Student Question
Compare Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell as social outsiders in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Quick answer:
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell are both lonely and isolated people, albeit for different reasons. Boo is that way because gossip, rumor, and urban myth have turned him into a monster, a boogeyman figure. Mayella is lonely and isolated because she's a member of the most hated and despised family in the whole of Maycomb.
The first thing that pops into my head is that Boo is a social outsider by choice. He chooses to remain inside and watch the world from behind closed doors and window curtains. He sometimes comes out at night, as in the moment he rescues Jem and Scout from Mr. Ewell. You can bet he stays up on the events of the town with other family members who are out and about each day. He is a good man from a decent family who chooses to sequester himself.
Mayella, on the other hand, is a social outsider for two reasons: one, she belongs to a family that is not respected. In fact, they are looked down upon as the trashiest white family in the county. They live near the dump and close to the black inhabitants of the town. This land would not have much value and no respectful white...
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family would willingly reside there. The second reason is due to Mayella's home situation. She is the eldest daughter, but is treated as a mistress by her father. There has been questionable behavior there which she must know is wrong. Her guilt also makes her an outsider--both the guilt thrust upon her by her relationship with her father, but also the guilt she takes on by lying about Tom in court and causing an innocent man to go to jail.
How do Boo Radley and Mayella Ewell illustrate loneliness in To Kill a Mockingbird?
The small Southern town of Maycomb is full of outsiders. Arthur "Boo" Radley and Mayella Ewell are just two of them. Boo has become an outsider, not so much because of what he's done but because of who people think he is. As the townsfolk of Maycomb don't really know anything about Boo, they make up all kinds of lurid stories about him. The most notorious of these is that he once stabbed his old man in the leg with a pair of scissors one day while he was cutting out newspaper articles for his scrapbook.
However, the truth about Boo is hard to find. He's been turned into a monster by countless urban myths and legends, and it's got to the stage where people wouldn't even recognize the truth about him if it stared them right in the face. Society has made Boo an outsider, and it's not about to bring him in from the cold.
Much the same social dynamic applies to Mayella Ewell. She's isolated and lonely on account of belonging to the most hated and despised family in town. The Ewells are widely regarded as the disgrace of Maycomb, a brood of lazy, low-down "white-trash" people that just about everyone avoids like the plague. In that sense, Mayella is considered guilty by association in the eyes of the town; she's an Ewell, and that's all there is to it. She's bad news, and respectable folk have nothing to do with her.
If anything, it's harder for Mayella than for Boo. Whereas Boo can potentially redeem himself in the eyes of the townsfolk by doing good works—such as saving Scout and Jem from the evil clutches of Bob Ewell—Mayella will always be an Ewell and therefore unable to escape from the little box into which society has imprisoned her.