Why is Bob Ewell the way he is in To Kill a Mockingbird?Please consider his past circumstances and his family, in particular Mayella.

In many of their narratives, both Anton Chekhov and Guy de
Maupassant have written about the peasants of their countries, peasants with whom they
were well acquaintained.  Common to these Russian and Norman peasants is a contorted
perspective, almost perversely petty and myopic.  An observation similar to that of
viewing the peasants of Chekhov and Maupassant is made by Scout in Chapter
17:

Every
town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells.  No economic fluctuations changed
their status--people like the Ewells lived as guest of the county in prosperity as well
as in the depression.  No....public officer could free them from
congenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous to filthy
surroundings.

Like Luster
Sexton of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road, the peasant of Georgia
whose family has lived on the same plot of land for generations, and like the other
peasants of Russia and Normandy who, also, have resided in the same places, there is a
certain mentality that comes of Bob Ewell's congenital defects and his family history of
living on the lowest level of society.  For some reason, these people have no ambitions,
but feel an envious resentment toward anyone they perceive as a rival or better than
they.  In their pettiness, they seek to pull down or harm the other person, and by doing
so, they thereby somehow feel better about themselves.  This is why Bob Ewell insists on
Mayella's claiming that Tom Robinson has raped her; he must, at least, be somehow
superior to a Negro.  And, this is why he spits in Atticus Finch's face at the
courthouse and later tries to kill his children.

People
like Luster Sexton and many of Faulkner's characters and Bob Ewell are the stereotypical
"poor white trash" whose ancestors were probably indentured servants and the like from
the lower levels of the United Kingdom.  At the very least, Bob Ewell and his ilk are
the least ambitious elements of the white southern society, whose location in town
certainly perpetuated the ignorance of this type.

There is
even a remark that Nathaniel Hawthorne makes in his novel, The Scarlet
Letter, that explains the stereotype that the character Bob Ewell
represents.  Hawthorne observes,

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Human nature will not flourish, any more than a
potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil.