Transcript Cane

Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937)
by Zora Neale Hurston
Selected Bibliography
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Color Struck (1925) in Opportunity Magazine
Sweat (1926)
How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Hoodoo in America (1931) in The Journal of American Folklore
The Gilded Six-Bits (1933)
Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)
Mules and Men (1935)
Tell My Horse (1937)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)
Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and
Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (edited by Alice Walker; introduction by
Mary Helen Washington) (1979)
Sanctified Church (1981)
Spunk: Selected Stories (1985)
The Negative Reception and Critical Recovery of
Hurston’s Novel
Common Critiques
1) The novel was out of step with the
growing demand that African-American
novels answer to the demands of social
realism
2) The all-black town and it’s mayor
were characterized as unrealistic
fantasy lands. (Hurston, though, grew
up n an all black town where her father
was mayor)
The Richard Wright Critique
The most damaging critique of all came from the most well-known and influential
black writer of the day, Richard Wright. Writing for the leftist magazine New Masses,
Wright excoriated Their Eyes as a novel that did for literature what the minstrel shows
did for theater, that is, make white folks laugh. The novel, he said, "carries no theme,
no message, no thought," but exploited those "quaint" aspects of Negro life that
satisfied the tastes of a white audience. By the end of the forties, a decade dominated
by Wright and by the stormy fiction of social realism, the quieter voice of a woman
searching for self-realization could not, or would not, be heard.
The Alain Locke Critique
Alain Locke, dean of black scholars and critics during the Harlem
Renaissance, wrote in his yearly review of the literature for Opportunity
magazine that Hurston's Their Eyes was simply out of step with the more
serious trends of the times. When, he asks, will Hurston stop creating
"these pseudo-primitives whom the reading public still loves to laugh with,
weep over, and come to grips with the motive fiction and social document
fiction.:
Sherley Anne Williams’
Recovery
•
Sherley Anne Williams remembers going down to a conference in Los Angeles in
1969 where the main speaker, Toni Cade Bambara, asked the women in the
audience, "Are the sisters here ready for Tea Cake?" And Williams, remembering
that even Tea Cake had his flaws, responded, "Are the Tea Cakes of the world
ready for us?" Williams taught Their Eyes for the first time at Cal State Fresno, in a
migrant farming area where the students, like the characters in Their Eyes, were
used to making their living from the land. "For the first time," Williams says, "they
saw themselves in these characters and they saw their lives portrayed with joy.
Alice Walker’s Enshrinement
"Alice Walker was teaching the novel at Wellesley in the 1971–72 school year when she
discovered that Hurston was only a footnote in the scholarship. Reading in an essay by a
white folklorist that Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave, Walker decided that such a
fate was an insult to Hurston and began her search for the grave to put a marker on it. In a
personal essay, "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," written for Ms. magazine, Walker
describes going to Florida and searching through waist-high weeds to find what she
thought was Hurston's grave and laying on it a "marker inscribed "Zora Neale Hurston/'A
Genius of the South'/Novelist/Folklorist/Anthropologist/1901–1960." With that inscription
and that essay, Walker ushered in a new era in the scholarship on Their Eyes Were
Watching God.”
Writing and Speaking
Complicating the Notion of the 3rd Person
• They sat there in the fresh young darkness close
together. Pheoby eager to feel and do through
Janie, but hating to show her zest for fear it might
be thought mere curiosity. Janie full of that oldest
human longing— self-revelation. Pheoby held her
tongue for a long time, but she couldn't help
moving her feet. So Janie spoke.
• Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her
story. So she went on thinking back to her young
years and explaining them to her friend in soft,
easy phrases while all around the house, the night
time put on flesh and blackness.
Mixed Discourse and Double Voiced-ness:
Standard Prose and Dialect Issuing from One
Narrator
"Pheoby, we been kissin'-friends for twenty years,
so Ah depend on you for a good thought. And
Ah'm talking to you from dat standpoint”
Time makes everything old so the kissing, young
darkness became a monstropolous old things
while Janie talked.
Question: To what extent is the narrator Janie, and to what extent s the narrator
extracted from her. What are the implications of this confusion n a text intimately
concerned with how women find their own voices.
