Theme Of Resentment In To Kill A Mockingbird By Zora Neale

Everyone deals with resentment in his or her own way. More often than not harboring resentment can hold a person back from succeeding in life and achieving happiness. Resentment ends only when a person can completely forgive those they feel have wronged them. Resentment greatly affected the plot as well as the character development in the novel. In this novel Janie is the person that harbors the most resentment towards a lot of other characters. The character she has the most resent me towards would be Nanny. The extent of Janie’s resentment towards Nanny is recognized after Jody’s funeral. “She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity” This lets the reader know that none of the people in Janie’s life including herself knew how she truly felt about Nanny. So there was no forgiveness from Nanny for how Janie felt. However once Janie fell in love with Tea Cake Nanny was forgiven for all the bad advice she gave Janie.
Janie’s resentment towards Jody can be seen as stemming from her resentment towards Nanny.
In Janie’s eyes every piece of advice she received from Nanny was wrong in the regards of love, which led her to Jody. If Nanny didn’t tell her to find a man that provided for her she wouldn’t have been forced to marry Logan and then run away from him to Jody. Janie harbored resentment towards Jody because of his controlling and abusive ways. He controlled everything from how she worked to who her friends were and everything in between all because of his paranoia of her leaving him At the end of their relationship Jody found out about Janie’s harbored resentment but it was not solved on the basis of Jody dying and him being angry for being resented by the woman he
loved. Janie’s toward a lot of the characters kept the plot moving as well as Janie. This however isn’t the best for Janie or the other characters with the exception of Tea Cake. Janie’s had resentment towards Tea Cake on two instances. The first instance was when he stole her $200. She was upset however she forgave him once he gambled and gave her the money back to her. The second instance was Nunkie’s flirtation with Tea Cake. In this instance Janie thought Tea Cake loved Nunkie and liked flirting with her so Janie became upset and went on a tirade. She then forgave him after minutes of trying to beat him. Their love for each other kept the resentment to a minimum and sped up the process of forgiveness. Throughout Janie’s life she spent a good bit of her time harboring resentment towards people whether it was blatant or hidden. This damaged her as a person as because she went on with her life with open wounds that she carried to friendships and relationships. Most of Janie’s resentment towards other people can be seen as stemming from the life lessons that Nanny taught her that she didn’t agree with, however that was all that Nanny knew. Nanny can be seen a Janie’s hidden hero in that she ultimately led Janie to find true love and happiness with Tea Cake.