Summary Chapter 18

• Mayella is the next to testify
  
  • she is 19 years old and seems to be terrified
  • the night when she was raped, she asked Tom Robinson to repair a dresser for her and when he was inside the house, he grabbed and raped her
  • Atticus makes Mayella reveal her poor life with seven siblings, her drunken father and no friends
• Atticus asks her several sharp questions
  
  • why she didn‘t defend herself, why her siblings didn‘t notice what was happening, and how Tom was able to bruise the right side of her face when his left hand was crippled when he was a young boy
  • he finally pleads her to confess that Tom didn‘t rape her and that it was her father who beat her up
  • Mayella gets upset and exclaims that the jury would be cowards if they didn‘t convict Tom Robinson
  • shortly after, she starts crying and refuses to answer any more questions
• Mr. Underwood notices that Jem and Scout are sitting in the balcony but Jem does not believe that he will tell their father

Summary Chapter 19

• Tom recounts that Mayella has often asked him to help her with some chores when he passed their house
  
  • on said night, she asked her to fix a door but there was nothing wrong with it
  • there was no one else in the house because Mayella had given them money to buy ice cream according to Tom
  • Mayella tried to hug him and asked him to kiss her
  • Bob watched the scene through the window and called Mayella a whore, claiming that he would kill her
• Tom‘s white employer - Link Deas - testifies that he has never had trouble with Tom throughout 8 years of work; the judge throws Deas out for this interruptive statement
• the prosecutor Mr. Gilmer hints at the fact that Tom had been arrested once and Tom admits that he is capable of choking and slinging a person to the floor despite his crippled arm
• Tom is pressed and asked about the reasons for always helping Mayella and he responds that he feels sorry for her
• the people in the courtroom are shocked since a black person is not allowed to feel sorry for a white person
• Mayella‘s testimony is reviewed by the prosecutor and he claims that Tom is lying
• this causes Dill to burst into tears and Scout leaves the courtroom with him
• Dill explains that he is upset about how rudely the prosecutor treated Tom
• outside, they meet Mr. Dolphus Raymond

Function

• Mayella is portrayed as some kind of mockingbird, too
  
  • her life is strained by ugliness, poverty and hatred
  • victimized: father abuses and most likely molests her, has to raise her siblings
  • never experienced any love or respect, doesn‘t recognize it as kindness when Atticus calls her Miss but thinks that he is making fun of her
  • has no friends and is considered to be the loneliest person in the world by Scout
  • has ambiguous roles for Scout: victim due to her upbringing but also responsible for Tom being ruined in order to deflect negative attention away from her
• Tom is characterized as purely honest and good
  
  • works hard and is compassionate enough to feel sorry for Mayella
  • reader believes his story over Mayella‘s due to his honest nature and Atticus‘s destructive questioning of the Ewells
  • although it is quite clear that Tom is innocent, it is also obvious that he will die
• Link Deas functions as the opposite of prejudice
  
  • doesn‘t care about the skin color of Tom; only a person‘s character matters to him
  • court refuses to assess Atticus‘s evidence as well as Deas‘s validation of Tom‘s character
  • his statement destroys the integrity of the formal processes of a court - which is ironic, since the whole trial is based on prejudice and can by no means considered as moral
• Mr. Gilmer as purely racist
  
  • calls Tom "boy" and constantly accuses him
  • according to Mr. Gilmer, Tom must be lying, violent and desiring white women just because he is black