Avidman
May 26, 2011
Book Reports / To Kill a Mockingbird: Analytical Essay on Mayella's Evolution; EDITING and REVISION [2]
Prompt: Select a symbolic mockingbird from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and write a five-paragraph essay about how the character evolves throughout the novel.
The norms of society are infectiously pervasive. Of course, personality derives neither from some inherited genetic code nor solely from personal experience; rather, what is inherited and what is assimilated combine together to form a person. To advance the assertion that either one is the exclusive cause is to commit the fallacy of oversimplification. Whatever governs personality is neither internally nor externally generated but rather is the product of intimately interwoven parameters. It is this very sentiment that American novelist Harper Lee echoes in her twentieth century novel To Kill a Mockingbird; set in a time dominated by chauvinism and ethnocentricity, its story delves deeper into the embedded racism that reigns over the fictional county of Maycomb when a nineteen-year-old named Mayella Ewell commits the unspeakable crime of perjury: she accuses a Negro of rape. While her evolution perhaps is the subtlest, by no means is her characterization mired in contrivance. Miserly, exploited, abused, and disregarded, she is in many respects a victim, but her continual exposure to abuse, prejudice, and rejection becomes the primary cause for her regression.
First and foremost, the abuse she is subjected to is without a doubt one of the most causative factors that contributed to the moral degeneration of her character. When her cross-examiner begins to rain questions on her, she loses her composure: "if you fine fancy gentlemen don't wanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards, stinkin' cowards, the lot of you". Cornered and beleaguered by her cross-examiner, she assumes an offensive position at once and tries simultaneously to appeal to the jury's pride; her evocation of cowardice thus permits her to ascend from her status of "white trash" to the prestige of white womanhood, a concept that itself is, according to defense attorney Atticus Finch, nothing but "a polite fiction", an artificial sense of chivalry is nothing more than twisted romanticism. During the entire course of the trial, she performs a role intended for public consumption: that of a white woman whose sanctity is denigrated by a Negro, a part intended to incite and acquire the jury's sympathy. When testifying about Mayella's desire to kiss a man, Robinson informs the audience that she tells him "what her papa do to her don't count". She tends to geraniums, nurtures her younger siblings, and performs all the chores unaided. But her relationship with her father is incestuous and abusive subjects her gratuitous violence. But when she is approached, pitied, and helped by the sole person who reached out to her, she propositions him, she craves him. But when she testifies for the prosecution of Robinson, she begins to employ the same low, underhanded tactics of persuasion as her father for fear for her own safety, lest he must inflict a terrible punishment for diverging from his instructions; effectively, she is so distorted in her evaluation of her father's power over her, so beleaguered by her father's threats, so warped by her father's abuse, that she lets an innocent man bear the ramifications of her crime for her rather than incriminate the true culprit.
Likewise, her exposure to racism provides the reader with a simple theory as to the reason behind her lack of an incentive to oppose her father. One of the most tragic ironies in her testimony is that she herself becomes but a killer of mockingbirds; her regression from a victim to the antithesis of the titular mockingbird paints a damning picture of morality and incredible prejudice. When she tempts a Negro, she infringes a "rigid and time-honored code" of society, but she and her father testify before the Court for Robinson's prosecution "in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted", that the jury would "go along with them on the assumption" that all Negroes are insidious deceivers and rapists and liars who await nothing more than the opportunity to pounce on white women. For her, racism is a sort of reflexive instinct, one inculcated both by time and by parental authority. Racism is the norm of her society, so her adherence to it is by all means justified in her environment. While her attraction to Robinson is genuine, she dared to commit a crime that is unspeakable: "she tempted a Negro", but reality soon "came crashing down on her afterwards". But whatever she is before the trial, whatever deeds she performs and however good her efforts, she testifies for the prosecution of Robinson of her own volition at the expense of an innocent man's life. The shame associated with tempting a Negro is inexorable and proves too great an embarrassment for her to endure, so instead she repulses her crime and corroborates her father's story, not to protect herself from legal persecution for a crime she commit but both to "destroy the evidence of her offense" and to divert attention from her guilt.
