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Zora neale hurston gilded six-bits and sweat
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Zora neale hurston novels analyzed
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Zora Neale Hurston’s story “The Gilded Six-Bits”, like many of her other stories that were set in Eatonville or about things she witnessed or experienced as she aged, resembles her in some way. The town where Missie May and Joe lived resembled the town Eatonville by it being a black community, the same society as Hurston experienced as a child. In this short story Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “The Gilded Six-Bits” reveals the theme, through multiple excerpts, as English lyricist William S. Gilbert is quoted as saying “things are seldom what they seem”.
The theme “things are seldom what they seem” ("Gilbert") are introduced in the first two paragraphs of the short story. This story opens by describing the yard and home of a Negro couple, Missie May and Joe, in a Negro community as one that appears to be meager and poor. There are quart bottles used as edging on the sidewalk and flowers planted without a plan. Contrary to the scant depiction that is painted of the surroundings of this Negro couple, their home is still filled with love and affection at the onset of this story. Later in the story Missie May is found in bed with the new, seemly rich man in town, by Joe. After the incident Missie May and Joe were much more distant from one another. The affection they would show each other every Saturday disappeared. At the end of the story it is shown that Missie May and Joe may restore their marriage and share the same affection that was shown in the beginning of the story. The relationship between Missie May and Joe it not what it seems after Slemmons and Missie May encounter but ends with them trying to go back to their affectionate relationship. This is evident in the conversation this couple engages in during din...
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...oncluded to be substances that appeared or was said to be one thing but resulted in another. The love and affection Missie May and Joe shared came to view as a lively and loving couple before Otis arrived and after the birth of their son. Otis D. Slemmons being exposed as a fraud after claiming to be a wealthy, rich man is convincing but also misleading. Missie May having interest in Slemmons after expressing some negative thoughts of Otis and the clerk perceiving black people as having no worries all depict the theme “things are seldom what they seem” ("Gilbert").
Works Cited
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Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six-Bits”. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 4th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 685-693. Print.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Sweat." Norton Anthology of Southern Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: Norton, 1998.
Zora Neale was an early 20th century American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. In her best known novel Their eyes were watching God, Hurston integrated her own first-hand knowledge of African American oral culture into her characters dialogue and the novels descriptive passages. By combing folklore, folk language and traditional literary techniques; Hurston created a truly unique literary voice and viewpoint. Zora Neale Hurston's underlying theme of self-expression and search for one’s independence was truly revolutionary for its time. She explored marginal issues ahead of her time using the oral tradition to explore contentious debates. In this essay I will explore Hurston narrative in her depiction of biblical imagery, oppression of African women and her use of colloquial dialect.
Zora Neale Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida also known as “Negro Town” (Hurston, 1960, p.1). Not because of the town was full of blacks, but because the town charter, mayor, and council. Her home town was not the first Negro community, but the first to be incorporated. Around Zora becoming she experienced many hangings and riots. Not only did Zora experience t...
Hurston begins the essay in her birth town: Eatonville, Florida; an exclusively Negro town where whites were a rarity, only occasionally passing by as a tourist. Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers
Missie May is described as a young African American woman; she is married to Joe with whom she is deeply in love. Hurston starts the story with a young, likeable female character and later within the story tears down her credibility and makes her an unappealing character. Missie May is mistaken as a bad
But soon she is off, true to her free-minded self. It is interesting to note that Hurston does not dwell on the socio-economic situations (i.e., slavery, poverty) that bring about the two rapes, as another black author (perhaps Richard Wright?) might have done. Hurston instead focuses on Janie’s very real, very necessary search for self-fulfillment. This kind of focus was not common in Black literature at the time of the writing (early 1930’s), and Hurston drew much criticism for what was seen as a refusal to address the social, economic and political issues that preoccupied her contemporaries such as Wright and Ralph Ellison. However, it can be argued that what Hurston was attempting, a portrayal of a culturally “self-sufficient” black community, was just as necessary for a full realization of Black consciousness as was the “protest” literature of the Harlem Renaissance.
The two main characters in this story are Missie May and Joe, a young newlywed couple who relationship is tested when a man named Otis D. Slemmons moves into town. The first character the author introduces is Missie May in the beginning she is portrayed as a very strong and admiral wife, but as the story continues she is revealed to be a woman who values money more than her relationship. The second main character is Joe a hardworking, loving husband who number one flaw is how self-conscious
In a brief overview of “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston presents the essential elements of fiction through a style of narration. The author’s purpose is to inform the reader of what it feels like to be “colored” in the United States of America. When sampling the essay, it is possible to find that a major idea of the text is a simple representation of being black in a white America. The reading of the text explores the discovery of self-pride and black nationalism using her own childhood as young teenage girl. The essay very obviously does not follow the everyday conventional idea of racial segregation that took place in that time.
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
Schilb, John, and John Clifford, eds. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012. 866. Print.
The Gilded Six-Bits tells the story of a black family dealing with social restrictions and expectations during the 1930s. The story begins with a picturesque snapshot of a newlywed couple in Eatonsville, the first black integrated community in the United States. Zora Hurston in The Gilded Six Bits demonstrates gender stereotypes through a newlywed couple’s dialogue in the early 1900s. The quintessential women in American society was still the bosomy beautiful homemaker with a penchant for cooking and cleaning. The husband was usually placed on a pedestal as the breadwinner and had the more power in the household and in their marriage. The typical woman during the 1930s was expected to cook, clean, and take care of the household chores.
Janie’s first attempt at love does not turn out quite like she hopes. Her grandmother forces her into marrying Logan Killicks. As the year passes, Janie grows unhappy and miserable. By pure fate, Janie meets Joe Starks and immediately lusts after him. With the knowledge of being wrong and expecting to be ridiculed, she leaves Logan and runs off with Joe to start a new marriage. This is the first time that Janie does what she wants in her search of happiness: “Even if Joe was not waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good…From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (32). Janie’s new outlook on life, although somewhat shadowed by blind love, will keep her satisfied momentarily, but soon she will return to the loneliness she is running from.
McLeod, Laura. "Zora Neale Hurston: Overview." Feminist Writers. Ed. Pamela Kester-Shelton. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
In conclusion, Hurston was a modernist writer who dealt with societal themes of racism, and social and racial identity. She steps away from the folk-oriented style of writing other African American authors, such as Langston Hughes, and she addresses modern topics and issues that relate to her people. She embraces pride in her color and who she is. She does not hate the label of “colored” that has been placed upon her. She embraces who she is and by example, she teaches others to love themselves and the color of their skin. She is very modern. She is everybody’s Zora.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Ed. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2005.