Together Forever

I believe that Mor jumps from the roof with her family because she no longer has any control over how people treat her children. She didn’t even know how horrible the world would be to her children until very recently. She didn’t know that her kids would likely be the victims of schoolyard taunting and adult prejudice. Even the man that she was dating was calling them a racial name. She could not be there at every turn to protect them. Not to mention that no one believed them to be her biological children. She loved them so much, and people were denying that they were hers. Just before she jumped, Mor said that her children are “the most important things in the world” (Durrow, 260). I don’t think she could think of a better way to keep her family together and safe from prying eyes. She thinks that they “will always be a family this way”, safe together forever in death (260).

There are characters that blame Mor, and there are others who don’t. Both sides are represented, so I think that Durrow really left it open for us to decide if Mor was to blame or not. Rachel’s grandmother does blame Nella for the death of her grandchildren. When Rachel insists that the reason why she is special is because she is her mother’s daughter, her grandmother asks “Tell us what a wonderful lady your mama was…You think that baby or Robbie or Charles would agree?” (237). Rachel, who could very possibly be the one blaming her mother the most, doesn’t blame her. When Brick asks if she still loves her mother, despite what she did, Rachel responds, “yeah. And I know she loved me” (262).

I don’t believe that Mor was evil at all. She was just a woman who did not know how to handle the incredibly prejudiced world that she suddenly realized that she was in. All she wanted to do was to protect her children, and keep them all safe as a family. While I don’t particularly agree with her decision to kill them all, I can see how she would see that was the only way out.