Lee makes evident that no amount of basic civility and courtesy can save her from her moral turpitude. Due to her lack of education, she is socially inept; she misconstrues her cross-examiner's courtesy as an affront and declares that his "ma'amin' and Miss Mayellerin' don't come to nothin'" and resolves not to "answer a word [he says] long as [he] keep mocking me". But that she understands the role of white men in protecting their women but fail to perceive basic and common courtesy presents the reader with a sort of fragile paradox. When asked whether she has any friends, she reacts with confusion: her solitude is such that she is described in narration as "the loneliest person in the world". So her attraction to Robinson is consequence of that seclusion; but her isolation from the remainder of society makes her incapable to understand friendship or the natural goodness that exists in some people. Of course, the Ewells "had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations" with no opportunity to alleviate the curse that had plagued her family and endured for generation after generation, with no chance of acceptance from white people, who disassociate themselves from her due to her social standing, or black people, who disassociate themselves from her because she is white. Before the entire incident, she cultivates geraniums "cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson", in a yard otherwise infested with junk: "the remains of a Model-T Ford, a discarded dentist's chair, an ancient ice-box, plus lesser items: old shoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and fruit jars". Somehow, Mayella's geraniums seem downright absurd in all the filth, but to the reader they symbolize what she aspires to-perhaps another reason as to why she immediately seizes her chance to finally access the privileges of white womanhood after years of living among pigs. However corrupted a person, a predisposition to good exists nonetheless.
"All things truly wicked start from an innocence" so said American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway, who delved deep into the inherent nature of mankind and there discovered a sort of primitive innocence, of basic moral value. Echoed in Lee's novel is precisely that sentiment; while Mayella's father serves from the very beginning as the novel's epitome of evil and dishonesty, hers is a progressive evolution. The account of rape she delivers is riddled with fallacies and contradictions, which denotes her initial hesitation to corroborate her father's story and lends itself to the author's position that every man and woman possesses some degree of moral propriety at an inherent level. The dynamism of her characterization is subtle, perhaps, but remains one of the most tragic in the entire novel.
Prompt: Select a symbolic mockingbird from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and write a five-paragraph essay about how the character evolves throughout the novel.
The norms of society are infectiously pervasive. Of course, personality derives neither from some inherited genetic code nor solely from personal experience; rather, what is inherited and what is assimilated combine together to form a person. To advance the assertion that either one is the exclusive cause is to commit the fallacy of oversimplification. Whatever governs personality is neither internally nor externally generated but rather is the product of intimately interwoven parameters. It is this very sentiment that American novelist Harper Lee echoes in her twentieth century novel To Kill a Mockingbird; set in a time dominated by chauvinism and ethnocentricity, its story delves deeper into the embedded racism that reigns over the fictional county of Maycomb when a nineteen-year-old named Mayella Ewell commits the unspeakable crime of perjury: she accuses a Negro of rape. While her evolution perhaps is the subtlest, by no means is her characterization mired in contrivance. Miserly, exploited, abused, and disregarded, she is in many respects a victim, but her continual exposure to abuse, prejudice, and rejection becomes the primary cause for her regression.
First and foremost, the abuse she is subjected to is without a doubt one of the most causative factors that contributed to the moral degeneration of her character. When her cross-examiner begins to rain questions on her, she loses her composure: "if you fine fancy gentlemen don't wanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards, stinkin' cowards, the lot of you". Cornered and beleaguered by her cross-examiner, she assumes an offensive position at once and tries simultaneously to appeal to the jury's pride; her evocation of cowardice thus permits her to ascend from her status of "white trash" to the prestige of white womanhood, a concept that itself is, according to defense attorney Atticus Finch, nothing but "a polite fiction", an artificial sense of chivalry is nothing more than twisted romanticism. During the entire course of the trial, she performs a role intended for public consumption: that of a white woman whose sanctity is denigrated by a Negro, a part intended to incite and acquire the jury's sympathy. When testifying about Mayella's desire to kiss a man, Robinson informs the audience that she tells him "what her papa do to her don't count". She tends to geraniums, nurtures her younger siblings, and performs all the chores unaided. But her relationship with her father is incestuous and abusive subjects her gratuitous violence. But when she is approached, pitied, and helped by the sole person who reached out to her, she propositions him, she craves him. But when she testifies for the prosecution of Robinson, she begins to employ the same low, underhanded tactics of persuasion as her father for fear for her own safety, lest he must inflict a terrible punishment for diverging from his instructions; effectively, she is so distorted in her evaluation of her father's power over her, so beleaguered by her father's threats, so warped by her father's abuse, that she lets an innocent man bear the ramifications of her crime for her rather than incriminate the true culprit.
