The other day I put a poll on Twitter asking which character from To Kill a Mockingbird most resembles Donald Trump. Unbelievably, the results ended up tied, 50-50 between Bob Ewell and Mrs. Dubose.[1]

The other choices were Prosecutor Gilmer and Atticus himself.

Of course, Atticus is the throw-away, obviously-wrong answer, like letter D in the test on Macbeth I gave yesterday:

According to your Beloved Taskmaster,[2] who wrote Macbeth?

A. Christopher Marlowe B. The Earl of Oxford

C. William Shakespeare D. Ten million monkeys randomingly typing

Gilmore, the prosecutor of Tom Robinson, is like Trump a bigot and in the movie suffers a Trumpian oral fixation, but Gilmore is too mild mannered to be the Donald. When Robinson on the stand admits he didn’t charge white Mayella Ewell for doing her chores because he pitied her, Trump would have been all over that perversion of ‘60s Alabama race relations, dramatizing the incident minstrel-show-style mocking both Robinson’s speech patterns and his mangled arm.

That leaves two choices, Bob Ewell and Mrs. Dubose. If it were a multiple choice test instead of a poll, you’d have to go with Ewell. One, there’s the gender issue, and, of course, Ewell, unlike wheelchair bound Mrs. Dubose, actually destroys people’s lives.  Plus her poison-of-choice is morphine whereas Donald’s is Diet Coke.[3]

Nevertheless, in the poll, my vote would go to bitter, belligerent Mrs. Dubose, based entirely on this one scene.

Note the mollification after the buttering up.

[1] Sigh, the vote was 1 to 1.

[2] I.e., I-and-I, your beloved blogger.

[3] Imagine, if you dare, Trump drunk.