Robinson's trial for rape rips away the peaceful facade to reveal the tensions lying beneath Maycomb's surface. Racism comes to the forefront whenAtticus mounts a real defense of Robinson, breaking the white code of always assuming a black man's guilt when a white person's word is involved.

Scout has to come to grips with the evil that broils beneath even a placid community like Maycomb. She learns that appearances are deceiving: people she demonized (like Boo Radley) turn out to be heroes, Dolphus only pretends to be a drunk, and Mrs. Dubose is a woman of courage. Meanwhile some of the white society that Scout has always thought of as decent shows itself capable of mob violence, murder, and hatred. Nevertheless, Scout comes through a dramatic period of her life with her spirit intact and her wisdom enlarged—though her view of Maycomb necessarily changes.

In the end, it is not so much Maycomb's identity that changes as it is Scout's perception of that identity as her view of life broadens and matures.

In the opening chapter of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout, the narrator, describes Maycomb as a sleepy, "tired old town." It was particularly sleepy and tired due to the Great Depression. As a result of financial distress, "People moved slowly then" because "there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with" (Ch. 1). Yet Scout also describes it as an optimistic town. In general, she depicts a classically relaxed, Southern town with upbeat spirits.

As the novel progresses, racial tensions due to Tom Robinson's trial bring out the town's aggression and hatred. At one point in the story, Atticus tells Jem that there have never been mobs or gangs in Maycomb. Plus, he states that the only time the Ku Klux Klan was present was in 1920, but "they couldn't find anybody to scare," so they quickly dispersed (Ch. 15). However, immediately after making these statements, Atticus must face a lynch mob in front of Maycomb's jailhouse. After Robinson loses his trial, he is shot to death with 17 bullets, a ghastly and unjustified number of bullets, while trying to escape prison. Both the lynch mob and his death signify that Maycomb has changed from a relaxed, lazy town to a town overruled by its racist hatred and is growing violent as a result. The book even ends with violence when the town's most violent member, Bob Ewell, attacks Atticus's children with the intention of killing them.

Yet despite the change from a calm atmosphere to a violent one, hope still remains in Maycomb. Hope is particularly expressed in Miss Maudie's comment to the children after the trial that Atticus is the "only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that"; she further notes that the town is making a "baby-step" towards creating a more just society (Ch. 22).

Hence, all in all, the town changes from a relaxed town to a violent town, while some of its members hold on to hope for change.

Maycomb doesn't really change all that much after the trial. The false conviction of an African American male for the crime of rape was all too common in the South at that time. Old habits die hard, and there is no real sense of outrage at the appalling injustice done to Tom Robinson—certainly not outside the Finch family. The ladies of Aunt Alexandra's missionary circle have no compunction about using racial epithets. They are highly indignant at the behavior of the African Americans who work for them. Not surprisingly, these employees have been grumbling about the outcome of the trial, and this disturbs the ladies of the missionary circle.

The ladies' reaction to the trial's outcome is fairly typical of most white people in the town: a certain indifference tinged with a quiet sense of relief that the "natural" order between the races has been preserved. Most people know as well as Atticus that the trial was not really concerned with getting at the truth; it was a way of reenforcing white supremacy. The difference is that for most of Maycomb's townsfolk, that's considered a good thing, and so they go about their business as if nothing has really happened, harboring the exact same prejudices as before.