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Chapter 3
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
Deza waits patiently while Mrs. Needham hands back the family essays. Mrs. Needham always hands back work from worst to best. Dolly Peaches (a boy whom Deza considers both “roughneck” and a “hoodlum”) always gets his first, followed by Benny Cobb. Deza is always, always last. Except today, Mrs. Needham calls her name before that of her best friend, Clarice. Deza is so angry and humiliated that her “second brain,” the one that calls her kiddo and that encourages her to do bad things when she’s angry or frightened, pipes up. As she trudges up to Mrs. Needham’s desk to collect her essay, Deza’s second brain says she should grab and bite her treacherous, backstabbing teacher’s arm. Fortunately, she manages to control herself and makes it all the way back to her seat without doing violence to Mrs. Needham, Dolly Peaches, or anyone else.
Deza’s low opinion of Dolly Peaches points toward what she values in life—courtesy, hard work, and educational achievement. And, because she lets Jimmie off the hook for behavior that she judges Dolly harshly for, it quietly reinforces the idea that Deza's family is the most important thing in the world to her. So important, in fact, that she’s willing to overlook certain things when it comes to them. It also turns out that she’s not always as squeaky-clean and virtuous as she would like to have readers (and herself) believe. When she’s thwarted, angry, or scared, her “second brain” tells her to do awful things. She is, after all, just human and prone to the same feelings of sadness and betrayal as everyone else.
Themes
Clarice certainly looks excited to have earned the highest marks, but Deza knows that deep down she must be consumed by guilt over the terrible fate she had helped to inflict on her friend. As Clarice walks up to collect her work, Deza clenches her jaw so hard that her teeth—especially the bad, cavity-riddled ones in the back—start to hurt.
It's symptomatic of Deza’s immaturity and selfishness at this point in her life that she can’t celebrate Clarice’s success—and that she even willfully misinterprets it to align with her own feelings of wounded pride. But she doesn’t have much else to prop her up other than pride, given how poor her family is and how hard their lives are—something her damaged teeth quietly underline.
Themes
