Personal Response: Childhood Memories and Court Case

1) What memories of your own childhood come to mind as you read about Scout's experiences?

When I was small, Scout reminded me of how picky and calculative I was. I was easily agitated and rash. I remembered when I was in Kindergarten, I would not even let my brother exceed even half a minute on the computer. One time, I remembered he refused to budge, and asked me to give him half an hour more. Half an hour? That was way too long according to my books. I continued pestering him and nudging him away from the computer, but to no avail. Soon, I started losing my patience, with all my might, I pushed him of the chair.

Shocked at my sudden use of violence, he fell like a sack of potatoes. As he fell, he scratched his leg, and it started to bleed. However, as naive and ignorant I was, I could not care less about his injury. I continued sitting there playing the computer.

With relation to Scout, she gets picky and agitated when her sibling Francis calls her father a nigger - lover, and would lose no time to punch people in the nose should they agitate her. I think as kids, we all have the same behaviour, but we must grow quickly out of it, less it be stuck with us for the rest of our lives.

2) As you followed the action in the courtroom, which character did you empathize with most? least? Explain.

I empathized most with tom Robinson. He was a good, decent, hard-working black man with a family to take care of, and has been falsely accused of raping a white woman. In addition, the writer sets the tone of Tom Robinson to that of innocence. It is very hard to believe that Tom Robinson would have lied during the court case. An example would be "I's scared I'd be in court...scared I'd hafta face up to what I didn't do." He was stuttering, which further portrays that he is genuinely scared.

According to him, he helped her all this while without even accepting a penny. Not only was he not thanked, but he was now facing a charge which would most likely end him up in prison. This seriously makes us empathise with her, and if we were in that courtroom, we probably would have tried to help him too.

He was in court because of the colour of his skin and the impudent ego of Bob Ewell's wounded pride. It was completely unfair, and he seemed to have little chance of winning this trial although all evidence pointed otherwise. The whole county was against him and was ready to convict him of a crime he never did just because he was discriminated, something that we can really empathise and feel for.

I could not empathize with Bob Ewell at all. The false accusation Tom can all be traced back to him. Although Mayella Ewell started it by even letting him come into the house, I can safely say that Mayella at least hat somewhat of a conscience. Even though she did a despicable thing in going along with accusing Tom of raping her, I think that Mayella Ewell is a character that people can at least feel sorry for.

From the court case, first of all, we can learn that Mayella got beaten by her father. Next, although they were given relief funds, her father used it to buy whisky, and can occasionally beat his children. Bob Ewell, which I would not even consider as a human, was terribly selfish and self centred. He could not even the least bit of affection for his children, let alone his wrongdoings of discriminating people according to their skin when he is actually much worst of than them.