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Chapter 11
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
Mrs. Malone comes home a little while later, looking like she’s aged 50 years. She asks Deza to wake Jimmie, then tells her children that the authorities found two bodies washed ashore. Hank and Carlos are dead. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Malone are still missing, and it doesn’t look good. Jimmie says he knows his father is still alive. He throws on clothes and runs out into the night, intent on finding him. Mrs. Malone lets him go, telling Deza that they’ll each have to figure out how to face this situation in their own way.
The first real blow in Deza’s life isn’t the hardships of the Great Depression or the degrading racism she and other Black Americans face. It’s the loss of her father. As long as her family is intact, she feels that she can face anything the world throws at her. But with her father gone, it suddenly becomes much harder to maintain her natural hope and optimism.
Themes
Over the next week, while they wait for news, Mrs. Malone still goes to work each day. Mrs. Henderson and Clarice practically move into the Malone house. Mrs. Henderson starts teaching the girls how to knit. One afternoon, Jimmie is watching Deza rip out a mistake for the umpteenth time when they hear their mother calling from the porch.
Notably, given the very real likelihood that both Mrs. Malone and Mrs. Henderson have lost their husbands, the families bond and support each other. The knitting quietly reinforces the book’s lesson about hope. Deza is willing to face temporary setbacks, like having to rip out her work to correct mistakes, because she knows that in the end the final project will be that much better.
Themes
Jimmie and Deza open the door to find Mrs. Malone standing there with her arms around a very raggedy homeless man. Tired but relieved, she says she’s found their father. The raggedy man greets Deza and Jimmie by the alliterative pet names their father gave them. But he doesn’t look like their father. He hasn’t got any teeth, for one thing, and he looks thin and small. When Mrs. Henderson joins the family on the porch, Mr. Malone sorrowfully tells her that Mr. Henderson didn’t make it. Mrs. Malone asks Jimmie to walk the grief-stricken widow home while she and Deza tend to Mr. Malone. Deza doesn’t believe he’s her father until he’s lying on the couch. She looks—really looks—into his face, and at last she sees her familiar father in the raggedy man’s eyes.
Maintaining hope is important, as is resilience in the face of the unexpected. Mr. Malone comes home (unlike the rest of his friends), but his experiences on the lake have marked and changed him. Indeed, Deza is initially unwilling to accept the truth because this man seems so much smaller and less powerful than her previously impervious father. Even though he’s come home, the family dynamic has shifted in a significant—and potentially permanent—way.
Themes
