The editorial in Chapter 25 is about Tom Robinson's death, and how it was unjust and “senseless killing.”(Lee, 241) The person writing the editorial, Mr. Underwood, believes it is a sin to kill people with disabilities. Tom Robinson didn’t have a functioning left arm, so Mr. Underwood is bitter about Tom Robinson's death. Mr. Underwood compares Tom to a Mockingbird, as he was innocent and helpless in his situation and didn’t deserve to be killed. This connects back to an earlier chapter, where Atticus claims that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. The editorial is confusing to Scout because she doesn’t see how Tom Robinson's death was a senseless killing. When she first read the paper, she disagreed with Mr. Underwood because she believed that Tom Robinson was given a fair trial with a good jury, and Atticus had tried his hardest. Later in the same paragraph, she realizes that the court was biased against Tom Robinson from the beginning, and he had never been given a fair trial. She says, “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. “(Lee, 241) She then understands that Tom Robinson never stood a chance against the word of a white woman, especially in the time period this book is set in. This shows that Scout is learning that not everything is fair, especially when it has to do with race.
I disagree with the editorial, I believe that the guards did not have much of a choice but to kill Tom Robison. Tom was a proven guilty man who was trying to escape from prison, disability or not he had to be stoped. Atticus states “He just broke into a blind raving charge at the fence and started to climb over… the guards called to him to stop. They fired a few shots in the air then to kill” (Lee 268). This quote is showing that the guards tried to get him to stop and solve the problem easy but he gave the guards no choice but to shoot and kill. In the editorial, the women's whole argument is that Tom had a disability and should not have been sensibly killed but if a man without a disability tried to escape the guards would have done the same thing, warn them then if they have to kill them.
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