Atticus gives Jem and Scout strict instructions not to go to the courthouse on the day of the trial. Jem has other ideas, and since Dill happens to be there, too, all three kids sneak into the balcony to watch the proceedings in chapter 17. When Bob Ewell gets up to give his testimony, though, discussion about the rape comes up and Reverend Sykes tells Jem that he should take Scout home to protect her...
Atticus gives Jem and Scout strict instructions not to go to the courthouse on the day of the trial. Jem has other ideas, and since Dill happens to be there, too, all three kids sneak into the balcony to watch the proceedings in chapter 17. When Bob Ewell gets up to give his testimony, though, discussion about the rape comes up and Reverend Sykes tells Jem that he should take Scout home to protect her ears. Jem doesn't want to leave for a minute, so he tells the Reverend the following:
"I think it's okay, Reverend, she doesn't understand it. . . she ain't nine yet" (173).
Scout argues that she can understand anything that Jem can, but that's debatable when Atticus starts to demonstrate the Mr. Ewell is left-handed, which will prove that he beat up his own daughter in order to make it look like she had been raped. Scout says the following:
"I was becoming nervous. Atticus seemed to know what he was doing--but it seemed to me that he'd gone frog-sticking without a light. Never, never, never on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to. . . Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want" (177).
This passage above shows that Scout does not know what Atticus is getting at by asking Bob Ewell to demonstrate the use of his dominant hand. Jem has "a quiet fit" because he understands that Atticus just proved Mr. Ewell is left-handed, and Scout could follow that, but then she says that Tom could be left-handed as well. Scout sees Tom sitting down there with strong shoulders and thick neck and determines that he could have beat up Mayella just as well as her father could have. It isn't until the middle of chapter 18, when Atticus has Mayella on cross-examination, that Tom Robinson stands up and shows everyone that his left arm is crippled and about a whole twelve inches shorter than his right arm. Scout and Jem realize more fully at this point what proving Bob Ewell's dominant hand does to support Tom's side of the story.
Because of how far back and up the kids were sitting in the courtroom, Scout and Jem could not see, nor could they have known, that Tom's left arm was crippled. Until he stood up to show the courtroom that he physically could not have strangled or hit Mayella as she was testifying, Scout did not understand the full implication of her father's left-handed writing demonstration with Mr. Ewell. Anyone else who may not have known about Tom's disability should have been able to reasonably see that he could not have done what the uneducated and lying Ewells were saying he did.
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