Themes In Zora Neale Hurston's Spunk

It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than

The Harlem Renaissance marked the coming out of many brilliant black authors and thinkers. Names like Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke, Ralph Waldo Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston marked the scene. Hurton portrays many messages in her stories without having to explicitly spell it out. This among other reasons make Hurston's writing so rich. Two of her almost fable-like stories, "Sweat" and "The Gilded Six-Bits", each portray powerful messages individually. In "Sweat," you get a message of "whatever goes over the Devil's back, is got to come under his belly." You will reap what you sow among other messages. In "The Gilded Six-Bits," you learn that time will heal, money is the root of all evil, and other morals. These

Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1901. She was raised in Eatonville, Florida. Hurston went to Howard University and progressed on to Barnard College. Hurston’s work reflected the use of African American legends in her short stories. Hurston was a vital figure who composed stories and played during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s. She was committed to telling the stories of many cultures to allocate their social legacy with deference and love with an end goal to beat the unrefined stereotyping of her period. In 1925 during the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston wrote a story called “Spunk”. In the story “Spunk”, Hurston used the literary terms like character, setting, and conflict that catches the reader’s attention and made

Zora Neale Hurston, known as one of the most symbolic African American women during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930’s. Hurston was known as a non fiction writer, anthropologist and folklorist. Hurston’s literature has served as a big eye opener during the Harlem Renaissance, celebrating black dialect and their traditions. Most of her published stories “depict relationships among black residents in her native southern Florida, was largely unconcerned with racial injustices” (Bomarito 89). Hurston was unique when it came to her racial point of views, promoting white racism instead of black racism. Even though her works had been forgotten by the time of her death, now her literature has left a bigger impact to future literature

Zora Neal Hurston was criticized by other African American writers for her use of dialect and folk speech. Richard Wright was one of her harshest critics and likened Hurston’s technique “to that of a minstrel show designed to appease a white audience” (www.pbs.org).Given the time frame, the Harlem Renaissance, it is understandable that Zora Neale Hurston may be criticized. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement which redefined how America, and the world, viewed African Americans, so her folk speech could be seen as perpetuating main stream society’s view of African Americans as ignorant and incapable of speaking in complete sentences. However, others, such as philosopher and critic Alain Locke, praised her. He considered Hurston’s “gift for poetic phrase and rare dialect, a welcome replacement for so much faulty local color fiction about Negroes” (www.pbs.org).

She uses idealistic examples and real world situations to get the best realistic interpretation on the matter of the harlem renaissance. This novel also is a great way to learn and understand the importance of women's roles and rights during the harlem renaissance era for the black/african american women. All in all, Hurston’s depiction of the harlem renaissance reflects and departs the major topics and does so

Purpose- Hurston’s purpose is to demonstrate that she is proud of her color. She does not need the bragging rights of having Native American ancestry, nor does she ‘belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it.’

The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.

In the opening sentence of the story Hurston’s writes, “It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday” (Hurston, 73). The beginning signifies correct English grammar and proper sentence structure, but in seamless Zora Neale Hurston’s fashion, the dialogue from the protagonist Delia Jones reads in broken incorrect syntax, “Sykes, you quit grindin’ dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by Sat’day if Ah don’t start on Sunday” (74)? In her short stories Hurston’s diction is elevated with the usage of morphology with the constant exchange of word formation with infixes, affixes and the combining of word choices. Hurston’s choice of diction offered a rhymical affect that adds a melodious tone to her writing shaped by the Harlem Renaissance period. As noted in the, The Florida Historical Quarterly “Hurston blended narrator and protagonist through language” (Haskin, 207) Her writing style aid in the management of mood, tone, character depiction, movement, and atmosphere in storytelling procedures. In the commencement of her stories, the storyteller, is communicating in standard English, the third-party narrative speaks as a representative for the character waiting to find his or her voice. As the character(s) discoveries their voice, they sway the narrator, and in the conclusion the narrator and central character are speaking for each other, using equally poetic, participating language (207).

After recently read a short story titled “Spunk” by Zora Neale Hurston about two men fighting for the woman that they love. Some stories end in happily ever after, but others end up in a tragic, like “Spunk”, one may say “fight for the person that you love”. In this story the two main characters are Spunk and Joe, they are both in love with the same woman, Lena. Spunk has a physical appearance that makes the village afraid of him, including Joe. Joe is married to Lena, but spunk wants her as well. Joe was shot after he took someone’s advice that he should go after Lena, which he did and for that advice caused his death. Spunk thought he

First, Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk” offers this aforementioned complex message regarding the life of African Americans. In “Spunk,” a man named Joe confronts a “monster” of a man named Spunk for stealing his wife. Unfortunately, Joe is shot and killed by Spunk after trying to stab him from behind, and Spunk quickly claims his prize by marrying Joe’s wife. However, shortly after Joe’s death, a black bob-cat starts prowling around Spunk’s house and the people of the community swear it’s Joe’s spirit. Furthermore, at the very end of the story, Spunk dies as well after falling into a saw—and he claims Joe’s spirit pushed him. Undoubtedly, the whole of the story can be interpreted as an individual (Joe) standing up to their oppressor (Spunk), which

In The essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” is a descriptive essay in which Zora Neale Hurston discovers her real identity. At the beginning of the essay, the setting takes place in Eatonville, Florida describing moments when Zora greets her neighbors by singing and dancing without anybody judging her. Back then, she was free from feeling different among other races. However, a tragedy happened when she was thirteen, her mom passed away and she left home to attend school in Jacksonville where she experiences discrimination due to her color of skin. She was introduced to a different lifestyle where the color of her skin was an unfortunate thing. However, she felt this change effected the way she viewed her appearance, as well as inside her. Here she also experienced isolation that comes from being different compared to other races. Hurst realizes that it’s more than just being “colored”, but how race can separate people. Back in history, Jacksonville’s habitants were a mixture of blacks and whites. In Jacksonville, Hurst was just another “colored girl.” However, this essay motivated me to analyze, evaluate and synthesize these works and explore the concepts and themes that run through each of the readings. Most importantly, find out what made this essay so important in American literature. According to the description in the essay, I have notice that the author Hurston uses literary devices like metaphor and tone that I found interesting and deserving for the reader to enjoy this journey.

The short story, “Spunk”, written in 1920 by famous author, Zora Neale Hurston of Eatonville, FL, contains many characters but there’s only one that I find to be very amazing, Mr. Joe Kanty. A member of the Harlem Renaissance, author and folklorist, Zora Neale Hurston, constructed many of her works like: “The Gilded Six-Bits”, “Spunk”, and “Their Eyes were watching God,” during the Civil Rights movement to help fuel the setting and purpose of her stories. In the short story, “Spunk”, Mr. Joe’s characters’ transitions or changes to help portray the hero and bravery him. Three character traits that determine Joe’s behavior or inner self throughout the story relates from him being loving and fearful to him becoming revengeful.

Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement in the 1920s that led to the evolution of African-American culture, expression through art, music, and literary works, and the establishment of African roots in America. Zora Neale Hurston contributed to the Harlem Renaissance with her original and enticing stories. However, Hurston’s works are notorious (specifically How it Feels to Be Colored Me and Their Eyes Were Watching God) because they illustrate the author’s view of black women and demonstrate the differences between their views and from earlier literary works.