Du Boisian Echoes: The Sudden Realization of
Blackness in Art:
Its implications and Deficiencies
"Dey all useter call me Alphabet 'cause so
many people had done named me different
names. Ah looked at de picture a long time
and seen it was mah dress and mah hair
so Ah said:
" Aw, aw! Ah'm colored!“
Question: We’ve seen this trope elsewhere as an introduction to racial selfconsciousness and self-knowledge in general. Is that’s what s happening
here? What is the significance that it is not another person, but an artistic
representation of Jane that brings her to her consciousness of her racial
difference? Is Hurston casting her book as a type of means to selfknowledge and self-realization: one offered by the artist to the artistic
consumer?
Self-Realization and Sexuality
She thought awhile and decided that her conscious life had commenced at Nanny's gate. On a late
afternoon Nanny had called her to come inside the house because she had spied Janie letting Johnny
Taylor kiss her over the gatepost.
It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in
the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that
tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called
her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leafbuds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song
forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that
had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through
all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt
matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they
emerged and quested about her consciousness.
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. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and
then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting,
breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made.
Question: If Janie’s conscious life begins with her first sexual encounter (the kiss), how
does Janie’s view of the blossoming pear tree speak to a quest for consciousness that is not
articulated in individual terms or without objectifying her as a sex object (as her
grandmother feels is, almost, her inescapable destiny. How does the legacy of slavery fit
into all of this?
The Role of Black Women in Black (and White) Society:
The differences between womanhood and consciousness
•
""Janie, youse uh 'oman, now, so—”
•
"Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out.
Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we
don't know nothin' but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de
nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He
hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can
see. Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”
•
"And Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe de menfolks white or black is makin' a spit cup
outa you: Have some sympathy fuh me. Put me down easy, Janie, Ah'm a cracked
plate.”
•
"She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by
sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray
dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the
gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not
make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."
Womanhood and Marriage vs. Partnership and Fulfillment
Patriarchy, Paternalism, and (un)fair Gender Expectations
""I god, Ah don't see how come yuh can't. 'Tain't nothin' atall
tuh hinder yuh if yuh got uh thimble full uh sense. You got
tuh. Ah got too much else on mah hands as Mayor. Dis
town needs some light right now.”
""Over, Janie? I god, Ah ain't even started good. Ah told you
in de very first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice.
You oughta be glad, 'cause dat makes uh big woman outa
you.”
"Lift yo' eyes and gaze on it. And when Ah touch de match
tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and
let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Brother Davis, lead us
in a word uh prayer. Ask uh blessin' on dis town in uh most
particular manner
Given his social position and the condition of society, is Jody really a demonical character?
To what extent are his complaints not without merit?
The Masculine Front Porch- Social Identity as Masculine Province
"Janie loved the conversation and sometimes she thought up
good stories on the mule, but Joe had forbidden her to
indulge. He didn't want her talking after such trashy
people. "You'se Mrs. Mayor Starks, Janie. I god, Ah can't
see what uh woman uh yo' stability would want tuh be
treasurin' all dat gum-grease from folks dat don't even
own de house dey sleep in. 'Tain't no earthly use. They's
jus' some puny humans playin' round de toes uh Time.”
"When the mule was in front of the store, Lum went out and
tackled him. The brute jerked up his head, laid back his
ears and rushed to the attack. Lum had to run for safety.
Five or six more men left the porch and surrounded the
fractious beast, goosing him in the sides and making him
show his temper. But he had more spirit left than body. He
was soon panting and heaving from the effort of spinning
his old carcass about. Everybody was having fun at the
The Human State as Antagonism or Harmony
“Listen, Sam, if it was nature, nobody
wouldn’t have tuh look out for babies
touchin’ stoves, would they? ’Cause dey
just naturally wouldn’t touch it. But dey
sho will. So it’s caution.” “Naw it ain’t,
it’s nature, cause nature makes caution.
It’s de strongest thing dat God ever
made, now. Fact is it’s de onliest thing
God every made. He made nature and
nature made everything else.
The Ownership Status of Sexuality
Janie’s Phallus
This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody
was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the
store. It didn't seem sensible at all. That was because Joe
never told Janie how jealous he was.
"She went over to the dresser and looked hard at her skin
and features. The young girl was gone, but a handsome
woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from
her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the
length, the glory was there. She took careful stock of
herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again.
Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just
what people wanted to see, and opened up the window
and cried, "Come heah people! Jody is dead. Mah
husband is gone from me."",
Signifying:
Public Discourse and Its Constraints:
Defining Self Through Discourse with Others
""Naw, Ah ain't no young gal no mo' but den Ah ain't
no old woman neither. Ah reckon Ah looks mah age
too. But Ah'm uh woman every inch of me, and Ah
know it. Dat's uh whole lot more'n you kin say. You
big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but
'tain't nothin' to it but yo' big voice. Humph! Talkin'
'bout me lookin' old! When you pull down yo'
britches, you look lak de change uh life.”
""Just a matter of time," the doctor told her. "When a
man's kidneys stop working altogether, there is no
way for him to live. He needed medical attention
two years ago. Too late now.”
Masculine and Feminine “Place” in the World
Self-Definition vs. A Dialogical Coming into Being
""Ah know it. And now you got tuh die tuh
find out dat you got tuh pacify
somebody besides yo'self if you wants
any love and any sympathy in dis world.
You ain't tried tuh pacify nobody but
yo'self. Too busy listening tuh yo' own
big voice.”
Freedom, Self-Reliance, Isolation
9
"Digging around inside of herself like that she found that she had no interest in that
seldom-seen mother at all. She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all
these years under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to the
horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them
and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road
after things. It was all according to the way you see things. Some people could look at a
mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that
loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the
horizon— for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you— and
pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's
neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the
name of love. Most humans didn't love one another nohow, and this mislove was so
strong that even common blood couldn't overcome it all the time
"She and Pheoby Watson visited back and forth and once in awhile sat around the lakes
and fished. She was just basking in freedom for the most part without the need for
thought. A Sanford undertaker was pressing his cause through Pheoby, and Janie was
listening pleasantly but undisturbed. It might be nice to marry him, at that. No hurry.
Such things take time to think about, or rather she pretended to Pheoby that that was
what she was doing.”
The Last Day for the Nobody Excuse
10
"whether Ah do or not, 'cause nobody ain't never
showed me how
"Dis is de last day for dat excuse. You got uh board
round heah?“
"Yes indeed. De men folks treasures de game
round heah. Ah just ain't never learnt how”
He set it up and began to show her and she found
herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to
play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play.
That was even nice. She looked him over and
got little thrills from every one of his good points.
Those full, lazy eyes with the lashes curling
sharply away like drawn scimitars. The lean,
over-padded shoulders and narrow waist. Even
nice!
He was jumping her king!
Imaginary Lamps vs Streetlights
Magic Disappearing Acts
10
"He turned and threw his hat at her feet.
"If she don't throw it at me, Ah'll take a chance on
comin' back," he announced, making gestures
to indicate he was hidden behind a post. She
picked up the hat and threw it after him with a
laugh. "Even if she had uh brick she couldn't
hurt yuh wid it," he said to an invisible
companion. "De lady can't throw." He gestured
to his companion, stepped out from behind the
imaginary lamp post, set his coat and hat and
strolled back to where Janie was as if he had
just come in the store
Self and Community, Community-Self
11
Janie wanted to ask Hezekiah about Tea Cake, but she was afraid he might
misunderstand her and think she was interested. In the first place he looked too
young for her. Must be around twenty-five and here she was around forty. Then again
he didn't look like he had too much. Maybe he was hanging around to get in with her
and strip her of all that she had. Just as well if she never saw him again. He was
probably the kind of man who lived with various women but never married. Fact is,
she decided to treat him so cold if he ever did foot the place that he'd be sure not to
come hanging around there again.
"It was after the picnic that the town began to notice things and got mad. Tea Cake and
Mrs. Mayor Starks! All the men that she could get, and fooling with somebody like Tea
Cake! Another thing, Joe Starks hadn't been dead but nine months and here she
goes sashaying off to a picnic in pink linen. Done quit attending church, like she used
to. Gone off to Sanford in a car with Tea Cake and her all dressed in blue! It was a
shame. Done took to high heel slippers and a ten dollar hat! Looking like some young
girl, always in blue because Tea Cake told her to wear it. Poor Joe Starks. Bet he
turns over in his grave every day. Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and
Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and
Janie gone to a dance.", [Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God]
Looking, Being, Leaving
Maiden Language
12
"Ah done lived Grandma's way, now Ah means tuh live mine.”
