Perhaps the most poignant moral dilemma in Eudora Welty's novel The Ponder Heart is the one established regarding the mixing of social class. The fact that social class should be something which all people should adhere to proves to be one of the main conflicts in the novel. Some of the characters fail to see the social lines as rigidly as those who hold them to be inflexible.

Likewise, the same question appears in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Many of the citizens cannot understand why Atticus took on Tom Robinson's case. While the main issue lies in race, one could easily detail that race coincides with social class based upon the fact that African Americans were not seen as being of the same class as whites.

Therefore, one could examine the social dilemma shown in both novels regarding the crossing of social boundaries and the problems associated with doing so.