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“Smile More”, “The best way to predict the future is to create the future”, and “Your beautiful one of a kind Smile More” all these quotes are powerful quotes said by Roman Atwood. In the story To Kill a Mockingbird Mayella is the opposite of these quotes she is not powerful. Mayella’s only strong in one area and that is race. Mayella, Tom Robinson, Scout, and all the women in To Kill a Mockingbird has one thing in common and it is that they do not have power. Mayella is not powerful because she would be considered third class or poor. “She lives behind the dump. Her family is dirty, but she looks like she tries her best to maintain cleanliness. Mayella has geraniums that she kept clean in jars in the corner of the yard “(Doc A). Mayella lives in a hut with no windows so, it is always dirty inside her home. Anything can easily get into the Ewell’s home and any bugs can do the same. Her father does not help Mayella by not trying to stay clean inside and out. This did not help Mayella physically or mentally. …show more content…
In the courtroom Mayella told Atticus that “Mr. Ewell does tollable.”Except when he is drinking(Doc B)” Drinking alcohol will change a person’s way of thinking. It can make someone angry for absolutely no reason and someone can become addicted to alcohol because it is like a drug. In this case alcohol has taken over Mr. Ewell’s life by taking over by controlling his brain to get him to hit his daughter. Do to Mayella being a women she has no power in what Bob Ewell did to her because he has more power than
‘“Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls. What passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts. Enclosed by this barricade was a dirty yard.”’ Mayella only has one thing that keeps her sane from all the horrible things that has been happening.
To some it is very unclear whether Mayella is powerful or powerless. In the book to To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, a family tries to defend a ‘Mockingbird’ who is being charged with crimes of rape. The book ironically takes place in the mid 1930s after similar events have just recently happened relating to blacks vs. whites. While Mayella Ewell can be considered as powerful based on her race, her class and gender indicates that Mayella is powerless based on the circumstances during the mid 1930s.
The lack of knowledge in Maycomb about the outside world and their opinions about black people ingrains ‘Maycomb’s usual disease’ into their minds as they have no other opinions about black people. This is shown by the crowd’s outrage as they gather to lynch Tom, not knowing that he was innocent, but blinded by their pre-conceived ideas about black people, thinking that Tom obviously did it as he was black. Their prejudice and ignorance blinded them to the fact that the Ewell’s had manipulated him to their own benefit. Also, this prejudice causes the people who are prejudiced to be as prejudiced towards people who are not. This is shown by Mrs Dubose’s statement to Jem, “Your fathers no better than the niggers and trash he works for.” This shows that Atticus and his family are put on a lower level than normal citizens.
What does it mean to be a good parent? The most common definition of a good parent is one who makes their children feel valued and loved, by teaching them the difference between right and wrong. At the end of the day, the most essential thing is to create a nurturing environment where your children feel like they can mature into confident, independent, and caring adults. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird defines what a true parent really is thought hardships and struggles throughout the book. The story is set in the Depression era of a little town in southern Alabama that is struggling with thick prejudice on a colored rape case. The story is told through a character
The almost horror house that the Ewell 's live in obviously makes us see them as dirty, unkept, unfriendly people.
Mayella Ewell is a character in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. She lives in the town of Maycomb, Alabama where the inhabitants are very sexist and judgemental. In the book Mayella is not powerful considering her class, race, and gender. The community members she lives near are a very large contributing factor to her powerlessness. Mayella is mistreated a great amount throughout her lifetime. After all that physical and mental abuse she faces becomes enough Mayella does something drastic. She accuses an African American man of rape knowing, her being a white woman, he would get in tremendous trouble. People cannot say whether it was right or wrong of her to do what she did. What they can say is that at the moment she was powerless to do otherwise.
