At the end of chapter 16, Judge Taylor is introduced and described. He is the judge in Atticus' case of Tom Robinson. Judge Taylor is described as "amiable, white-haired, slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court with an alarming informality--he sometimes propped his feet up, he often cleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife."
In some of the longer hearings, Taylor sometimes appeared to be sleeping. However, he was never unaware of what was going on. One other interesting habit of his was that he didn't smoke cigars, but slowly chewed them down.
"If one was lucky, one had the privilege of watching him put a long dry cigar into his mouth and munch it slowly up. Bit by bit the dead cigar would disappear, to reappear some hours later as a flat slick mess, its essence extracted and mingling with Judge Taylor's digestive juices."
Later after the trial is over, the judge is spoken of again. He has a late night visitor one Sunday night. Maycomb knew it was Bob Ewell coming after him. Taylor made Bob look like a fool on the stand, and Bob was trying to get even, so Bob cut his screen that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment