Bob Ewell

He couldn’t fight his real enemy, so he spit at someone else

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

4/23/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/ewell.htm

"‘I wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco,’ was all Atticus said about it."

That one line in Harper Lee’s brilliant 1960 novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird" starkly showed the difference between the protagonist, the stately and ethical Atticus Finch, and his antagonist, the bitter, twisted Bob Ewell.

In the novel, which takes place in a small Alabama town in the 1930s, Ewell, a drunk and a ne’er-do-well, makes a spectacular charge of raping his daughter against one of the local black men, a cripple named Tom Robinson, and the lawyer Atticus Finch is appointed by the court to defend Robinson. To the unease of the town, Atticus proceeds to do so, demonstrating that Robinson could not have raped the daughter and leaving the strong impression that she was raped by her father instead. This being Alabama in the 1930s, the jury elects not to take the word of a black man over the word of a white man and convicts Robinson, who is subsequently shot while trying to escape. The town at large figures Robinson’s behavior was "Typical" and assumes it shows he really was guilty, but among others who know better is Bob Ewell, who begins a mounting vendetta against the people who caused his humiliation in court, including Atticus Finch.

In his first move after the trial, he accosts Atticus in the street and spits in his face. Afterward, he mounts an escalating campaign of intimidation culminating in a knife attack on Atticus’ two children, one foiled and which resulted in Ewell’s death when a reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley, intervened.

When I read about the pathetic and vengeful ex-Marine Michael Smith, and his attack on Jane Fonda at a book signing, the first thing I thought of was Bob Ewell. Like Bob Ewell, he ran up to his victim, spat a stream of tobacco juice, and ran away. Semper Fi, good buddy. Pride of the Marines, and all that. People wrote their papers saying he should get the Medal of Honor and citizen of the year awards. I’m sure America would love to be remembered as a country that honored their veterans for spitting tobacco juice in the faces of 67 year old women.

As I thought about it, I realized that some analogies could be drawn between Jane Fonda and Atticus Finch. OK, Finch would never have done Barbarella, but he did antagonize a lot of people by doing something unpopular that he thought was the right thing to do. Like Fonda, Finch made enemies, and found he was being systematically smeared (he was accused of sleeping with Negroes and other things like that). Just as Jane Fonda is endlessly accused of actively giving the Vietnamese information that led to the torture of prisoners. Some of the prisoners were named in the rumors, and they’ve all denied the stories, but the Bob Ewells of America don’t care: they just rear back and repeat the same smears.

Now, there’s a lot of room for legitimate debate about Fonda’s actions some 32 plus years ago. Her actions didn’t break any laws, but they didn’t do anyone any good, either. I was part of the anti-war movement, and remember rolling my eyes and wishing she had stayed stateside. Advocates of the war, rapidly dwindling in number at that point, were outraged and had a new target, and even the North Vietnamese doubtlessly looked at one another after the crazy American movie actor left and said, "Well, other than spitting tobacco juice in the face of the Americans, did we actually gain anything from all that?"

But it’s been a third of a century. Fonda has since apologized for her lack of judgement. And America trades with the Vietnamese these days, even if few Americans ever visit the war museum in Ho Ch Minh City to see the thousands of images of horrors America visited upon their land.

But the Bob Ewells of America can’t let go of it. A lot, like Bob Ewell, are tiny, strutting, truculent men who always need someone to blame. A lot came back from Vietnam not feeling good about having been there, and rather than examine those feelings or acknowledge that maybe America was wrong to be there at all, they seek scapegoats. It is an externalization of the deep guilt, rage and shame that is their legacy from having served in a dubious manner and for a dubious cause. Most, unlike Michael Smith, realize that spitting in the faces of people for actions done over a generation ago won’t make them better people or fix their problems. Far too many, however, cheered Smith’s action, a symptom of the coarse psychosis of people unwilling to admit that something has gone drastically wrong with America.

Smith’s actions were reported to an uncritical TV audience by Robert Novak, a man who cheerfully committed treason against America by revealing the name of an operative in the hopes of giving his partisan favorite, George Putsch, a boost in the ratings. [Go ahead, Bob: sue me.] It came just as the army "found no wrongdoing" among the leaders of the American contingent at Abu Ghraib. Thousands of Bob Ewells regarded this blissfully in the flickering glows of their TV sets, only to erupt in rage and joy at the news that an old lady was spat upon by one of America’s finest. Who then ran away.

Disregarding the plight of the VICTIMS for a minute, I wonder how many Michael Smith / Bob Ewell types we’re breeding over there in the American Gulags of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo. How many will come back, filled with hate, rage, guilt, and anger over what they did, and what they witnessed? How many will come back willing to spit at old ladies, or attack young children with a knife?

How many of the people who cheered Michael Smith because they really believe that US servicemen were tortured because of Fonda’s actions will declare that the animals who tortured and raped men, women and children at Abu Ghraib "were only doing their job and fighting terrorism"?

Of course, it doesn’t take that sort of personal tribulation to create a Bob Ewell. When Marla Ruzicka was killed by a car bomber in Iraq last week, praise for her humanitarian efforts to help the innocent victims of the war and the bombings by the resistance poured in from all quarters, including Senators from the GOP. But one Ann Coulter-in-training, a Debbie Schlussel from the John Birch right, snarled that Ruzicka was a "Treasonatrix Barbie" and growled that Ruzicka was "Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans." Ruzicka’s crime? She demanded that the US account for innocent victims of bombing raids on Iraqi cities. That she also demanded an accounting of the victims of resistance atrocities was lost on Schlussel. Even the Pentagon considered her cause a good one, although it made them uncomfortable. Much like the town of Maycomb’s reaction to Atticus Finch defending that Negro, actually. It’s pretty unlikely that Schlussel, a lawyer, ever suffered great tribulation that forced her into a moral quandary, as happened to the Fonda-hating vets. Some people just like to despise others and wrap themselves in the flag or Jesus when they do so. If they are vicious enough about it, they might end up on the cover of Time Magazine.

One of the terrible ironies is that whether her actions were right or wrong, Jane Fonda protested the war because she knew that through the personal degradation and attrition forced upon American youth by arrogant and wrong-headed leaders blindly following an insane ideology, a lot of those kids would come back turned into Bob Ewells. Michael Smith did. They came back with an insatiable rage, an anger that can never be relieved, a guilt that can never be assuaged.

It’s unlikely the incident will affect Fonda all that much. She strikes me as fairly well-adjusted and at peace with herself these days. Most normal people don’t hate her, and she’ll continue to sell books and her next movie will do well at the box office. The tragedy in the spitting incident isn’t that Jane Fonda will remain unchanged by it.

The tragedy is that Michael Smith will remain unchanged by it.

Folks in his neighborhood might consider telling their kids to steer clear of him.