How does Lee use details in this passage to present the position of the Ewells in Maycomb society? How does Lee present Mayelle Ewell in the novel as a whole?
Part (a) How does Lee use details in this passage to present the position of the Ewells in Maycomb society?
‘Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells objectify the Ewells removing their personality and shows them as a whole; it makes them insignificant as if they were nothing special because every small town had an ‘Ewell’. It also makes their name ‘Ewell’ be viewed negatively by people, showing that even a young girl like Scout is prejudice whether she realizes or not as she has not met, spoken to nor get to know each individual member of the family yet she views them all together as a ‘bad’ family because they were the ‘Ewells’. By saying that ‘the Ewells lived as guests of the county’ Lee is showing us that the Ewells have no real contribution to the society. We can see that the Ewells are classed low down in the Maycomb society when we learnt they ‘lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin’ this implies that the Ewells were viewed to be the lowest of low as they had to live in a second hand place and not just any second hand cabin but ‘a Negro cabin’ because of how negatively society viewed the black community having to live in a cabin that once belonged to a black man must have made meant that the Ewells were very desperate and poor.
Lee describes the Ewell’s house as ‘the dump’ illustrating that they were poor and therefore lived in and among rubbish and trash. The words that are used to describe the Ewell’s fence and their belongs are all very negative such as ‘rusty’, ‘old’, ‘worn-out’, ‘ancient’, ‘remains’ and ‘scrawny’ highlights that they were not only poor but extremely poor. The words ‘worn-out’ and ‘rusty’ suggest that these objects have had previous owners meaning that nothing that the Ewells had really belonged to them as they did not buy it with their own earnings.
They have ‘a discarded dentist’s chair’ but by using the word ‘discarded’ it shows that the previous owner did not want it or need
‘Every town the size of Maycomb had families like the Ewells objectify the Ewells removing their personality and shows them as a whole; it makes them insignificant as if they were nothing special because every small town had an ‘Ewell’. It also makes their name ‘Ewell’ be viewed negatively by people, showing that even a young girl like Scout is prejudice whether she realizes or not as she has not met, spoken to nor get to know each individual member of the family yet she views them all together as a ‘bad’ family because they were the ‘Ewells’. By saying that ‘the Ewells lived as guests of the county’ Lee is showing us that the Ewells have no real contribution to the society. We can see that the Ewells are classed low down in the Maycomb society when we learnt they ‘lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin’ this implies that the Ewells were viewed to be the lowest of low as they had to live in a second hand place and not just any second hand cabin but ‘a Negro cabin’ because of how negatively society viewed the black community having to live in a cabin that once belonged to a black man must have made meant that the Ewells were very desperate and poor.
Lee describes the Ewell’s house as ‘the dump’ illustrating that they were poor and therefore lived in and among rubbish and trash. The words that are used to describe the Ewell’s fence and their belongs are all very negative such as ‘rusty’, ‘old’, ‘worn-out’, ‘ancient’, ‘remains’ and ‘scrawny’ highlights that they were not only poor but extremely poor. The words ‘worn-out’ and ‘rusty’ suggest that these objects have had previous owners meaning that nothing that the Ewells had really belonged to them as they did not buy it with their own earnings.
They have ‘a discarded dentist’s chair’ but by using the word ‘discarded’ it shows that the previous owner did not want it or need