Summary Of Deadly By Julie Chibbaro

In the novel Deadly by Julie Chibbaro readers view how a disease is passed around by an Irish cook named Mary Mallon. Some debate that Mary was merely an innocent victim and the Department of Health and Sanitation were the real villains for claiming a random disease on a woman. Others believe she wasn’t able to accept this new change and accept the fact that she does have tuberculosis. For this essay Mary will be portrayed as the villain because of her ignorance, disobedience, and ability to not accept the new technology. Mary’s ignorance was a major problem. In the documentary, The most dangerous woman in the world, Mary insists that the Department of Health and Sanitation was only doing this because she’s a “ filthy Irish”. Mary Mallon’s
way of analyzing the situation gives her a bad representation. Instead of thinking she actually had a very contagious disease that she could bring down an entire city by her cooking, she thinks they only want to blame the Irish. Mary’s ignorance gave her the illusion of not transferring the disease to others. She believed that she’s never been sick a day in her life ( Documentary; The most dangerous woman in the world ) The false belief that she has never been sick and she could not be sick makes it harder to help her her and others around her. Mary still went to cook for a larger group of people after her trial. As doing that she caused more of a chaos than before. If she was not so ignorant and believed what the Department of Health and Sanitation told her she won’t be causing others pain and suffering. This reminds me of the movie Meet the Robinsons when the considered bad guy thought he was doing the right thing but ends up hurting the story plot and characters. Her disobedience and will to not cooperate also caused some problems. One thing she rebelled on was going to with the Department of Health and Sanitation. On p.g 270 of Deadly ,Prudence states “ ‘ She was violent when we tried to approach her properly,’ I said ‘ She screamed and brandished a knife at us. She threw a cooking fork at us.’” Mary’s “self-defence” towards the Department gives her a negative connotation and bad reputation. Because of small acts like these Mary is seen as a “bad guy”. Another recurring decision that caused Mary her freedom is how she decided to go back and cook for others. Her determination to continue cooking caused others their health and some lives.If she was set free why would she go back and do the one thing they told her not to do? Lastly the Department Health and Sanitation have all the rights to pluck someone out of a large area if they have even the slightest detection of a very contagious disease. In this case they could have easily taken Mary but Mary’s stubbornness and disobedience made them go through so much trouble to help the public. The last solid evidence that proves that Mary is indeed a villain is the fact that she couldn’t adapt to the new technology and idea sh might be one of the first recorded healthy carrier of this disease.