Mayella and Scout

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Recommended: Themes in Killing a Mockingbird and how Lee incorporated them into her writing

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird explores many themes throughout the novel, which the narrator, Jean Louis “Scout” Finch, describes through her own eyes. The most essential of the themes encountered is the examination of the virtuous essence of human beings—that is, whether people are essentially righteous or essentially evil. The story approaches this question by recounting Scout’s transition from a perspective of childhood innocence, in which she assumes that people are righteous because she has never seen evil, to a more adult perspective, in which she has experienced evil and must adopt it into her comprehension of the world. This theme branches into a subtheme which involves the ultimatum that hatred, prejudice, and ignorance poses to the innocent; for example, people like Tom Robinson and Boo Radley are unprepared when they encounter evil which ultimately leads to their absolute destruction. In literature, writers may use the pairing of the protagonist and the antagonist characters to make personality qualities more extinct. Lee delicately unravels character foils throughout the novel, which highlight the differences in personalities, actions, and lifestyles of the characters, in this case, Mayella Ewell and Scout Finch. Although, on the surface, Mayella and Scout seem completely contradictory to one another, they share certain characteristics which allows for Scout to understand Mayella on a deeper level than the other residents of Maycomb County. To fully understand Mayella and Scout’s positions, a comparison of the girls’ fathers and lifestyles has to be made to give a backdrop to build a firm foundation of their personalities and actions. The town’s beloved defense attorney, Atticus Finch, Scout’s ... ... middle of paper ... ...tially an extension of the town dump and he has no intention of changing it, and his attitudes toward life. Bob is rather arrogant; he provokes terror, and is cruel, savage, and menacing. The court scene drastically contrasts the differences between the two men, as they are both contained in the same small room, under pressure, and being watched by all of Maycomb. Atticus handles the case tranquil and white-collar like, presenting the case logically and thoroughly, which leads the town to regard him highly. Bob tries to be humorous, and get the courtroom to chuckle about the case as a whole and not take it seriously, but when it is proved that he is lying, they think him foolish to try and make a serious case a laughing matter. Despite the obvious differences between Mayella and Scout, there are many latent similarities that they share.

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