What are the importances of the characters Dolphus Raymond and Mayella Ewell?If you were to write an essay about them in To Kill a Mockingbird, why...

In developing motifs and themes in their literary works,
authors employ characters to exemplify these ideas.  Mayella Ewell and Dolphus Raymond
serve this purpose.  As foils to each other, by contrast they point to the many
tentacles that racial prejudice possesses.

Once Mayella has
been caught in her desperate desire for affection, she is embarrassed and worried about
its consequences in both her immediate family and in her community.  So, to disguise her
unconventional actions, she fabricates her testimony to be in accord with the mores of
white society. 

On the other hand, Dolphus Raymond, who
once was a distinguished member of Maycomb's society, rejects the conventions of the
South in the 1930s and lives with the blacks, whom he finds less hypocritical. But, to
satisfy the hypocrisy of a social system within which he must live, he feigns
alcoholism, thus giving the prestigious members of his society who cannot totally reject
him because he is from from an "upstanding" family a reason to excuse his otherwise
unforgivable behavior. 

Through the characterization of
Mayella Ewell and Mr. Dolphus Raymond, two members of different social levels who act as
foils to each other, Harper Lee, then, points to the hypocrisy and evil of racial
prejudice that sacrifices Tom Robinson to the status quo.