To Kill a Mockingbird chapter 16 summary and analysis is available in PDF.
The trial starts the next day.The town is flooded by people from all over the county.Everyone makes an appearance in the courtroom, from Miss Crawford to Mr. Raymond, a wealthy eccentric who owns land on a river bank, and has mulatto children.Miss Maudie says that watching someone on trial for his life is like going to a Roman carnival.
The crowd gathers in the town square to eat lunch.They waited for most of the crowd to enter the courthouse so that they could slip in at the back and prevent Atticus from seeing them.Black people are required to sit in the balcony in order to watch the trial if they wait too long.They can see the entire courtroom from these seats.Judge Taylor, a white-haired old man with a reputation for running his court in an informal fashion, presides over the case.
The prosecutor, Mr. Gilmer, questioned the man who said that Bob Ewell told him that his daughter had been raped.Mayella told Tate that Tom Robinson had raped her.The witness admitted that no doctor was summoned, and told Atticus that Mayella's injuries were on the right side of her face.Bob Ewell is called when Tate leaves the stand.
Bob Ewell and his children live behind the town garbage dump in a cabin with a yard full of trash.No one is sure how many children Ewell has, and the only orderly corner of the yard is planted with well-tended geraniums rumored to belong to Mayella.An extremely rude little man, Ewell testifies that on the evening in question he was coming out of the woods with a load of kindling when he heard his daughter yelling.He looked in the window and saw that Tom Robinson had raped her.Ewell ran for the sheriff after he saw that his daughter was all right, after Robinson fled.Atticus asked Mr. Ewell why no doctor was called and then had the witness write his name on the piece of paper.Bob Ewell is a left-handed man who is more likely to bruise a girl on the right side of her face.
The trial is the most gripping and dramatic sequence in the book, with the testimony and deliberations covering about five chapters.The courtroom scene, in which Atticus picks apart the Ewells as the whole town watches, is the most cinematic portion of the narrative.Though the trial targets Tom Robinson, in another sense it is Maycomb that is on trial, and while Atticus eventually loses the court case, he successfully reveals the injustice of a society that confines Black people to the colored balcony.The trial was conducted in the courtroom.In the trial conducted in the mind of the reader, it is the white community wallowing in prejudice and hatred that loses.
It's fitting that the children end up sitting in the colored section of the courthouse, just as Miss Maudie doesn't want to attend the trial.The crowd of white faces in the courtroom are not racist.The other children have made fun of Jem and Scout for loving Black people.