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 …show more content…
However, the one detail of Hurston’s story that complicates its message is the fact that Joe is only able to stand up to and take down Spunk after he is dead. To illustrate this, after Spunk’s death, one of the men states, “If spirits kin fight, there’s a powerful tussle goin’ on somewhere ovah Jordan ‘cause Ah b’leeve Joe’s ready for Spunk an’ ain’t skeered any more—yas, Ah b’leeve Joe pushed ‘im mahself.” (Hurston 111). Quite obviously, this shows the fact that Joe, timid at the beginning of the story when he is alive, is only able to work up the nerve to effectively confront Spunk from the grave. Furthermore, Joe is only able to “fight” Spunk—by pushing him into the saw—as a …show more content…
Domingo’s essay, “Gift of the Black Tropics,” also paints a complex picture when it comes to the life of African-Americans. Throughout his essay, Domingo explores the diversity of Harlem’s (let alone New York’s) African American population. Domingo analyzes the statistical data of African-Americans and touches on the various types of foreign-born “Negro” immigrants, specifically focusing on individuals from the West Indies throughout the rest of his essay. Mimicking the optimistic outlook, Domingo touches on the fact that foreign-born African-American immigrants, specifically from the West Indies, refuse to comply with informal segregation. For example, Domingo states, “Skilled at various trades…many of the immigrants apply for positions that the average American Negro has been schooled to regard as restricted to white men only…[thus] West Indians have in many cases been pioneers and shock troops to open a way for Negroes into new fields of employment” (Domingo 345). Consequently, Domingo argues that foreign-born African-Americans are making great strides in helping to dismantle informal segregation when it comes to jobs, simply by refusing to comply. This, in turn, helps to provide both American- and foreign-born African-Americans with more occupational opportunities than before by showing that the engrained restriction in jobs is just a ploy that can be overcome with persistence. While many may feel that this is a good thing, Domingo
communities. In the United Sates, they were seen as black, members of a definite minority. The amount of education, the amount of income, and culture, didn’t erase ones blackness, as it would back home. Nor are whites sensitive to shade differences, as people are in Jamaica. Whatever their shade or achievements, Jamaicans were victims of racial discrimination in employment, education, and housing. For many Jamaicans, this was the first time that they became painfully aware that black skin was a significant status marker. New York Jamaicans are submerged in the wider black community of America. However, at the same time, Jamaicans distinguish themselves as different than the “indigenous” blacks. Therefore, the results are that their interactions with American whites are less painful. Jamaicans who came to New York City were not shocked by the racial situation, but were disillusioned when they found the city to be less glamorous and offering less economic opportunities than imagined.
Zora Neale Hurston wrote the “Spunk” and published it in Harlem Renaissance journal in 1925. “Spunk” revolves around two main characters: Spunk Banks and Joe Kanty, who develop hatred between themselves due to a quarrel over a woman named Lena Kanty. Lena Kanty is Joe’s legitimate wife, later to be lured by Spunk Banks to abandon her legitimate husband. Spunk Banks successfully wins the love of Lena Kanty due to his heavy corporeal stature and military training. Spunk owns a .45 military hand gun, therefore, complicating attempts made by Kanty to fight for his wife. Kanty loses his life in the hands of Banks, when fighting for his wife and in the presence of his wife. Banks survives a court trial but a huge, black bob-cat in Joe’s ghost follows him afterwards in quest for vengeance for justice. Bank eventually finds his fate with a sawmill machine and succumbs to wounds sustained in this accident. Notably, both men die in the fight for a wife, where Kanty’s ghost kills Banks who previously takes the former’s life away (Hurston 105-111).
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
“I Am Not Your Negro” displays the adversities that Black Americans face in American society.
Leading many a hero astray with their good looks and sweet words, the seductress is one of the oldest and most common archetypes, and it is prevalently employed by Zora Neale Hurston in develop the themes in her stories. The enchantress archetype is used in “Spunk” to develop the subject of masculinity and power. In “Spunk”, the namesake character Spunk is a fearless man has found himself bewitched by the wife of Joe. He uses his manliness to make himself desirable towards her, saying "ah'll git the lumber foh owah house to-morrow... when youse inside don't forgit youse mine, an' let no other man git outa his place wid you!"(Hurston). Joe attempts to overcome his cowardice and attempts to establish dominance to win his wife back.
