Describe the Ewells.

Bob Ewell

An evil, ignorant man who belongs to the lowest substratum of Maycomb society. He lives with his nine motherless children in a shack near the town dump. Evidence from the trial suggests that he caught his daughter kissing Tom, proceeded to beat her, and then encouraged her to claim Tom raped her. He drinks heavily and spends his relief checks on whiskey rather than food for his family. Bob holds a strong grudge against Atticus and attacks his children at the end of the novel.

Mayella Ewell

The oldest of the many Ewell children, at age nineteen. She lives a miserable and lonely existence, despised by whites and prohibited from befriending blacks. However, she breaks a social taboo by trying to seduce Tom, then reacts with cowardice by accusing him of rape and perjuring against him in court.

From the text:

"In certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed them certain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some of the Ewells’ activities. They didn’t have to go to school, for one thing. Another thing, Mr. Bob Ewell, Burris’s father, was
permitted to hunt and trap out of season."

“Ain’t got no mother,” was the answer, “and their paw’s right contentious.”

Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. None of them had done an honest day’s work in his recollection.