Loneliness In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Loneliness can kill a person if it gets out of control and this is exactly what happened to Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell, from To Kill a Mockingbird, is a nineteen-year-old girl who lives with her abusive father. Mayella’s mother passed away when she was younger, leaving her to take care of her siblings and be a mother figure for them. Between her father beating her and having to take care of her younger siblings, Mayella has a lot on her plate. She does not have many friends due to the fact that she is always busy with her family, and because of this she gets very lonely. During the peak of her loneliness, she turns to Tom Robinson - a black man in the community - for comfort. When her father, Bob Ewell, catches her with Tom, he abuses her and claims that Tom raped her. For these reasons, Mayella Ewell deserves both sympathy and contempt for her actions. Mayella Ewell deserves to be blamed for what happened to Tom. During Tom’s trial, Atticus Finch - who was defending Tom - asks Mayella many questions hoping that she will admit that her father beat her, not Tom. To all of these questions Mayella would give no answer and just sit in silence. Finally, Atticus asked, “‘Who beat you up? Tom Robinson or your father?’” (Lee 187). Again, she gave no answer. At this point, Mayella had been given a countless amount of …show more content…
Since she is always busy with her chaotic family, she does not have time to go out and make friends. She gets very lonely and turns to Tom Robinson for comfort. When her father sees them together he begins to beat Mayella up and then accuses Tom of raping her. Although Mayella’s loneliness did end up getting Tom shot, it was solely her father’s fault that she was lonely in the first place; moreover, people of the community should feel a strong sense of sympathy for Mayella

Examples Of Loneliness In To Kill A Mockingbird

The novel takes place in Depression-era Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional backwater town that is highly segregated. Maycomb has a very warm climate, since it hasn’t rained “since Appomattox” (Lee 74), probably referring to the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. Maycomb is also a small, rural town. This can be seen when it is revealed that one family the Ewells, sometimes cooks “possum and rabbit” (Lee 195) and how Jem and Scout seem to know just about every family in the town. If Maycomb was large…

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Robert F Kennedy Speech Analysis

evokes empathy when she writes about misjudged and misunderstood characters in her book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Robert F. Kennedy expresses a compelling form of empathy by stating how important integrity is in his speech regarding the immortal words of Martin Luther King Jr.. Both Harper Lee and Robert F. Kennedy both express socially crucial forms of empathy in their writings. When reading, To Kill a Mockingbird, the reader empathizes with the characters that Scout empathizes within the novel,…

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How Does Lee Show Empathy In To Kill A Mockingbird

Empathy in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, has touched many people’s lives throughout the years it has been published. In this novel, readers meet a young girl named Scout, her brother Jem, and her father Atticus who live in small town Maycomb, Alabama. These characters experience many people whom they have learned to show empathy toward and also to respect. The family shows empathy to negroes, to the elders, the misunderstood, the sick, and…

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Mayella Ewell In To Kill A Mockingbird

Growing up poor in a backwater town creates people who are victims of their circumstances, pitiful people who make awful decisions. The novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is set in Maycomb County, a town much like the one described. The novel follows the lawyer Atticus Finch as he defends Tom Robinson, a black male, in a racially charged trial that shakes up the town. The plaintiff, Mayella Ewell is one of the most pitiful citizens in Maycomb, she is uneducated, lonely and self-preserving…

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Essay on southern gothic

tradition in an intent to mirror racial and social disparities and expose the apprehensions and anxieties of their audience are William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Carson McCullers’s “The Ballad of the Sad Café” (1951), and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Amalgamating the gothic, the grotesque and naturalism, these unique writers create in their fiction recognizable warped rural communities while questioning small town fears and mentality and of the modern South. A grotesque character…

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How Does Atticus Finch Change In To Kill A Mockingbird

of life, parenting styles change through the ages to reflect the evolution of society; as generations pass, various moral lessons differ in significance to a child coming of age in a particular time. To begin with, in Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch, the father of the protagonist Scout and her brother Jem, teaches his children three imperative lessons that are significantly ahead of his time. First of all, Atticus imposes his courageous characteristics onto his children…

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How Is Mayella Ewell Inhumane In To Kill A Mockingbird

family or her hometown, she becomes a social pariah. These factors bring about a conflict within her, between what is expected, and what is morally correct. This results in her wrongly accusing the one person who treats her respectfully. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Mayella Ewell is worthy…

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Truman Capote's Influence On To Kill A Mockingbird

Monroeville, Alabama. His greatest fear had come true. His life was very lonely, his only friends being his childish, morphine addicted elderly cousin Sook, as well as the future author of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, his neighbor, Nelle Harper Lee. Both children bore the bruises of loneliness and parental rejection, and they bonded over…

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To Kill A Mockingbird Sympathy Analysis

is publicly displayed and one that is buried in their personal life, completely hidden. People tend to perceive themselves as how they are seen by others, but can open up or be exposed when they are put in that position. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, both of Mayella Ewell’s sides are evident. Mayella is girl from a poor family with her father and many siblings. On the outside, she can be dismissed as a lying cheat because she fibbed on the witness stand. However, when she is forced to open…

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To Kill A Mockingbird: Unreliable Narrative

matter that I hope it never again becomes accepted. The main law that stuck out to me was the lack of welcoming that was shown in churches. Black men, women, and children were not allowed to attend ‘white people’s churches’. As we see in To Kill a Mockingbird, the whites churches were much better off than the black churches. The blacks could not read, nor did they have enough funds to purchase anything which resulted in them not having any hymnals. They made due without this, but it doesn’t take…

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