TL;DR: A twenty-five-year-old Black tenant farmer with a wife, three children, and a left arm dead at his side from a childhood cotton-gin accident. Court-appointed to be defended by Atticus Finch against the false charge of raping Mayella Ewell. The trial drives the second half of the book; Tom's quiet "I felt right sorry for her" on the witness stand is the moment the case is lost.

Spoiler level: medium. Discusses the trial, the verdict, and Tom's death, all of which are central to the novel. If you have not read past Chapter 15, hold off.

Snapshot

Tom Robinson is the central figure of Part Two and one of the most quietly devastating characters in American fiction. Clean, polite, soft-spoken, married to Helen and father of three young children, he works for Mr. Link Deas on his cotton farm at the edge of Maycomb. He is twenty-five years old. His left arm — twelve inches shorter than his right and hanging dead at his side — is the central physical fact of his body, and the central forensic fact of the trial.

Role in the story

Tom is the defendant in the trial that the entire second half of the book turns on. He appears off-stage in Chapter 9 (Atticus has been appointed to defend him), again off-stage in Chapter 15 (the lynch mob comes for him), on-stage at the trial in Chapters 17 through 20, and then off-stage again as the verdict, the editorial, and the news of his death roll out across Chapters 21 through 25. He is, with Boo Radley, one of the two clearest "mockingbirds" the book's title is naming.

Personality in plain English

Polite to a fault. Quiet. Honest. Religious — he attends First Purchase regularly and gives his last "I never set foot on her property without an invitation" with the steadiness of a man who knows the truth will not save him but who has nothing else to offer. Kind: the small chores he has done for Mayella Ewell over months — for free, on his walk past her shack — are the unforgivable detail his cross-examiner uses to bury him, and Tom does not bother to lie about them. He does not raise his voice in court. He calls Mr. Gilmer "sir." He answers every question put to him as truthfully as he can.

What he wants

The trial to be over. To go back to his family, his job, his church. To be believed. (The book is clear that he knew, before he ever took the stand, that he was not going to be.)

What he fears

Helen and the children, when this is over. The state penitentiary. The walk to the prison yard after sentencing. The book delivers his death in news-of-the-day prose in Chapter 24: while at exercise at the Enfield Prison Farm, he ran for the fence in broad daylight and was shot seventeen times by the guards. The bare fact is left for the reader to do the work of: he had decided he would not be saved by Atticus's appeal.

Key relationships

• Atticus Finch — his appointed defender. The Chapter 19 testimony, taken together with the Chapter 20 closing argument, is one of the most carefully constructed defenses in American fiction — and the verdict comes back guilty anyway.
• Helen Robinson — his wife, who appears off-stage throughout. The First Purchase collection in Chapter 12 is for her. The visit Cal and Atticus make to her cabin in Chapter 25 — described by Dill — is the book's most quietly devastating scene.
• Mayella Ewell — his accuser. The Chapter 18 cross-examination, and Tom's "I felt right sorry for her" answer to Mr. Gilmer in Chapter 19, are the case in miniature.
• Bob Ewell — Mayella's father; the man whose appearance at the Ewell window changed everything about that November afternoon.
• Mr. Link Deas — his employer, who stands up in court during the trial to vouch for him ("Tom Robinson is a good boy") and protects Helen on her walks to and from work after Tom's death.

Visual identity

Tall and broad-shouldered. Twenty-five years old. Long-oval face with a defined chin, high prominent cheekbones, flat cheeks beneath them. Dark brown almond-shaped eyes, slightly downturned at the outer corners. Rich dark brown skin. Short, tightly curled black hair with a slight recession at the temples. The book's load-bearing physical fact: his left arm is twelve inches shorter than his right, the result of a childhood cotton-gin accident; the left shoulder slopes lower than the right, the left arm hangs visibly thin and stiff at his side, and the elbow cannot be lifted to chest height. For court he wears clean work pants or coveralls, a buttoned white cotton work shirt with long sleeves over both arms (the left sleeve creased where there is less arm beneath it), and a thin black tie.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Tom Robinson (canonical — the most common form)
• Tom

Discussion questions

• Atticus has Tom stand up in court so the jury can see his withered left arm. The forensic point is unmistakable — a left-handed man could not have made Mayella's right-side bruises, and Tom cannot use his left hand. The jury convicts anyway. What does the book want us to do with the fact that the evidence does not matter?
• "I felt right sorry for her." Tom's answer to Mr. Gilmer is, in the world of Maycomb, the worst thing he could have said. Why does the book put the lost case on that one line and not on Mayella's tears or Bob's testimony?
• Tom dies trying to climb a prison fence with one usable arm and is shot seventeen times. Atticus tells the children he had given up. Underwood's editorial calls it "the senseless slaughter of songbirds." Which framing does the book ultimately endorse?
• We never see Helen Robinson's face on-page. We see her collapse in a yard from a distance, and we hear that Link Deas escorts her to and from work. What does the novel gain by keeping her at that distance?
• Tom and Boo Radley never meet. The book pairs them by its title without ever putting them in a room together. How does that quiet structural pairing read on a second reading?