrics of Beck’s Modern Guilt undoubtedly draw parallels with
the reactions of Jem to Tom Robinson’s trial, and, ultimately, the
verdict of the jury. Jem is almost a revolutionary in his different
concepts of right and wrong as opposed to those so widely accepted in
Maycomb. The lines “Don’t know what I’ve done / But I feel
ashamed” as well as “These people talk about impossible things /
And I’m falling out of conversations” is similar to Jem’s “guilt”
at being associated with Maycomb and its people: the Ewells, the
Stephanie Crawfords, the jury, and the like. The absurdity he sees
in the verdict and everyone’s response confuses him, which is similar
to the second aforementioned line.

In this last section Tom Robinson gets locked up and is awaiting to see his fate. I chose this picture of a jail because it is really sad and it is sad that Tom got locked up. TOm tried to escape jail and was shot senevteen times, this shows how desperate Tom was and how depressing the jail is. Tom did not want to die in this place he did the last thing he could do and run away from it, although Atticus said his case was a great strive because the jusy took a long time to make a verdict, it is still a sad outcome. Do you think you could survive jail? I dont know if I could, I would probably go crazy before anything else.

“I wonder if he thought Atticus somehow responsible for Tom Robinson’s conviction” (Lee 212)

In this quote, Scout is explaining how Jem was crying. He was so upset over the conviction of Tom Robinson and how the jury considered him guilty. Scout thought that Jem may have thought that it might have been Atticus’ fault, mainly because Atticus was Tom Robinson’s attorney. Atticus’ excuse was that he was too strong for Tom, but that made no sense to me. In a way, I think it is his fault, but racism played a huge role, and I don’t think there was much Atticus could have done to change the outcome. Scout didn’t know for sure, but if I was in Jem’s position, I would also blame every thing possible to try to find a way to make sense of all of the trial’s nonsense.

Guilty?! This is unbelievable! I have no idea how the jury can even begin to imagine Maybella’s case. Tom Robinson may be black, but is still a person none the less. Racism played such a large role in that trial. If it was a white man rapping a black girl, the jury’s favor would have probably been in the white man’s side. Even now, a black person being convicted for a crime, even if there he was completely innocent, would still feel uneasy and wronged. Race plays a physiological role on every event. I am so sick of it. All the time, a book or a movie would have a case where racism would play a role. Its not just only blacks getting hit hard by racism. Hispanics are being made fun of for a few of them jumping the boarder and a few of them being poor. Theses stereotypes are true only for the few persons of that race, not every last one of them. Just because a couple of groups of Muslims decide to be terrorist and get that title does not grant other people the right to label all Muslims as terrorists. Back to the book, the whole trial would have changed if the jury was half white and half black.

In this section of the book the trial is about to end and the jury is giving its final verdict. Atticus said that it was amazing that it took so long for the jury to make up their mind. After the jury gave their verdict Tom was sent to a jail seventy miles away if he is not pardoned Atticus thinks he will get the electric chair.  Just imagine if you were Tom Knowing you could be put on death row for a crime you didn’t commit! What would you do? At that point I would have lost faith in the justice system and tried to break out of jail like Tom did. Of course we know that Tom was not successful in escaping, we also know that he was shot seventeen times, but what we don’t know is what exactly was going on in Toms head as he tried to escape. We also don’t know what drove him to try to escape was it in loss of faith, stupidity, or was it just a doomed mans last chance at survival? I hope that as the story goes we can find out exactly what happened as he tried to escape.