"As a result, the town remained the same size for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cotton fields and timberland" (131). Living in the same place with the same people has made them very used to their surroundings and the ways of the town. "New people rarely settled there, the same families married the same families until the members of the community looked faintly alike" (131). This fact made it very real for people to believe that even the beliefs and morals remained the same for the last hundred years. "The older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time" (131). The history of Maycomb allows others to see what it is like in the mind of a Maycombian. This leads into influences upon the jury's decision to find Tom Robinson guilty of rape.
The jury's decisions were of a prejudice outcome. It is most definite that hatred has played a major role in the final decision of the jury. People on the jury were blinded by their hatred for anyone who is different from them. In this case, Tom Robinson is a coloured man. The way people of Maycomb react towards different people is proven by the way the town folks treat the Arthur Radley situation. As a brief outline, the people of Maycomb found Arthur Radley as a different person, someone to make fun of because he was unique from the usual kids that grew up in Maycomb. "Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were bloodstained-if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of the time" (13).