A great deal of hypocrisy is exposed during Aunt Alexandra's missionary circle meeting in Chapter 24 of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. While the ladies of the circle express concern for the Mrunas, in truth, they are only concerned because no white people are able to approach the Mrunas, except for J. Grimes Everett. The ladies of the society feel that only white people are able to set Christianly examples for so-called heathens. Since their sentiments are riddled with hypocrisy, we can say that the ladies of the missionary circle are not genuinely concerned for the Mrunas; they are only concerned that the Mrunas are not the sort of people the ladies of the missionary circle want them to be.
Scout hears Mrs. Grace Merriweather preach to the missionary group about the conditions of and express sympathy for the Mrunas, as Scout narrates in the following:
[The Mrunas] put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family--...--they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and earworms ... . (Ch. 24)
Later, during refreshments, Scout attempts to make polite conversation with Mrs. Merriweather by asking her about the Mrunas. Scout even notes that Mrs. Merriweather grows teary-eyed when she speaks of the Mrunas as "the oppressed"; however, what's particularly interesting is her statement to Scout, "Not a white person'll go near 'em but that saintly J. Grimes Everett." In other words, through her reference to white people, Mrs. Merriweather is exposing her opinion that the Mrunas are in the condition they are in simply because they don't have the influence of Christian white people.
The members of the missionary circle further expose their hypocrisies by referring to the Christian African Americans who live in their own hometown as people who live in darkness and immorality.
No comments:
Post a Comment