Likewise, her exposure to racism provides the reader with a simple theory as to the reason behind her lack of an incentive to oppose her father. One of the most tragic ironies in her testimony is that she herself becomes but a killer of mockingbirds; her regression from a victim to the antithesis of the titular mockingbird paints a damning picture of morality and incredible prejudice. When she tempts a Negro, she infringes a "rigid and time-honored code" of society, but she and her father testify before the Court for Robinson's prosecution "in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted", that the jury would "go along with them on the assumption" that all Negroes are insidious deceivers and rapists and liars who await nothing more than the opportunity to pounce on white women. For her, racism is a sort of reflexive instinct, one inculcated both by time and by parental authority. Racism is the norm of her society, so her adherence to it is by all means justified in her environment. While her attraction to Robinson is genuine, she dared to commit a crime that is unspeakable: "she tempted a Negro", but reality soon "came crashing down on her afterwards". But whatever she is before the trial, whatever deeds she performs and however good her efforts, she testifies for the prosecution of Robinson of her own volition at the expense of an innocent man's life. The shame associated with tempting a Negro is inexorable and proves too great an embarrassment for her to endure, so instead she repulses her crime and corroborates her father's story, not to protect herself from legal persecution for a crime she commit but both to "destroy the evidence of her offense" and to divert attention from her guilt.
Lee makes evident that no amount of basic civility and courtesy can save her from her moral turpitude. Due to her lack of education, she is socially inept; she misconstrues her cross-examiner's courtesy as an affront and declares that his "ma'amin' and Miss Mayellerin' don't come to nothin'" and resolves not to "answer a word [he says] long as [he] keep mocking me". But that she understands the role of white men in protecting their women but fail to perceive basic and common courtesy presents the reader with a sort of fragile paradox. When asked whether she has any friends, she reacts with confusion: her solitude is such that she is described in narration as "the loneliest person in the world". So her attraction to Robinson is consequence of that seclusion; but her isolation from the remainder of society makes her incapable to understand friendship or the natural goodness that exists in some people. Of course, the Ewells "had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations" with no opportunity to alleviate the curse that had plagued her family and endured for generation after generation, with no chance of acceptance from white people, who disassociate themselves from her due to her social standing, or black people, who disassociate themselves from her because she is white. Before the entire incident, she cultivates geraniums "cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Miss Maudie Atkinson", in a yard otherwise infested with junk: "the remains of a Model-T Ford, a discarded dentist's chair, an ancient ice-box, plus lesser items: old shoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and fruit jars". Somehow, Mayella's geraniums seem downright absurd in all the filth, but to the reader they symbolize what she aspires to-perhaps another reason as to why she immediately seizes her chance to finally access the privileges of white womanhood after years of living among pigs. However corrupted a person, a predisposition to good exists nonetheless.
"All things truly wicked start from an innocence" so said American author and journalist Ernest Hemingway, who delved deep into the inherent nature of mankind and there discovered a sort of primitive innocence, of basic moral value. Echoed in Lee's novel is precisely that sentiment; while Mayella's father serves from the very beginning as the novel's epitome of evil and dishonesty, hers is a progressive evolution. The account of rape she delivers is riddled with fallacies and contradictions, which denotes her initial hesitation to corroborate her father's story and lends itself to the author's position that every man and woman possesses some degree of moral propriety at an inherent level. The dynamism of her characterization is subtle, perhaps, but remains one of the most tragic in the entire novel.