Background and Character Tom Robinson lives in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the 1930s. He works faithfully for a white landowner named Mr. Link Deas. Tom is known in his community as a quiet, kind, and helpful man. He has a physical disability because his left arm was caught and mangled in a cotton gin when he was a boy, leaving that arm completely useless. The False Accusation Mayella Ewell, a poor white woman living nearby, asks Tom to come inside her fence to fix a broken door. When Tom enters, Mayella suddenly attacks him with a kiss and tries to hold onto him. Her abusive, drunken father, Bob Ewell, sees this happen through a window and screams insults. To protect himself from false trouble, Tom runs away as fast as he can, but Mayella and her father accuse him of rape to hide the family's shame. The Trial Atticus Finch steps up to defend Tom in court, even though the town's intense racism means he cannot win. During the trial, Atticus proves that Tom's left hand is crippled, meaning he could not have beaten Mayella on the right side of her face the way she claimed; instead, the evidence points to a left-handed attacker like Bob Ewell. When Tom takes the stand, he honestly admits that he felt sorry for lonely Mayella and tried to help her out of pity. In that time and place, a Black man expressing pity for a white person turns the prejudiced, all-white jury against him.