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Chapter 18
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
More bad news arrives three days before the remaining Malones plan to leave Gary, when the family’s landlord kicks them out three days early so that his new tenants can move in. What he’s doing is not just wrong but illegal, although Mrs. Malone has neither the time nor the money to pursue her legal rights. He gives them until noon to pack up their remaining belongings. Leaving Deza in charge of that task, Mrs. Malone and Jimmie go to see if Mr. Rhymes can take them to Detroit early.
The landlord is both White and more economically stable than the Malone family (since he’s making an income from rental properties), so they are doubly disadvantaged when he decides to kick them out. Notably, however, Mrs. Malone behaves—and insists her children behave—with grace and dignity under this pressure as they have under all the others.
Themes
Deza packs her Sunday school dress and the dress from Mrs. Needham, her dictionary and thesaurus, and her old schoolwork into her last box. She gets so distracted sorting through her old papers and rereading them that she loses track of time. When she hears the screen door slam, she drops the papers into the box and kicks it under the bed out of habit. She finds a strange White man in the living room instead of Mrs. Malone. It’s one of the landlord’s workers, carrying out the landlord’s eviction orders since it is now past noon. As recompense for being kicked out, he hands Deza four one-dollar bills, which she puts into her pocket.
Deza gets lost in pleasant memories as she sorts through her box of schoolwork. It makes sense that she’d look for something comforting and familiar in the midst of this upheaval. But there’s danger in losing sight of the challenges in front of one, and readers should note that she neglects to carry the box downstairs with her. The landlord clearly knows that what he’s doing is illegal, and although he counts on the fact that Mrs. Malone has neither the time nor the money to go to the police, the money he offers Deza shows an unquiet conscience.
Themes
The excited new tenants invite Deza to wait inside, but she can’t stand to see other people taking over her house, no matter how nice they seem to be. She sits on the porch and glumly waits for her family to return. Mrs. Malone doesn’t return for another three hours. And she has more bad news. The Rhymes family’s car was repossessed by the bank. She has no idea how they’ll move their things now. Just then, a shiny black car pulls up in front of the house.
The book distinguishes between the predatory practices of the landlord and the new tenants who are—like the Malones—just trying to cling to a normal life in unprecedented times. The loss of the Rhymes family’s car emphasizes the impact of the Depression, and makes the arrival of the shiny car (clearly owned by someone who is flourishing despite the Depression) all the more notable.
Themes
Jimmie jumps out of the car, followed by the driver, a skinny Black man wearing a fashionable suit and gold jewelry. Jimmie introduces this man, Marvin, to Mrs. Malone and Deza. He says for just five dollars, Marvin will help them move their boxes and give them a place to stay at his girlfriend’s house. Mrs. Malone pulls Jimmie aside and asks if this Martin is Marvelous Martin Ware, the same one who’s made his money running gambling rings for poor people. Jimmie says yes. Mrs. Malone isn’t pleased, but they don’t have many options. She pulls five dollars from her wallet.
Mrs. Needham and Dr. Bracy seem to be decently well off financially, despite the Depression, but Marvin Ware is in a category all his own. Mrs. Malone criticizes Ware for making money in a predatory way, by running a gambling ring that targets poor Black families. In this, he’s much like the tenant or the mill bosses who are content to enrich themselves off of the labor and hard work of others. The book invites readers to share Mrs. Malone’s contempt, but also her understanding that desperate times call for desperate measures. If society as a whole were doing a better job of taking care of its most vulnerable members during the Depression, the novel suggests, such acts of moral compromise might not be necessary.
Themes
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Jimmie and Marvin load the boxes into the back of the shiny black Cadillac, then the family piles into the car. It’s the fanciest car—if not the fanciest place, period—Deza has ever been in. Marvin tries to make small talk, but Mrs. Malone makes it clear that she has no interest in being friendly. As they drive, they pass billboards advertising Burma Shaving Cream with silly little poems. Everyone—except Mrs. Malone—finds them quite amusing. It isn’t until they’re well underway that Marvin explains that his girlfriend lives all the way in Chicago.
Marvin Ware might have purchased his car with ill-gotten gains, but it still offers the hope that the possibility of a better life is out there, somewhere. Things don’t always have to be as bleak as they seem for the Malones at this moment, even if they’re currently headed—literally—in the opposite direction of where they need to go.
Themes