A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.
The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land (qtd. in W.T.L. 235).
Is a woman worth dying for? The short story “Spunk” was written in 1925. Some of Hurston’s other important works are “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, “Mules of Men”, “Sweat.” Hurston is known to write about the people in her Florida community, and make stories out of them. She likes to write about African Americans cultures and beliefs in society. Joe and Spunk fight over Lena’s love which causes both men to die in the end. The author uses characterization to convey the theme of bravery and how the characters are good examples of this theme. The style of the short story is significant in this section. The theme of bravery is especially significant in this section.
Before laws were passed for equality, African-Americans had a difficult time coping with being undermined by whites. This led them to build their own communities and remain among their own. The story “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston was written in 1928, about her moving from a community of her own kind to neighbors who discriminated against her and her family. Though a person’s environment can affect how they see himself/herself or how others might perceive him/her, difficult times does not exactly mean that a person will become bitter or vengeful about it.
As I read Marilyn Halter’s book, Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American Immigrants 1860-1965, I was able to develop a clear perspective of the Cape Verdean’s American voyage as well as their social and economic triumph. Prior to reading this book, I had no knowledge of the Cape Verdean people, unless they are very similar to the “Brazilians”. Marilyn intentions for her book was to address the social construction of Cape Verdean racial and ethnic identity and how the trials they experience while margining into American society. Cape Verdeans, a mix raced people group of Portuguese and African decent, struggled to attain and maintain their social identity in America, all while enduring isolation and ridicule from both Whites and Black in the new world. After reading this Halters book and her narrative depiction of the Cape Verdeans experience migrating to America. Just as many American immigrants during early 19th and 20th century, they were in search of an opportunity toward social mobility and sustainability while departing from the racial boundaries in their country. Though as soon as they arrived, the American society stressed the Cape Verdeans to choose to identified as white or Black? Little to their knowledge, their journey in search of prosperity immediately immersed them into the vulgar, racial divide between black and white Americans.
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
Trotter, Joe William Jr., ed. The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. A collection of essays examining the role of black social networks in spurring the exodus from the South.
Instead of valuing the message one is sharing, society becomes hung up on the formality of the speaker. Hurston’s incorporation of this rough language highlights the hardships members of her community faced to move up in the ranks. They are judged immediately for their voice rather than the content of their ideas. Hurston plays off this stereotype in “Spunk” by recounting the whole story through the idiom of the rural South. Subconsciously, she is spreading awareness of the low economic and social status of her hometown and culture, and then busting the stereotype through the voice of the narrator. The voices of the townspeople mirror Hurston’s origins, and the voice of the narrator illustrates how far she had come in her education and success. Society should not stereotype minority groups because of their lack of resources that hold them back from what they are truly capable of. Unfortunately, critics such as Langston Hughes did not understand Hurston’s intentions. He “accused her of using the dialectic speech and the elements of folklore to degenerate her own people and to please whites, who expected unsophisticated language and behavior from African Americans,” (“Spunk” 296). Hurston along with the many other Harlem Renaissance characters were evidence themselves that the African American culture has unique elements that make it worth celebrating rather than a burden dragging the United States down.
In Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva’s book Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico, she reconstructs defining historical moments between the 1870s and 1910s when over-racialized boundaries became politically expedient in the building of a cohesive Puerto Rican national identity. Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva is an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Washington, Department of History. She earned her B.A. at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has also won an award for writing Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico.
Most writers use a lot of descriptive words about nature and how it seems unfair for one to not live on earth. Just like homosexuality are looked down on, race has been done the same. For example, in Ecocriticism by Greg Garrard states that,” For African Americans, the meaning for pastoral are different again, reflecting the historical experience of plantation slavery and later, rural lynching.” African Americans used literature to escape from the harsh reality of the world and sometimes to cope with the harsh conditions of work on the plantations. They write also write about freedom and how it would be to be a free man in the North. Being downed by the color of your skin or nationality as