Chapter 21 Novel Highlight: 

In this chapter, we find out that Tom Robinson was guilty. The chapter starts out with Calpurnia going to the court room to inform Atticus that the kids haven’t been home all day. Cal then gathers the kids and walks them home. They came back home after dinner to their place and Jem tells them that nothing has happened. Jem reassures Scout and Dill that they’re gonna win the case. The jury then had to discuss all the evidence and information they had been given and finally came out. When they came out, they had announced that Tom was guilty. Everyone from the colored row was disappointed. That was how the chapter ended.

This is an important chapter because we finally found out what we’ve all been waiting for. After all the judgement that the Finch family endured, what Tom had been through, this was the outcome. This chapter had so much impact on the rest of the book because it told us the outcome of the trial, and what Tom’s fate would be for the rest of his life. This part in the book affected so many people; Tom, Atticus, Scout, Jem, and all the colored people Tom was representing.

Chapter 21 had represented how unjust the court system can be. It also gave us perspective on how something that had no evidence to it could be turned around to make the defendant look bad. The only witness that Mayella had was her father, who was drunk most of the time, and the only witness Tom had for the defendant side was himself. There had been evidence that Tom has never caused trouble similar to this problem before and that he was generally a man who helped Mayella out, not put her in to rule. Nowadays, the system can still be unjust, but it has definitely gotten better than what it was at that time. I can only imagine the impact that that trial made on the rest of Maycomb and how it impacted Alabama as a state.

– Shahhed Abuhamdeh