A Little Sunlight: Mayella Ewell Character Analysis

Mayella is a victim of assault and abuse.  This was not inflicted by Tom Robinson, the black man who allegedly raped Mayella in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird.  Out of hatred and racism, Bob Ewell blamed him for the offense.  Robert “Bob” Ewell is the drunken, abusive father of Mayella who was the victim of a sinister crime.  Instead of facing up to what he was causing and the own truth about his family’s reputation, he wanted to control his daughter.  Out of fear of more beatings, she protected him by accepting the punishment that Tom was to bear.  Mayella was abused, neglected and looked over.  Her hands and mind were filthy with the dirt of abuse and her forced conviction of Tom’s alleged crime

To help cope with her internal and external beating, she plants geraniums to have a little hope in her life.   The geraniums suggest that Mayella desires to be better than her surroundings, to make something bright in her dull world, to aspire to higher things. But whatever Mayella’s hopes and dreams are, she doesn’t get a chance to express them to the reader.  She almost exposes her father’s true intentions to Atticus, but her father restrains her.  Her father abuses her and doesn’t allow the necessary human connection.  The flowers help branch out her isolated, grimy world and give her a small shred of hope.

If you have a controlling abusive authority figure in your life, you protect them out of fear.  Mayella fears of what her father will do to harm her, if she speaks out of the abuse he afflicted upon her.  Tom Robinson was just the perfect person for him to blame.  He’s a black man who Mayella attempted to seduce just to have a human connection.  Just because of his race, and the huge amount of racial discrimination in Maycomb, everyone believes he did it.  Mayella is a silenced victim of abuse and social segregation.  She is silenced by her abusive father and of the fear that he will injure her once again.

In her grimy, socially isolated world Mayella lives in fear every day of what her father will do to harm her.  The geraniums she plants give in a little to the human association she so greatly craves. Her father tries to make her world even smaller, by crushing that connection and forcing her to convict him. Just like the geraniums she plants, she is in dire need of a little sunlight in her boxed in world.

Close Your Eyes

Just close your eyes

You’ll be okay

It’ll be alright

When the sun rises

You’ll find your prince

And he will find his princess

Don’t you worry

Your story will be complete

At least your heart

Your story will go on and on

A romantic tale

Is reality

Don’t cry

Love will find you

You will find love

In a hopeless place

In this small town

He’ll sweep you off you feet

Carry you away

Into the sunset

You will be the princess

He will be the prince

Just close your eyes

Close them tight

Imagine.

Someday….

You will find the love

That you are destined

To find

True love

Is hard to see

You have to fight

He will fight for you

Whatever stands in his way

He will find you

His damsel

You just have to be on the lookout for him

Don’t just choose

Anyone you see

Wait.

Remember.

Remember that prince

Fighting to find you

Just wait.

Close your eyes

Just close your eyes

Ignite

Ignite

Ignite your bones

Start a spark

Grow

Growing

Growth….

Take all that you have

Give all that you are

Make it into something Beautiful.

Extraordinary

Shoot your colors

Flowing

Up.

Up.

Up.

Across the sky

Turning the gray space

To a future

A hurricane

To a rainbow

Rain

To sunshine

A blank canvas…

To a new masterpiece

Empty thoughts

Extending to new horizons

A shadowy past

To a brilliant future

An ominous night sky

To a starry night

Blank expressions

To new heights

Everything can be beautiful

Just how you look at it

Set fire to..

Your soul

Make your heart

Blazing

Burning

Burning

Burning

Your flawed past away

Watch it

As it blows…

Away from here

Scattered ashes

Across the earth

To new waters

Reaching new distances

So away you go

Away from here

Stray

Stray away from here

Ignite

Ignite the past

Light is in the future

Ignite the light

Let the blazes shine

Ignite…………

Invisible Children

Author's note:  This is a poem that I was inspired to write after I saw the Kony video.  If you haven't seen it...please look up Kony 2012 on youtube.  It will make you cry, I know I did.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, Kony is a vile man.  He is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army In Africa.  This group captures children and forces them to become slaves or to mutilate other children.  Before they take them, they kill their family and neighbors so that have no one to turn to.  This makes them join.  Hundreds and thousands of children have been captured by this man. Make him famous.  Make these invisible children heard.  Not only hear them, listen to their cries.  I feel like we need to do something..and this poem expresses it.

Invisible children………………………………

Invisible children.

Hidden.

Isolation.

 Suffering.

Captured……….

From the life

They knew before

In the world…
They stand alone

Facing….

A choice

Of violence

Of death

Of uprising

Of mutilation

Of standing

Of falling

Of blood….

