How Does Maggie Paugh Change Throughout The Novel

In the novel Spite Fences, by Trudy Krisher, the main protagonist Maggie Pugh is a young girl living in Kinship, Georgia. This novel tells a coming of age story and the author shows Maggie growing up and realizing her place in her community. She tries to stay away from getting tangled into the racial tension and hatred in her town, and away from the influence of her evil mother. Maggie is able to create her own opinions and branch out to create unexpected bonds. Her friendships and her camera lead her to make bigger movements outside of her small town and allow her images and her first hand experiences to fight for civil rights in Kinship and other places around the south. In the novel Spite Fences, Maggie Pugh is a naive yet, insightful young

Her Mama is always saying racist statements such as, “ ‘Shut that dern radio off, Maggie,’ Mama said. ‘I can’t stand all that news about the coloreds. All that stuff about them using the public parks’ (16). She also says, “ ‘I knows Cinda and Zeke and those other coloreds, Maggie,’ Mama said, the glass poised still, ‘and i guess it’s shameful enough you ‘ssociatin’ with them’ “ (222). Maggie was shut off from a world where equality was an idea, until, her colored friend Zeke tried explaining it to her through his job, “ ‘Maggie,’ he said, putting his face right next to mine, ‘don’t you see? We’s both dippin’ from the same bottle, Maggie. White or black’ “ (94). She was now starting to figure out that there was no right opinion, even though her mom made it seem that

Her perspective is different from most of the white people in Kinship but, the reason she is different is because Maggie has friends of color. “ ‘He’s not a bad man. He’s just colored, is all. He’s my friend. George Hardy is my friend’ “ (224). Maggie ignores the fact that George is colored and only sees that he is a good person and wishes her mother could see that as well. She doesn’t understand why people couldn’t see the human in a colored person or why they were treated so unfairly. “Zeke tried to hold his head high. He didn’t even struggle to free himself or to cover his head with his hands. My mind raced. Why, then, did they have to beat him” (69)? Maggie knew Zeke was being treated unfairly solely based on the color of his skin, “Zeke’s arrest was explained one way if you were colored, and another way if you were white” (69). Maggie broke away from the thoughts of a stereotypical white person and saw that something needed to be done to help the colored people in her