“To Kill a Mockingbrird” and “The Ox-Bow Incident”
When is mob justice justified? Is it true that justice acts too slowly and therefore should we commend the people who take the law into their own hands for their quick thinking and swift punishment for wrongdoing? Both of the novels The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and Harper Lee respectively, demonstrate the consequences of mob violence and punishment without trial. It can be deduced that mob justice, or people acting on what they think is right and not observing what the law says, is not justified in any case. Too many problems arise when justice is not left for the courts to decide. This is observed in The Ox-Bow Incident, where a mob gathers and lynches several suspected criminals, but only results in even more death for several innocent people. Mob violence is also plays a part in To Kill a Mockingbird. The situation involves a male Negro on trial for supposedly raping a young woman. A mob with cruel intentions moved in on the jail where the accused rapist is being held, but fortunately is a young girl speaks with the angry crowd and calms them down.
The first indication of mob justice in The Ox-Bow Incident was when Farnley started to get together a posse to follow a band of cattle rustlers into the desert. When someone suggested that the sheriff and Judge go along, replies were as such. “What led rustlers into this valley in the first place? This is no kind of a place for rustlers. I’ll tell you what did it. Judge Tyler’s kind of justice, that’s what did it.” And “The Vigilance Committee does something-and it doesn’t take them six months to get started either, the way it does justice in some places.” These statements show that the men of the town have no need for official justice; they feel justice will be served when the cattle rustlers are hanged. Although what the mob is doing is in fact illegal, they either don’t realize it or don’t care. Some members in the mob do, however, know the consequences of making decisions base primarily on rage. These individuals, mainly Osgood, a village preacher, and Davies, the store owner, try and talk to the group of men. Unfortunately, the rowdy crowd shouts them down, totally disregarding anything they say. The cattle rustlers are pursued down the canyon, and soon the posse catches up with them and prepares to hang the three criminals. The three men consist of an old Mexican, a grizzled old man, and Donald Martin, a relatively young man. Tetley, the man interrogating the three men, asks them what their story is. Martin, one of the accused men, proceeds to tell that he bought the cattle fairly from Kincaid. Refusing his explanation, the crowd uses everything Martin says against him. Overcome with rage, irrational conclusions were the outcome of the “trial”. Then when Kincaid’s gun was found in one of the stranger’s saddlebags, the mob took this as definite proof that Kincaid was killed by these men, even with the continued insistence that it was found by the side of the road. Even though Martin’s story seemed to sound legitimate, it was rejected by the crowd and the hangings were set for the next day. The hangings commence and all three of the suspected felons are killed. After the executions, the men ride back toward the town and meet the sheriff on the way. Some of the town drunks ramble on to the sheriff that they caught the men who killed Kincaid and put them to justice. The sheriff reveals that there wasn’t any murder, Kincaid is alive and the men bought the cattle from him legally. This goes to show that things may have gone very different if the interrogation of the suspected men would have taken place in front of a real jury. Evidence would have been observed and there would have been a time for the three men to tell their story so the jury could hear it and respond appropriately.
To Kill a Mockingbird also supports that mob violence is not justified. The central issue in this novel involves a black man, Tom Robinson, on trial for the alleged raping of a young woman. Tom gets sympathy from Atticus Finch, a lawyer with high standards and ethics. Atticus represents Tom because he wants a fair trial for Tom and he believes the jury will not listen to Tom and will convict him just because he’s black. The mob comes into play when Tom is kept in the town jail the night before the trial. The critical point of this mob mentality is the fact that the men don’t want a rapist to get away without a punishment. However, the men obviously don’t realize that possibility that Tom is telling the truth. Tom’s story was that he went to Mayella Erwell’s because she asked him to do some house work. According to Tom, as soon as he entered the house she threw herself on him and started to kiss him. At that moment, Mr. Erwell stormed into the room and started hitting Mayella about the face. Tom, in a panic, ran off as fast as he could toward home. A major defense that Tom has is that his left arm is useless due to a farming accident he had when he was young boy. Therefore Tom could not have beaten Mayella since all of her bruises were on the right side of her face and Mayella told the jury that Tom was facing her when he struck her. Despite all of this the jury convicted Tom, and he was thrown into jail.
Both The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird have situations that involve certain mob situations. Each novel has a circumstance that was affected by the fact that a criminal case did not reach an appointed judge and was dealt with by a mob. In The Ox-Bow Incident several innocent people’s lives were ended because of the actions of a mob. If a formal trial would have taken place, Martin, his two partners, Tetley and Gerald may not have died. As in To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom may have gotten seriously hurt or even killed by the mob if not for Scout, the little girl who settled them down. In every case of mob violence, the main idea is not “innocent until proven guilty” its, “prove you’re innocent and we will not kill you. That is, if we believe you.” This mentality often results in irrational decisions that are not based on evidence but based primarily on rage. That is why in The Ox-Bow Incident the three men were killed not because all the evidence pointed out that they were guilty, but because Martin could not prove that they were innocent. It was the same way in To Kill a Mockingbird, the men of the town did not even wait to see if Tom was guilty of rape, they went to the jail prepared to cause him harm without giving him a chance to defend himself.
As shown in The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird, mob justice is not practical for real life situations. The reason mob action almost always results in people getting hurt or killed is because the mobs mentality is based primarily on a person being guilty until proven innocent. The Ox-Bow Incident and To Kill a Mockingbird displayed the advantages of formal justice as to the alternative, mob justice.
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