The homes of the Ewells and Radleys, while tragic and sad
in their own way, don't actually bear too much in similarities. Of the Radley home,
Scout observes:
The house was low ... long ago darkened to the
color of the slate gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of
the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded teh
front yard ... where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in
abundance.
And of the Ewell
home, located behind the town dump:
The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with
corrugated iron, it's roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat ... rested uneasily on
four irregular lumps of
limestone.
Both families,
however, are dysfunctional in a way that has more or less destroyed the lives of the
children. The absence of a mother figure is one similarity. A cruel father is yet
another; Boo Radley's father's cruelty is rooted in religion, while Bob Ewell's is
probably at least partly a function of his alcoholism. Both Boo Radley and Mayella
Ewell show a glimmer of the person they might have been in different circumstances. A
small oasis in the filth of the Ewell home is the lovely row of red geraniums which
Mayella cares for diligently. Boo Radley shows a kind and compassionate side when he
brings a blanket to Scout the night of Miss Maudie's house fire and when he leaves small
gifts for the children in the tree trunk.
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