Burris Ewell's confrontation with Miss Caroline on the
first day of school is dramatic and very revealing of his character. When Miss Caroline
finds lice in the boy's hair, she tells him he must go home and treat them with lye soap
and kerosene before returning to school. She also instructs him to take a bath before
coming back. Burris laughs at her. She isn't sending him home, he says, because he was
getting ready to leave anyway.
After hearing her class
explain the circumstances of Burris's life at home, Miss Caroline asks the boy to sit
back down. He defies her: "You try and make me, missus." Miss Caroline then tells Burris
again to go home, threatening to call the principal if he refuses. "I'll have to report
this anyway," she says. Burris responds with hateful, vulgar
disdain:
The
boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.Safely out
of range, he turned and shouted: "Report and be damned to ye! Ain't no snot-nosed slut
of a schoolteacher ever born c'n make me do nothin'! You ain't makin' me go nowhere,
missus. You just remember that, you ain't makin' me go
nowhere!"He waited until he was sure she was crying, then
he shuffled out of the
building.
Burris Ewell is
indeed "a mean one, a hard-down mean one," as Little Chuck Little says to Miss
Caroline.
No comments:
Post a Comment