Why Is Atticus Finch Important In To Kill A Mockingbird

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In the book To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there lives a character, Atticus Finch, the father of the narrator and main character, Scout. He, a lawyer, has chosen to defend a black man in a rape case amid criticism and insults from the town of Maycomb, where he lives and works. This creates a very difficult situation for him, yet he chooses to move on in spite of the scorn given to him by the town. Atticus consistently shows three traits throughout the book that develop and portray his character in a special way. The first, astuteness, a very necessary skill for a lawyer, means that he is able to discern things from given facts very well. The second trait, courteousness, describes his attitude and actions to others. He manifested the third trait, resolve, during the court case with Tom. These three traits will prove to you that he is, indeed, a gentleman lawyer.

Atticus Finch is a lawyer, a profession …show more content…
He resolved to prove Tom’s innocence in the court, and his actions show that he is very determined to do so. He was so sure of Tom’s innocence, in fact, that he sat outside the prison building protecting Tom from the lynching party that set out to kill him one night. During the court case, all of his efforts and his tactics, though they sometimes looked odd or unrelated, were concentrated into a plan and strategy to get the Ewells into a corner. This includes asking Mayella trivial questions and reading what the court reporter recorded, and once he got them in a corner, he trapped them, proving that Tom was unable to have attacked her. When he finally finished his cross-examinations, he had established that Mayella was bruised on the right side of her face, meaning that she must have been hit by a left-handed assailant, and that Bob Ewell primarily used his left hand. Then, he told Tom to stand up, and that revealed that Tom’s left hand was mutilated in a factory accident, meaning that he could not have hit
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