...Zora Neale Hurston – Naturalism Naturalism is defined as the view that whatever man encounters in any area of human experience is natural. In can be described in detail as factual or realistic representation, especially the practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human life in literature and the practice of reproducing subjects as precisely as possible in the visual arts (Yahoo! Education - Dictionary). Zora Neale Hurston, an African American writer, anthropologist, and folklorist, was a naturalist. She was born in the town of Eatonville, Florida, which is five miles from Orlando. Eatonville was the first all black community to be incorporated. Ms. Hurston grew up uneducated and poor, but she was immersed with black folk life. She had little experience with racism early on in life which caused her to have unconventional attitudes later in life. After graduating from the Morgan Academy, Ms. Hurston attended Howard University and received her associates’ degree in 1920. Ms. Hurston worked several jobs during her college years but was still often in debt. She struggled with poverty throughout most of her life despite her hard work. From 1925 on, Ms. Hurston lived in New York and eventually joined the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the shapers of the black literary and cultural movement of the twenties. Ms. Hurston was the first black scholar to research folklore on the level that she did. From 1930s to the 1960s, Zora Neale Hurston was the...
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...Outline Thesis statement: In addition to the frequent references to nature, certain animals have symbolic weight in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The animal with the greatest symbolic charge in this novel is the mule. Mentioned frequently throughout “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, the mule obviously represents the carrier of heavy loads and burdens, but it can also, and does, represent stubborn resistance. The mule serves to illustrate the strained relationship between Janie and Joe Starks. The figure of the mule can also refer not only to Janie herself but to any black woman struggling for independence. Janie identifies with the mule, which remains stubbornly independent despite its masters efforts to beat it down. Ironically, while Jody's position in the city gives him the power to free the mule, his pride and ambition cause him to virtually enslave his wife. He can free Janie only by his death. The mule is also a symbol of the control that men have over things. Watson’s mule was worked hard and was not fed properly so he didn’t look healthy. Women are associated with this mule because the men in Eatonville made them work hard and they were not treated fairly (49). Some of the women in the town worked just as hard as the men and they were not allowed to enjoy a lot of the things men got to. The men liked to relax on the porch and play checkers. None of the women got to participate in these activities. This segregation was unfair to the women of Eatonville. Janie...
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...In Angelina Weld Grimke’s “The Closing Door”, Jessie Redmon Fauset’s “The Sleeper Wakes”, and Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat”, the roles most often appear to have men as dominant, or in charge, figures. However, the typical view of the male figure being dominant and the female being submissive may not be quite as distinct in the above three texts, as first thought. It is even possible that the roles of the dominant and submissive parts are actually switched. The following will show how both the male/female and dominant/submissive combinations may be interchangeable, depending on which aspects are considered. In the stories “The Closing Door”, “The Sleeper Wakes”, and “Sweat”, male figures appear to be the ones that are in control, or dominant, in the situations. The women take direction from men. Throughout their stories it is pervasive that society is male dominated. Although there are many similarities between the stories in this regard, some of the differences are due to social, economic, physical, and moral divisions. These divisions, or aspects, become important in how one may look at domination in these stories. In the story “The Closing Door” by Angelina Weld Grimke, the two divisions that become important in respect to who controls things are physical and economic. Grimke describes the male character, Jim Milton, as being a “brown, good-natured giant” and also “He would reach her, it seemed, in one stride and would pick her up bodily, apron, money and all” (Grimke 94)...
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...Beauty and Devastation "It [the tiny bloom] had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously"(10). In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” her use of imagery, particularly of nature, is used to stimulate the audience's imagination while communicating deep significance in the novel. The imagery of nature creates a unique parallel between the two sides of nature; its beauty and its devastation. Janie's idea of contentment is shown in Hurston's imagery of a pear tree, which represents nature's beauty. The pear tree represents Janie's idealized views of nature, as it demonstrates her naive and romantic character which constantly seeks true love, and her idealism of the harmony in a marriage based upon love as she travels a path of self-discovery throughout the novel. She was lying across the bed asleep so Janie tipped on out of the front door. Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma’s house answered her. (11) In this part of the novel it deliberately describes the pear tree in this fashion to show the relation between a blossoming tree, which is blooming as it grows, to the significant character...
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...Fundamental Concepts, Methods, & Modes in the Humanities Name RIWT 1 Date Instructor’s Name Fundamental Concepts, Methods, & Modes in the Humanities In an effort to analyze, critique, and understand where creativity and inspiration originated, I will discuss two historical art periods and illustrate how one art period is a continuation of, or a reaction to, the earlier art period. However, first I would like to refresh our understanding of what art truly is. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. It is how we see ourselves. It is how we see each other. It is how we see the world. It is how we stay focused and grounded with our roots and beliefs, so that we know where we come from, what we have been through, and where we are heading. It is my intention to prove that the later art period came about as a continuation of the earlier art period. The two art periods that I have chosen are the Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance art periods. In a nutshell, the Renaissance simply was a period of rebirth. It is a period during the 14th through the 17th century in which the arts were revived. The reason for this revival was because The Middle Ages were over. During that period, territorial struggles throughout Europe had made people more concerned with staying in good graces with whoever was ruling them at that particular time. The rulers, themselves, were more concerned with preoccupying and expanding their control. And with the Roman...
