On her way home one day, Melba is savagely attacked by an irate white man who tries to rape her. He's angry at the landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional. Fortunately, Marissa is one hand to help. She hits the man over the head with her book bag and tells Melba to run.
Marissa's actions are somewhat surprising. At school, she has a deserved reputation as a bully. In fact, she bullies Melba on a regular basis, forcing her to give up food and money—despite her father being a well-to-do minister. But here she shows no hesitation in saving Melba from a terrifying ordeal. No explicit reasons are given, but it's more than likely that Marissa intervened because she didn't want to see someone from her own community become the victim of an act of racial and sexual aggression.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Why did Marissa help Melba when she was attacked by the man in the field?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
A good thesis statement presents a claim (an interpretive stance on a story that can be defended using textual evidence) and is a position w...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
What does the hot air balloon symbolize? To the Assad son who buys the hot air balloon, it symbolizes a kind of whimsy that he can afford. B...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
Allie’s baseball mitt is extremely important to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. It is a symbol of Allie since it was important to his brot...
No comments:
Post a Comment