There is poverty in Harper Lee's town of Maycomb, Alabama. The story of Scout and her brother Jem takes place during the Great Depression. As the children of an attorney they don't face most of the harsher realities of those times, but the social conflicts swirling around them eventually bring the strife straight to their front door. Easy to forget the time wasn't just of physical deprivation and poverty, but also a period of social paranoia. To Kill a Mockingbird shows us all sides of those conflicts giving us a glimpse into the different parts of a small town until we can see how they work together. We can live for a brief time in these somewhat claustrophobia inducing little worlds and see them as they were.

To Kill a Mockingbird is Lee Harper's only book of fiction, but into this one story she packed years of observation and experience. She ably describes the causes of tensions that bind or divide a community. Her ability to describe the thoughts, feelings, and motives of her characters expertly exhibits the advice given to her young protagonist by her father. Atticus tells Scout she'll never truly understand anyone until she puts herself in their shoes and walks around. Through her one and only novel Lee puts us in small southern town shoes and takes us for a long walk down dusty unpaved roads.

Atticus Finch is the court-appointed attorney for the doomed Tom Robinson. Robinson is a black man on trial for the rape of a white woman. Many in the town feel Finch is being disloyal for actually putting a real case together and trying to win his client's freedom. In Maycomb no one is sitting around at the supper table deciding in a Machiavellian way which neighbor should prosper or fail. To them it's simply the way it's always been and therefore how it should remain. Their sense of betrayal comes from upholding a social code generations in the making which is often unjust and cruel.

The Ewell's have lived in extreme poverty for generations. As the narrative tells us the Ewell's live close to the bone no matter how the economy looks for everyone else. We can see Mayella's father Bob has given up. He's a drunk who cares nothing for how his family will eat or maintain themselves. Mayella is at best an extremely emotionally damaged young woman which is understandable giving the obvious abuse she receives both from her family and to a different degree from the town's people.

What's important to remember as you see Mayella and her father destroy the

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