Throughout the novel we see the abusive behaviors of Bob Ewell towards people, especially to his daughter Mayella. When Bob Ewell saw what he did from the window he screamed “you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya” (Lee 198). This inferred that Bob Ewell was talking to his daughter and not Tom, who later testified that when Bob yelled this he was looking right at Mayella. Atticus also makes a case on page 127 about how no one, not even Bob, called a doctor to check on Mayella. By not calling a doctor it proved Bob Ewell was only concerned for himself, not even for the own well-being of his daughter, he was a selfish and horrible father. Also, the Ewell family was one of the lowest whites in Maycomb they had no money and no education, the children only attended the first day of school every year. Bob Ewell wanted the people of Maycomb to view them higher than they do now, but was too lazy to do it himself. Mr. Ewell believed that pinning his own abusive behaviors on Tom Robinson would make people believe he saved their town from dangerous man, and they would now think highly of him. Bob Ewells selfish behavior and poor parenting skills lead to him being a responsibility in the death of Tom
In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, nine-teen year old Mayella Ewell is forced to go against Tom Robinson, an African American who is accused of raping her. Although it is obvious that the rape didn’t happen, the author portrays Mayella as a victim of circumstance. Lee makes it somewhat easy to sympathize with Mayella by describing Mayella’s homelife, indirectly characterizing Bob Ewell throughout the novel, and describing Mayella’s actions while in court.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird” (Lee 94). This quote, delivered in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, introduces the mockingbird which is incorporated symbolically throughout the novel. The mockingbird, in presenting its gifts of music and beauty, is the symbol of Atticus’s practice of altruism because he believes in society’s responsibility to protect those who are vulnerable and innocent.
No, I do not believe Mayella is powerful. I have decided this because although she is white, she is equally or even lower than the lowest- the African Americans. With this, she is also treated as one. When relating to gender, Mayella is physically weaker than the opposite sex. Even though she may be mentally stronger, she can not show it in this situation. Lastly, she is in the bottom class of her community. To me, Mayella is one of the weakest people in Maycomb. The only power she has is to use the people around her. Mayella used “the only person who was ever decent to her” in a way that helped her none and got Tom Robinson killed. I understand that this could be considered power, but it wasn’t enough for me to consider her powerful. There are many things that Mayela could have done to have helped her become powerful, or to even be seen as someone to Maycomb. Instead, she tried to do these things while being known as trash, In the end, this gets her nowhere other than putting and African American in jail for false accusation. Mayella is not
The passage I have chosen is from the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. In this passage Atticus Finch is trying to teach his children, Scout and Jem, the real or his definition of the word courage. He is explaining to his children that courage is more than just men with guns. He says to not connect courage with fighting, but to associate it with standing up for what you believe in. It takes little character to point a gun and pull a trigger, but it takes a whole lot of courage to accept a difficult challenge in which you can ultimately be defeated in. It made me realize that courage goes beyond a physical act, it shows one's integrity and strength. I learned that a person is courageous when they follow their own beliefs and stick to
The Clever Title of a Somewhat Enjoyable Paper In Harper Leeś To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper tries to emphasize the cruelty of racism, sexism, and discrimination against those who we do not try to understand. In To Kill a Mockingbird, it shows how discrimination and racism can tear a community apart. Everyone assumes Tom Robinson is guilty of rape simply because he is a colored man.
When Tom Robinson is testifying, he describes the interaction he had with Mayella Ewell:” She says what her papa do to her do not count”(Lee). It can be inferred that Mayella was often physically, verbally, and sexually abused by her father. Because Mayella lacks self confidence or it was torn down by her father, she does not have the power to make a change in her life at home or others around her. In the passage it states that” Mayella was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left”(Lee). Atticus believes Bob Ewell is the offender who had beaten his daughter especially since Tom Robinson has nonfunctional left arm.
As stated in a survey by Odyssey. Com, according to a 2004-2012 study, it was shown that juries are prone to racist sentencing. In the survey, it was revealed that black men received sentences that were twenty percent greater than that of a white man for the same crime. This survey goes to show some things have not changed since the United States segregated past. The novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the two main kids, Jem and Scout, grow up in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, where their father works as a lawyer defending a black man.
Scout Finch, the youngest child of Atticus Finch, narrates the story. It is summer and her cousin Dill and brother Jem are her companions and playmates. They play all summer long until Dill has to go back home to Maridian and Scout and her brother start school. The Atticus’ maid, a black woman by the name of Calpurnia, is like a mother to the children. While playing, Scout and Jem discover small trinkets in a knothole in an old oak tree on the Radley property. Summer rolls around again and Dill comes back to visit. A sence of discrimination develops towards the Radley’s because of their race. Scout forms a friendship with her neighbor Miss Maudie, whose house is later burnt down. She tells Scout to respect Boo Radley and treat him like a person. Treasures keep appearing in the knothole until it is filled with cement to prevent decay. As winter comes it snows for the first time in a century. Boo gives scout a blanket and she finally understands her father’s and Miss Maudie’s point of view and treats him respectfully. Scout and Jem receive air guns for Christmas, and promise Atticus never to shoot a mockingbird, for they are peaceful and don’t deserve to die in that manner. Atticus then takes a case defending a black man accused of rape. He knows that such a case will bring trouble for his family but he takes it anyways. This is the sense of courage he tries to instill in his son Jem.