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Chapter 6
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 is so excited that she sleeps in her new shoes. But she’s not sure about wearing them to school just yet—they’re so nice, and she wants to keep them that way as long as possible. She puts on her old, heelless, and tightly pinching shoes before going downstairs. In the kitchen, Deza hands Mrs. Malone the almost-empty box of oatmeal, noticing for the umpteenth time the strange-looking, cowboy-hat-wearing White man who smiles out at her from the label. She asks her parents if they know anything about him. He’s a Quaker, Mr. Malone says. Mrs. Malone adds that Quakers are honest people who helped Black people escape enslavement via the Underground Railroad. Mr. Malone suggests that maybe this Quaker seems so jolly because he just heard the good news about the Emancipation Proclamation…73 years late!
Seventy-three years feels like a long time for a 12-year-old, but on the other hand, it’s still within an individual person’s lifetime. There are people still living in the 1930s who were previously enslaved. The moment reminds readers both of how far Black Americans had come by the 1930s and how far they still had to go to achieve the dream of freedom underlying the Emancipation Proclamation. During the Depression, the most vulnerable communities—including Black Americans—were disproportionately affected, while wealthier White families (like the Carsdales, for whom Mrs. Malone works) were more insulated.
Themes
Deza takes the box from Mr. Malone and opens it, inhaling the sweet grassy scent of the oats. But when she looks inside the box, she sees dozens of tiny bugs crawling among the flakes. Screaming, she drops the box, spilling oats and bugs on the floor. Mrs. Malone tells her to sweep the spilled oatmeal back into the box, but Deza is horrified by the idea. It has bugs in it! Mr. Malone says that money is too tight to waste food, and he sweeps a handful of oats and bugs up off the floor and tosses it into his mouth to prove it. Jimmie follows suit. When Mr. Malone thinks his kids aren’t looking, he spits out his handful. But Jimmie swallows his and starts bragging about it on the way to school. Great, Deza thinks: Jimmie’s bragging is just more ammunition for his enemies’ mockery.
Deza is as horrified when she discovers the grubs in the oatmeal box as she was when she learned that Jimmie had tried to feed the family pie that a dog had slobbered on. The poor woman in the park hadn’t minded the dog slobber because her family was too poor to be picky. Now, Deza realizes, although her family lives a comparatively stable and respectable life, they’re also too poor to be picky. It’s hard to say whether this or the bugs themselves bother her more. Readers should pay attention to Deza’s worry over Jimmie in this moment, too, as it foreshadows coming trials.
Themes