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...Through the use of colloquial dialect, syntax, and descriptive figurative language, Zora Neal Hurston beings to create the townspeople as a judgmental, jealous mass in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The old, stereotypical, Southern Black accent is prevalent throughout the novel, allowing the reader to see the speakers as uneducated laborers. Their judgmental rhetorical questions relate their feelings of jealousy towards Janie, asking what a “forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal”(1) and other probing questions, silently comparing themselves to and judging her. Yet these “uneducated laborers”, as they are so flawlessly portrayed, take the low road themselves, silently seething with jealousy. The townspeople, blinded by the main character’s beauty, are confused, fragmented sentences blundering foolishly from their tongues. They all seem to think “[Janie] was going to marry” and her husband “[runs] off wid some young gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs”(2), wondering about Janie’s life, so much more interesting than their labor-monkey lives. The townspeople, who make the transition to the “porch” are lumped together. At first described as monkeys on the “bander log”(2), the porch’s organs of judgment are taken away, Janie’s consideration of them as “tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences”(1) are synecdochal humiliations and degradations, lumping them together once more. The porch’s “killing tools” of laughs are only...
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...“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston is filled with many religious symbolism. Good versus evil plays a large role in the development of Delia and Skype Jones, as characters. The story is about Delia, an African American woman who is a washwoman for whites. Delia consistently looks to her religion for guidance and support as she endures the many hardships that she faces because, which are caused by her abusive husband and unfaithful husband, Sykes. Delia and Sykes Jones is a couple that have opposite moral values, but yet they are tied together through marital vows, that no longer have much importance or value. Delia Jones is portrayed as the Protagonist and a very modest woman of weakness who later gains the strength to stand u to her abusive husband Skyes. Delia looks to God and her religion to help her build the strength she needs, so she can continue to be protected from her husband who is both physically and emotionally abusive to her. However, Sykes Jones, is every bit the opposite of Delia Jones. He has neither religious values nor any important moral standards. He is an adulterous, who takes Delia’s hard working money, and spends not on his wife but on his mistress Bertha. Delia who relies solely on her faith and continues to stay contempt, no matter how her husband treats her, but Delia warned him that in the end, Sykes “sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing (par. 26).” The white clothes that Delia washes are a symbol of Delia’s...
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...Topic: Harlem’s Glory I. During the 1920s, many African Americans were forming strong communities; their art culture began to flourish. II. African Americans had started to become more of art then just a color of their skin. When the Harlem Renaissance began there were African American artist such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer they had different and unique forms of literature and subjects. a. The Big Apple i. During this time of age African-American middle class began pushing a new political agenda that where relating to racial equality. ii. The biggest movements where held in New York, where three of the largest civil rights groups established their headquarters. W.E.B. Du Bois was one at the forefront of the civil rights movement at this time. He gathered a group of African American political activists and white civil rights workers, met in New York to discuss the challenges facing the black community. iii. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was created in 1909 it was to promote civil rights and fight the discrimination. b. The Fuel i. With this all that was happening, was making the whites’ fascination with the exotic world of Harlem. The crisis published the poems, stories, and visual works of many artists of the period. ii. This involved racial pride, fueled in part by aggressive of the “New Negro” demanding civil and political rights. iii. While...
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...In event that was rather a stir up in the 1920’s was the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time when African Americans all around showcased their artistic talents, showing the whites that they did indeed have talent. Obviously after the name “The Harlem Renaissance” was based in Harlem, New York. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement of writers, artist, actors, musicians, and poets of color expressing themselves through their talents. They used these talents not only to express themselves but also to tell stories of their past and the troubles the black people faced as a whole. This movement brought together so many African Americans. Not only that but it showed the white people of America they weren’t the only people who had talents. The arts were shared, whites bought black paintings and they were entertained by black shows that went on in venues. Often there were poems that were exclusively written for black people of America. During the renaissance Things were happening and the people of the Harlem Renaissance were reacting. Langston Hughes was a writer who created quite the impact during the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote poems, stories and even plays. He kept black communities entertained and gave opportunity with his plays. His poems kept African Americans motivated and pushing for what was right, equality. Jacob Lawrence was an artist creating abstract pictures of events happening beginning in 1917. He was the artist of “ The Great Migration Series” which...
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...Creole Jazz Band, and at the Cotton Club. He played in many films and toured internationally. He was the man that made the most Americans begin to accept jazz into their culture II. Poetry Langston Hughes One of the most well known names of the Harlem Renaissance His writing reflected that black culture should be celebrated because is it just as valuable as white culture "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." said Langston One of Langston most famous work was his essay entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" This essay talks about no great poet ever being afraid of being himself even if he is african american. Zora Neale Hurston The most well known female writing activist during Harlem Renaissance Showed african american culture by writing in a distinct dialect which today would be known as slang a quote from her novel “jonah’s gourd vine” shows this "Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know...
