Fried Green Tomatoes Quotes

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café was written by Fannie Flagg, a well-known American author. This novel takes place in the Deep South and switches back and forth between the 1980s and the early 20th century, when discrimination was rampant. Discrimination has two main definitions. Firstly it is defined as “the ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not” (Webster). A second definition is “the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people” (Webster). It is the second of these two that is a major theme in the novel Fried Green Tomatoes. Three main types of discrimination in Fried Green Tomatoes are racism, sexism, and

Racism is defined as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” (Webster). Racism is the prevailing type of discrimination in this book. One example happens because Idgie serves everybody equally at her café. Grady Kilgore, the sheriff says, “Now, Idgie, you ought not to be selling those niggers food, you know better than that. And there’s some boys in this town that’s not too happy about it. Nobody wants to eat in the same place that niggers come, it’s not right and you just ought not be doin’ it.”(Page 51) After this Idgie still served them but from the back of the café instead of the normal dining area. People treated African Americans as lower class citizens because of their skin color. A second example is when Stump loses his arm in a railway accident. Big George and some others rushed him to the hospital. When they arrived, one of the nurses said to Idgie, “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to have your man wait outside, this is a white hospital” (Page 106). Just because George’s skin is black means he can’t see the boy he probably

Sexism is defined as “unfair treatment of people because of their sex; especially: unfair treatment of women” (Webster). One type of this discrimination is the expectation that women only wear dresses. An example of this can be found on page 10. Virginia Threadgood said, ‘Idgie was about ten or eleven at the time and she had on a brand new white organdy dress that we’d all told her how pretty she looked in. We were having a fine time and starting in on our blueberry cobbler when all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, Idgie stood up and announced, just as loud . . . “I’m never gonna wear another dress as long as I live!”’ This act of rebellion shocked everyone as it sharply contrasted to the stereotype that back then all women wore dresses. Another type of discrimination against women is how they are treated in this book. When Idgie asks a shopkeeper, named Mrs. Puckett, how Frank Bennett treats his wife, Ruth, “No, he’s always pleasant enough,” she [Mrs. Puckett] said arranging the boxes in a row. “It’s just that I don’t like any man that’ll beat his wife” (page