Places In The Heart Themes

Places In the Heart The movie Places in the Heart brings up many controversial issues that occurred in the South during the era of the Great Depression. The five most prominent themes regarding social issues were slavery, racism, woman's role in society, men's role in society, and higher authorities. Two of the most important issues were the male and female roles in the family. The main character, Edna, husband dies in a horrible accident and she is left to survive by herself and do all the male roles in the family. During this time period the male role was to bring money in to provide for the family and the authority role. At one point the main characters child was caught at school smoking cigarets and had to be punished my his mother. As a woman she never did discipline her children so the buy had to tell her exactly how to do since it was the father role to do. She had to then do all she could to get the money she needed to maintain a stable household.
Moses's ancestors were slaves so he knew how to deal with cotton really well. He was also very respectful and grateful and never felt like Edna owed him anything, all he asked for was a place to stay and some food to get him by. Racism also ties into the social aspect of this movie because most of the town was extremely racist against African Americans. The higher authorities in the town were heavily involved in the KKK and made up most of the group. They were racist against Moses because he was black and had no respect for him whatsoever because he was African American. They referred to them as "niggers" and expected the worst in them. Such as when the cotton seller was really rude Moses when he saw that Moses was actually educated as opposed to the typical stereotype that the whites so strongly believed in being that African Americans were stupid and