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...Andrew Bae Period 2 Iannuzzo 4/27/14 Zeal Neale Hurston: Behind the Scenes Zora Neale Hurston is an African American other from a small city in Florida, filled with wildlife and gardenias. Hurston is faced with two different perspectives of the world and uses that to help further describe her childhood to the readers. In Zora Neale Hurston’s passage Dust Tracks on a Road, she uses diction, her mother’s point of view of the world and her father’s view of the world to help illustrate her own childhood to the reader. Hurston uses specific word choice and diction to enrich the reader’s perception of her childhood. Hurston being from Florida was often around forestry and foliage however once she had moved to New York it was quite the opposite, what was bountiful is now rare and what was unusual then is now plentiful, for “there were plenty of oranges, grapefruit, tangerine, guavas and other fruits in our yard.” All these different fruits were available to her so easily and plentiful however “[she] treasured the apple… apples were something rare. They came from way up north.” She uses specific word choice by saying plenty of oranges, implying and abundance almost an unnecessarily large amount of oranges, grapefruits and other fruits however when it came to an apple, it was like a treasure to her, rare because it had come from way up north. Differentiating herself from the north made it more realistic to the reader that the apple was rare and that something from way up north...
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...Zora Neale Hurston’s use of language in her short story Spunk allows the reader to become part of the community in which this story takes place. The story is told from the point of view of the characters, and Hurston writes the dialogue in their broken English dialect. Although the language is somewhat difficult to understand initially, it adds to the mystique of the story. Spunk is a story about a man that steals another man’s wife, kills the woman’s husband and then he ends up dying from an accident at the saw mill. Spunk believed that it was Lena’s husband, Joe Kanty, who shoved him into the circular saw, and the people in the village agreed that Joe Kanty had come back to get revenge. The language used by the characters helps to establish the setting of the story and gives the reader an understanding of why voodoo is a plausible explanation for the outcome. “Looka theah folkses!” is what Elijah Mosley states to the others in the store. This is the first indication that the characters in this short story are not the most educated, and are probably from some small backwoods town. We quickly get confirmation of this when we learn that he is alerting them that Spunk Banks, a giant, brown-skinned man, “who aint skeered of nothin’ on God’s green footstool”, is sauntering up the one street in the village, with a small pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm. Clearly, the store is where people hang out, and everyone knows that the woman with Spunk is Lena Kanty, Joe’s wife...
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... Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Emily Dickens were marginalized through out their carriers and each, in some way or form, was told they could not achieve their dreams. This lead each of them to contemplate how one adjusts to not achieving there dreams. Hughes ponders the many several outcomes that can ensue; Brooks considers how one might adjust their dream to fit what society deems appropriate, and Dickens portrays a woman who hides her true dreams within herself. In Langston Hughes’ Harlem, he asks the reader “what happens to a dream differed?”(579). He does not ask what happens if a dream is differed. To him the likely hood of achieving ones dream seems so small that he does not waste time pondering what it might be like if the dream were to come true, and instead spends his time contemplating what it feels like when one does not achieve the dream. Would their desire disappear, like water from “a raisin in the sun”?(393) Would the thought of not achieving the dream be so overpowering, so pungent, that one could not ignore it. Or would it be something sweet, something to reminisce about, to chuckle at and think back to the days when one was younger and still believed in the impossible. Or would it just drive one mad to think of everything that brought them to the point where they had to give up on ever realizing their dream. As one reads Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, one feels as if the characters have been labeled by society and they have in turn accepted that label. Society...
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...A Comparison Between Joe Starks and Mr. O’Brien Joe Starks from Their Eyes Were Watching God by: Zora Neale Hurston, and Mr.O’Brien from The Tree of Life both have a lot of built up anger. It is difficult for Joe Starks and Mr.O’Brien to let out their anger when they are surrounded by people who respect them. Therefore they let out all of their anger towards their loved ones. When facing painful circumstances Joe Starks and Mr. O’Brien both demonstrate anger towards their loved ones, but their intentions are different. Joe Starks and Mr. O’Brien are both viewed as authoritative figures. Joe Starks not only bosses his wife around, but he is also the Mayor of Eatonville. The people of Eatonville view Joe as their savior and voted him as...
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...“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.” (8) This powerful quote and many others are found in Zora Neale Hurston’s African American Literature Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston writes of a young, light skinned, African American female named Janie who journeys through life trying to find the “perfect” relationship. As Janie goes through her life, she, along with her search, has taken turns for the worse and for the better. Janie has endured many conflicts through her relationships with Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. Throughout Janie’s relationships with men, she discovered that she did not want to live a marriage life full of fear, unhappiness, and sorrow. Her ability to dream and to act on her instincts allowed her to truly find her happiness within her last relationship. As stated above, the...
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