Previous
Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mighty Miss Malone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hope
Talent and Hard Work
Family
The Black Experience in America
The Great Depression
Summary
Analysis
Twelve-year-old Deza Malone is hard at work on the end-of-the-year essay her teacher, Mrs. Needham (the most wonderful teacher in the world, in her opinion), has assigned. Deza knows Mrs. Needham is going to love her paper. It’s six pages instead of the required two. In the essay, Mrs. Needham has asked her students to describe their families. Deza carefully describes the physical appearance and character of each member of her family, along with their dreams, most annoying traits, and pet peeves.
The opening pages of the book introduce readers to Deza Malone and her essay showcases what’s most important to her. She loves and values her family above all else. She wants to please and impress her teacher, and she wants to show off how smart and accomplished she is as a student. Notably, her desire to show off trumps paying attention to the guidelines of the assignment.
Themes
Deza’s mother, Mrs. Margaret Malone, is a Gary, Indiana native. Deza describes her as “spellbindingly beautiful” and says she has a “great job” as a housekeeper for the Carsdale family, which runs one of the local banks. Deza can’t think of a single thing about her mother that annoys her. But she does know that Mother’s pet peeve is when people pick on Deza’s brother Jimmie. Deza’s father, Mr. Roscoe Malone, grew up in Flint, Michigan, where he trained to be a carpenter. In the current economy (the book is set late in the Great Depression), he struggles to find and maintain a job. He is a well-read and intelligent man who is a poet at heart. He likes to alliterate his sentences whenever possible.
Although Deza describes her family in glowing terms, reading between the lines of her essay, a different—and more difficult—picture of her life emerges. Her father is unemployed and her mother works as a housekeeper for a wealthy family. It’s late in the Great Depression and, while times are difficult for many, those who were already vulnerable because of their race, socioeconomic status, or education level are the most impacted. Although Deza’s father is clearly intelligent and accomplished, racism and prejudice limit his opportunities as a Black man in the pre-Civil Rights era.
Themes
Deza’s brother, Jimmie (whose full name is James Edward Malone), is three years older than her, although his stunted growth has left him shorter than Deza. He compensates by getting into fights. Deza adores her older brother, who has “the singing voice of an angel.” On her last birthday she got two incredible presents: a store-bought cupcake for dessert, and a dictionary and a thesaurus, which Jimmie bought for her at a sale of used library books. She’s using the thesaurus to add colorful, descriptive adjectives to her essay.
The book never reveals what’s behind Jimmie’s mysterious lack of growth, because the Malone family can’t afford to take him to a doctor to find out. Thus, his short stature is just another (uniquely enduring) signifier of the family’s impoverishment. But most of the time, that doesn’t matter, because the family is as rich in love and care as they are poor in worldly goods.
Themes
Finally, Deza describes herself. She’s older than most of her classmates because when she was 10, she had to take a year off of school to nurse Mrs. Malone through an illness called “Tic Do La Roo.” She doesn’t mind, though, because now she’s in the same grade as her best friend, Clarice Anne Johnson. In her essay, Deza tries to adopt a humble attitude. She claims she’s not “very intelligent,” even as she describes Jimmie labeling her the smartest kid ever. She also lists modesty and “all-encompassing and pervasive humility” as her best traits. She can’t think of anything annoying about herself—even though Clarice listed at least five possibilities on their walk home from school. Finally, Deza settles on her occasional “verbosity” as her annoying trait.
Mrs. Malone’s illness, like Jimmie’s short stature, points toward the family’s impoverishment and inability to access quality medical care. But what care they can’t get from outsiders they give to each other. The condition Deza describes, tic douloureux, is a neurological condition that causes excruciating, long-lasting pain episodes. As Deza turns to herself, her heightened self-esteem is on full display to humorous effect. Her description of her humility shows, in fact, a deep-seated (if innocent and child-like) vanity about her intelligence and academic capabilities. Importantly, however, she doesn’t just rely on her innate talents. She also works hard at what she does, including looking up an impressive-sounding word for “talkative”—verbose—in her thesaurus.
Themes
Get the entire The Mighty Miss Malone LitChart as a printable PDF.
To “conclude” and to “sum up,” Deza notes that her family members are all “very bright, very good-looking, uniquely talented.” And, they’re different from most families because they have a motto: “We are a family on a journey to a place called Wonderful.” She can’t wait to arrive.
Throughout her essay, it’s clear that Deza is using her thesaurus to pad her essay and to impress Mrs. Needham. She wants very much to live up to the picture she’s drawn of her intelligent and talented family. And she introduces the family motto, which speaks to the hope Mr. and Mrs. Malone hold for the future, no matter how difficult the present may be.
Themes