And of tears…………

Tears streaming

Down their face

War torn tears

Tearing their youth

Innocence

Ripped

From their very hands….

Don’t just fall

Don’t cover your eyes

 

Breath in.

Breath out.

 Breath in the loss

Breath in their loss

                                                                                                    Look.

Look at their faces….

See their blood.

 See other’s blood shed before them…

Reach.
 To their hands

Hear their cries

Hear their voices

See their tears

Clean the blood

From their hands…

Please…
We cannot have them fade as…

Invisible Children……..

Katniss: In The Arena

Author's note:  This is a creative piece from the perspective of a tribute of the Hunger Games.  The purpose of this is to tell what a character in a book was like.  I chose Katniss, and made it from the perspective of someone else in the same situation as the character. I haven't really ever wrote something like this, so please give me feedback!

I dash through the trees.  My blood is pulsing and I can feel the wind pushing the leaves as I tear through them.  Breathing heavier and heavier thinking, “Run faster.  Go faster.  He won’t get you.  You need to survive.  You need to have the will to win.  Run.  Just run. ” 

Branches scratched at my arms.  At this point, I didn’t care what scathed me; I just wanted to live.

In the distance, I see a small fire blazing in a tree.  Its fingers, fierce and commanding burned the tree’s body.  The tree was beginning to lose.  The fingers didn’t restrain from the destruction.  Soon, all that was left was an ashy, shrunken stump.  This is how these games will go down. All of us will end up like the tree.

Looking up, I see a shadow descending silently through the forest.  She seemed to have the nimbleness and gate of a phantom.  The earth ceased to leave a mark from her steps.   The leaves didn’t rustle from her breath, or her movement.  When the wind blew, her gasp didn’t carry along.  Her steps were that of a ghost, but of a warrior.  She moved quickly and powerfully.   All in all, she was a ghostly tool of destruction.

 I see her dark grey eyes gaze into mine.  Her shadowy, straight hair littered with leaves, and her olive skin smeared with earth.  On her arms, bruises and scratches covered her arms.   After all of this, she hasn’t been wounded very badly defending herself. 

 She raises her bow quickly turning to face me.

It’s Katniss Everdeen.  She’s that girl from District Twelve.  I know she is strong enough to fight.  All of us are aware she is skilled with her bow, and she is swift.  I also know that she won’t give up. Well….neither will I.  None of us will give up.  No one wants to die here, or even now. We’re both in this, and only one will come through victorious, bearing all the glory from these games. 

All of us are hungry for the glory.  Some are starving for the blood and some for the riches.  Others are ambitious for the satisfaction of survival.  Then there are those lusting for the kill.  What was she fighting for?  Who did she think she was up against? 

Firing at me, I twist me body, dodging the arrows, hitting the ground hard.  Hastily standing up, I grab anything I can defend myself with.  My fingers grasp the spear, as I hold it up.  Again, her fingers nimbly reloaded the arrow and she releases it at me. This time it plunges into my arm.  I fall to my knees dropping the spear and almost declaring my defeat.  Was my time over?  I was fallen.  My fight was over…the battle was over.  I despaired, laying in my defeat.

I know that this fight wasn’t over.  It was too early in the games to pronounce my death because the night was young.  The moon was white, pale; No blood was shed on its luminous body. My time wasn’t done, for I knew that my eyes would see the dawn.  But, when the districts would awake, they would see a rising, bloody sun from the brutal fight in the night.

She watches with her skilled, curious eyes as I kneel down on the Earth.  Floating down to me, she almost looks pitied as she holds up her bow, taking a single arrow in her hands.

Gazing at my wound, she looks into my eyes with her ashy eyes.  They looked at me with such sadness.  Such a mortal, fragile emotion I saw in her eyes.  Pulling back the string, she steps back, aiming at me.  Closing her eyes, she releases.

 I feel dead. I’m not dead yet, but such a feeling has come over me. 

She watches with crystal drops lining her misty eyes.  Of course she doesn’t want to die. None of us do.  All of us want to taste the freedom; the freedom of survival.  Every one of us here wants to taste the outside world after this.  All of us want to taste the sunlight again; to touch the rays of the sun raining down on the earth.  I know I want that one last time…but fate intervened amidst it all.

Before she leaves me, she turns to look at me one more time.  Again, her eyes told me of the regret she would face.  Silent tears streaked down her face.  She didn’t make a sound as she mourned for me. 

                                                                        

Her hushed despair overwhelmed me, too. What her eyes told, was chapters and chapters of a story.  It would be a story of the survival…a story of the regret.  It would be a tale of the blood, and of the glory.  Of the lusting; the hunger of these games.