The Mighty Miss Malone

Father is, in Deza’s opinion, very handsome, even after misfortune befalls him in the fishing accident and the poorhouse. He is a moral, instructive, humorous father and mentor to Jimmie and Deza. He has a quirky habit of making nicknames and sentences filled with alliteration. He has a strong ability to teach Jimmie and Deza about the real world and challenges they might confront by putting lessons into easy-to-understand yet serious terms; for example, he talks about racist phrases such as “being a credit to your race” (75) as a warning signal that the speaker is prejudiced, and he references the “Manipula-Mobile” as a way others try to steer you off course using hidden persuasion.

Father, like every member of the Malone family, shows great resilience despite hardship. The fishing accident traumatizes Father; Jimmie reveals to Deza that Father hit his confused friend Mr. Henderson in self-defense, which may or may not have led to Mr. Henderson’s death. Father is more depressed and anxious after boxer Joe Louis loses the big fight. When he leaves the family in Gary, he intends to find work to support them; for unknown reasons, however, he is soon in a hospital, then in a poorhouse in Lansing, Michigan. Mother finds him, and she and Deza bring him home. Father’s resilient spirit on the way home indicates he is eager to rejoin the family and hopeful for the future. He is a dynamic character whose unlucky accident sends him to despair but whose inner strength reawakens with the love of his family.

Deza remarks in her Chapter 1 essay that Mother is “the glue holding this family together” (4), and Mother proves the truth of that statement repeatedly as the Malones suffer trauma and loss and face hard decisions. She is a valiantly diligent worker, taking multiple jobs at a time to help the Malones survive. She only missed work when afflicted with a nerve disorder called Tic Douloureux, in which the trigeminal nerve becomes compressed and irritated, triggering an intermittent, severe pain to one side of the face. Deza does not reveal if Mother recovered from the condition through a doctor’s care or just waited for it to abate before returning to work.

Mother makes the hard choice to leave Gary though none of the three remaining Malones want to. She is a moral woman who expects nothing less from her children, and she is shocked and disappointed when she learns Jimmie knows Marvelous Marvin, the “numbers man” so well. She also, however, sometimes puts propriety aside when logic and reason (and lack of funds) point toward certain solutions; examples include “riding the rails” to Flint and staying longer than intended in Flint’s Hooverville. Mother never loses faith in her search for Father; though Deza does not know it until they are on the way to Lansing, Mother devoted much time and patience to sending inquiries to hospitals, poorhouses, and morgues in the hopes that she would either find Father or bring closure to his disappearance. True to her character, she cautions Deza that Father’s recovery after the poorhouse will be long and difficult, but she also laughs along when he shows some humor on the way home. Mother is a static mentor archetype in her care and concern for the family, her steadiness and work ethic, and her forward-moving yet realistic outlook.

While Jimmie’s personality contrasts vividly with Deza’s, he resembles his sister in his gradual movement toward maturity over the course of the novel. He is 15 when the story opens but is often the subject of bullying and harassment due to his small physical size—his spirit and swagger, though, make up for a lack of height. Jimmie does not always make the right decisions, such as when he steals Dr. Bracy’s pie and hangs out with immoral types like Marvelous Marvin. He loves his family devotedly, however, and is doggedly determined to right the course of the Malones by becoming their benefactor when he finds excellent work putting his singing talent to use.

Jimmie is a dynamic character in that he matures and grows in humility over the course of the story. For example, though he admits the pie theft to Dr. Bracy, he lies about giving a donation to a wheelchair-bound blind grandmother; later in the story, though, his dishonesty takes a far more moral turn when he sends money to Mother pretending to be Father, in attempt to save Mother and Deza from poverty as well as save Father’s pride. While his dishonesty may remain a stable trait, its essence is transformed through a repurposing to help others instead of himself. He is an ally character archetype for Deza.