In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, dramatic action revolves around Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell, in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. Atticus Finch is his court-appointed lawyer, and after he gets the case, his daughter, Scout, the narrator, must contend with the disdain and ostracism of their neighbors. Atticus, too, stands against the weight of public opinion, even stopping a mob of men eager to dispense vigilante justice.