Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Free response one page essay about zora neale hurston
Free response one page essay about zora neale hurston
Free response one page essay about zora neale hurston
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Anthropology and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine
Zora Neale Hurston described the study of anthropology as a spy-glass, an illuminating lens (1). Anthropology is defined as the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans (2). Through this study and with the aid of an essay defining human nature written by Cardinal Jean Daniello, we can take a closer look at the behavior of the characters in Hurston's novels Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jonah's Gourd Vine. Hurston uses her anthropological lens to create complex characters in these two works.
Hurston began her study of anthropology at Barnard College in the 1920s where she concentrated on African American culture and folklore. Hurston became the first African American to chronicle African American voodoo and folklore (1). The publications Mules and Men and Tell My Horse are works that directly incorporate her anthropological field notes on Black folklore and tradition (1).
Hurston’s background with anthropology was the foundation for her future fiction writings. The title of her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, reflects Hurston’s passion for storytelling and folklore because it is inspired by a biblical story. The story tells of Jonah, who has a beautiful plant growing around him. However, God destroys it because Jonah does not appreciate it and it leads to his fall. Therefore, the story becomes a metaphor for the fall of John Pearson.
In the novel, Hurston utilizes the personal experiences with her family to create complex characters in the story. It centers on John Pearson, a man who lusts after many women. John’s desire for women at times appe...
... middle of paper ...
... imply the fixity" that some people want it to. John's behavior is not a product of human nature. What is natural is not an excuse for a person's wrong-doing. No characters in these novels share the same imperfections. Everyone is flawed, but there is still control. Under Hurston's anthropological lens, one can better understand her complex characters and their motivations in these stories.
Works Cited
1) American Feminist for Anthropology. "Zora Neale Hurston." April 10, 2005. http://sscl.berkeley.edu/~afaweb/Hurston%20Bio.htm.
2) www.dictionary.com
3) Danielou, Cardinal Jean. "Does Human Nature Exist?" April 10, 2005. http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/NATEXIST.htm
4) Hurston, Zora Neale. Jonah's Gourd Vine. HarperCollins Publisher: New York, 1990.
5) Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. HarperCollins Publisher: New York. 1998.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Sweat." Norton Anthology of Southern Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: Norton, 1998.
Appiah, K.A. and Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. eds. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.
Hurston, Lora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
I recently read your article titled “Vodou Imagery, African-American Tradition and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Your article mentions how Zora Neal Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God while she was collecting folklore on Vodou in Haiti. You proceed to discuss the Haitian Vodou imagery present in the novel as well as the influence that it had. You claim that Hurston’s use of Haitian Vodou doesn’t signal a rejection of modernity, but rather an acknowledgement of it (158). Although I disagree with your argument that Ezili is the predominant Vodou element in Their Eyes Were Watching God, I agree with your claim that Hurston’s use of Vodou not only empowers Janie to transcend the stereotype that black women had preordained constraints, but also gives the character of Janie a deeper meaning.
1. c.Robert E. Hemenway, in his Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, University of Illinois Press, 1977, 371 p.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.
I think both authors would agree with this view. Both stories involve a woman and how they are viewed as well as the struggles they face. Hurston’s story is about a power struggle between men and women. She states “see God and ast Him for a li’l mo’ strength so Ah kin whip dis ’oman and make her mind.”
Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1937. Print.
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 differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
Zora Neale Hurston has been married and divorced twice, which assisted her in developing Joe and Missy May’s marriage. Hurston’s rocky marriage occurred just prior to the writing of “The Gilded Six-Bits” which portrays a marriage replete with infidelity and hatred. Missy May’s infidelity tests the strength of her marriage with Joe, which ultimately succeeds the trials and tribulations. Perhaps Hurston spared Joe and Missy May’s marriage to prove to herself that marriages can stand through infidelity, because neither of her marriages continued through the hardships. Hurston saw marriage as an important commitment capable of forgiveness and recommitment. Hurston creates Joe, as the character that forgives and forgets, possibly this is what she expected or desired in her own husbands. Hurston uses her own life experiences to depict her characters a...
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
Beneath the lies a hidden history of unorganized, everyday conflict waged by African-American working people. Once we explore in greater detail those daily conflicts and the social and cultural spaces where ordinary people felt free to articulate their opposition and power in African-American "folk" communities. Folklore's function as an everyday form of resistance in the Jim Crow South. Zora Hurston, narrative frame is far more supple than has previously been acknowledged. She gave the title Mules and Men a depiction of comparison of African Americans in the South(niggers) to mules. The mule is a work horse that is not used for speed, but known for eats weak minds and strong back. Hurston brings a clear view of the strong minds that enable this culture to thrive.
Hurston, Zora N. "Sweat." Literature: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Janet E. Gardener, Beverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, and Peter Schakel. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin, 2013. 176-79. Print.
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.
In Hurston 's short story “Sweat”, the theme is expressed in many ways throughout the story, though most prominently by way of domestic violence and ungratefulness shown