Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama.(Gallaher) She moved to Eatonville, Florida where she picked on many town stories and gossip.(Gallaher) Growing up, Zora was the fifth of eight children.
(Gallaher) At the age of thirteen Zora’s mother died.(Gallaher) Zora felt like she had lost everything. Later that year, Zora’s father kicked her out of the house and made her go and care for her brother’s children.(Gallaher) Zora did not like this choice of living, so she started working for a white household. This is the house that sparked Zora’s intelligence. The woman that Zora worked for gave Zora her first book and arranged for her to go to school.(Gallaher) The school was Morgan Academy and she graduated in 1918.(Gallaher) In 1920, Zora received an associate degree from Howard University.(Gallaher) The early 1920’s marked Zora’s beginning as an author. In this time, she published her first stories, starting as a college publication and moving to contests, newspapers, and magazines.(Gallaher)
One story was “Spunk,” a tale about a man named Spunk who was fooling around with another man’s wife.(Hurston) In rage, the husband tries to kill Spunk, but fails at his attempt and dies instead.(Hurston) In revenge, the ghost of the dead husband comes back to haunt Spunk and eventually kills him.(Hurston) Another story was “Sweat.” “Sweat” was about a wife that slaved to keep up the house and was married to a man who abused her. The husband wishes to get his wife out of the house, so he brings in a real snake, her biggest fear, to get her to leave.(Kip) When she still doesn’t leave, he lets the snake out and ends up getting killed by the snake.(Kip) The woman’s revenge to her husband was that she just watched him die, instead of helping him.(Kip)
Zora was partially influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.(Gallaher) She moved to New York in 1925, just as the Harlem Renaissance was at its crest. She attended Barnard College to study under the father of anthropology, Frank Boas.(Gallaher) In the late 1920’s Zora published many works. She gained financial partnership with wealthy New York patrons.(Gallaher) After graduation, Zora headed back to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida to collect folklore for her upcoming stories.(Gallaher) The 30’s and 40’s marked Zora’s peak. She completed graduate work at Columbia, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and published four novels and an autobiography.(Gallaher) Her writing brought her to the Caribbean where she got so involved with voodoo that she started to incorporate these ideas of voodoo into her stories and novels. One novel Zora wrote was Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel was full of revenge. Not just revenge on one person, but on many different people in many different situations.
By the mid-1940’s Zora’s career started to drop. She was falsely arrested for molesting a 10-year-old boy.(Gallaher) That even left a scar on her reputation. One after another, publishers denied her works. Between 1950 and 1959, Zora attempted many jobs and even tried to revive her career one more time and failed. Due to this type of depression that Zora was experiencing, she became a “broken, penniless recluse.” Zora died of a stroke in 1959 and was buried in Fort Pierce, Florida.(Gallaher) Zora only received one award.(Witcover) It was in 1925. Zora won second prize for fiction in Opportunity literary contest. She worked with Langston Hughes on a play called Mule Bone. Things went sour when there was a disagreement on the play and both sides accused the other with plagiarism.
Zora had a rough beginning and was influenced by that rough beginning to do something with her life to get away. She took many things from her childhood and hometown and put them into her books. She felt she wasn’t free when she was young, so she used a certain theme in many of her stories. In a way, Zora’s real life consisted of revenge towards certain people. Thus, the theme that is common in all three stories, Spunk, Sweat, and Their Eyes Were Watching God is revenge.
The story “Spunk,” as described earlier, has a theme of revenge because of the husband’s need to take away the life of the man that took away his.(Hurston) Lena Kanty and Joe Kanty had been married for quite some time, but Lena wasn’t satisfied.(Hurston) Spunk Banks fell in love with Lena and Lena fell in love with Spunk.(Hurston) Lena and Spunk began to fool around behind Joe’s back.(Hurston) This drove Joe crazy, so he decided to attempt to kill Spunk, but in return, only got himself killed. The part of the story where revenge played in was when one night after the death of Joe Kanty, Lena and Spunk were getting ready for bed and there was a black bobcat walking around the house, howling.(Hurston) This showed that Joe was haunting Spunk for killing him. The final act of revenge was when Spunk supposedly slipped and landed in the circle saw. Before he died, he claimed that is was Joe that shoved him into the saw.(Hurston) Joe Kanty wanted revenge for three reasons. At first he wanted revenge against the towns people’s thoughts of him, because they considered him a coward. The he wanted to revenge Spunk and his wife for having an affair. Finally he wanted revenge against Spunk for killing him.
In the story “Sweat,” Delia Jones was married to Syks Jones for fifteen years.(Kip) Within that fifteen years, Syks had a mistress. Syks abused Delia and used her.(Kip) He tried to scare her away numerous times.(Kip) First he would hit her shouldes with a bull whip to make her think it was a snake.(Kip) Delia had a terrible fear of snakes.(Kip) Finally, Syks decide to bring in a real snake and set it up so that it might bite Delia.(Kip) His plan back fired on him when the snake ended up biting him and killing him.(Kip) Delia just watched from outside until she couldn’t bare it anymore. The view of revenge in this story is that delia was a very tired and upset wife. She wanted the best in her life and Syks got in the way of that. One phrase that delia said was, “Oh well, whatever goes over the Devil’s back, is got to come under his belly…”(Kip) had a future seeing of revenge needed to take place. Zora Neale Hurston was foreshadowing. Delia showed some revenge when she watched her husband walk into a death trap and watched him die instead of calling for help.
In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the main character, Janie Crawford, went through three husbands.(Hurston) At the beginning of her life, she had problems with her grandma, because Nanny wanted her to marry rich and not be a “mule” of the society.(Hurston) Janie’s first husband was good at first. He made her believe that she had done the right thing in listening to Nanny. Then her first husband, Logan Killicks, started to act different and irronically expressed an intention to purchase a mule.(Hurston) This was a sign for Janie to leave soon, so she did, with a man named Jody Starks who became the mayor of the first all-black town in Eatonville, FL. After Jody died, Janie met a young man by the nickname of Tea Cake.(Hurston) She fell madly in love and ran away with him.(Hurston) At the beginning of the story or the end of her journey, Janie returns to Eatonville. Janie showed some want of revenge on her first husband. She just up and left him. Janie had a feeling of revenge on the whole world for thinking that she couldn’t be who she wanted to be. She showed everyone up in the end. Zora Neale Hurston wrote many short stories, a few plays, and a couple novels. She had many similarities throughout her novels, from voodoo practicing to setting to theme. Derived from the three stories, “Sweat,” “Spunk,” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” a similar theme would have to be revenge. Zora’s main point in most of her stories is to show that there are people out there who are not going to play by the rules. Zora Neale Hurston wrote extraordinary books and facinated many readers with her interesting stories.
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