"She was borned in slavery time when folks, dat is black folks, didn't sit
down anytime dey felt lak it. So sittin' on porches lak de white madam.
looked lak uh mighty fine thing tuh her. Dat's whut she wanted for me—
don't keer whut it cost. Git up on uh high chair and sit dere. She didn't
have time tuh think whut tuh do after you got up on de stool uh do
nothin'. De object wuz tuh git dere. So Ah got up on de high stool lak
she told me, but Pheoby, Ah done nearly languished tuh death up dere.
Ah felt like de world wuz cryin' extry and Ah ain't read de common news
yet.“
"Ah'm older than Tea Cake, yes. But he done showed me where it's de
thought dat makes de difference in ages. If people thinks de same they
can make it all right. So in the beginnin' new thoughts had tuh be
thought and new words said. After Ah got used tuh dat, we gits 'long
jus' fine. He done taught me de maiden language all over. Wait till you
see de new blue satin Tea Cake done picked out for me tuh stand up
wid him in. High heel slippers, necklace, earrings, everything he wants
tuh see me in. Some of dese mornin's and it won't be long, you gointuh
wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone.”
Why to Good to be True
13
• She was broken and her pride was gone,
so she told those who asked what had
happened. Who Flung had taken her to a
shabby room in a shabby house in a
shabby street and promised to marry her
next day. They stayed in the room two
whole days then she woke up to find Who
Flung and her money gone. She got up to
stir around and see if she could find him,
and found herself too worn out to do much.
All she found out was that she was too old
a vessel for new wine. The next day
hunger had driven her out to shift.
A New Kind of Work
15
• So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans
along with Tea Cake. There was a suppressed murmur
when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was
already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was
generally assumed that she thought herself too good to
work like the rest of the women and "that Tea Cake
"pomped her up tuh dat." But all day long the romping
and playing they carried on behind the boss's back made
her popular right away. It got the whole field to playing off
and on. Then Tea Cake would help get supper afterwards
• Ah naw, honey. Ah laks it. It's mo' nicer than settin' round
dese quarters all day. Clerkin' in dat store wuz hard, but
heah, we ain't got nothin' tuh do but do our work and
come home and love."", [Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes
Were Watching God]
Blood for the Gods
16
• "Her thin lips were an ever delight to her eyes. Even her buttocks in basrelief were a source of pride. To her way of thinking all these things set
her aside from Negroes. That was why she sought out Janie to friend
with. Janie's coffee-and-cream complexion and her luxurious hair made
Mrs. Turner forgive her for wearing overalls like the other women who
worked in the fields. She didn't forgive her for marrying a man as dark as
Tea Cake, but she felt that she could remedy that. That was what her
brother was born for. She seldom stayed long when she found Tea Cake
at home, but when she happened to drop in and catch Janie alone, she'd
spend hours chatting away. Her disfavorite subject was Negroes.“
• Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that
she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any
inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from
theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense
suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped.
Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most
divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom.
Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
Self Possession, Envy?
17
• " A great deal of the old crowd were back. But there were lots
of new ones too. Some of these men made passes at Janie,
and women who didn't know took out after Tea Cake. Didn't
take them long to be put right, however. Still and all,
jealousies arose now and then on both sides. When Mrs.
Turner's brother came and she brought him over to be
introduced, Tea Cake had a brainstorm. Before the week was
over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior
justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him.
Being able to whip her reassured him in possession. No brutal
beating at all. He just slapped her around a bit to show he
was boss. Everybody talked about it next day in the fields. It
aroused a sort of envy in both men and women. The way he
petted and pampered her as if those two or three face slaps
18
Folkore
• "Then everybody but God and Old Peter
flew off on a flying race to Jericho and
back and John de Conquer won the race;
went on down to hell, beat the old devil
and passed out ice water to everybody
down there. Somebody tried to say that it
was a mouth organ harp that John was
playing, but the rest of them would not
hear that. Don't care how good anybody
could play a harp, God would rather to
hear a guitar. That brought them back to
Tea Cake. How come he couldn't hit that
box a lick or two? Well, all right now, make
No Voice
19
• "The court set and Janie saw the judge who had put on a great
robe to listen about her and Tea Cake. And twelve more white
men had stopped whatever they were doing to listen and pass
on what happened between Janie and Tea Cake Woods, and as
to whether things were done "right or not. That was funny too.
Twelve strange men who didn't know a thing about people like
Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing. Eight or ten
white women had come to look at her too. They wore good
clothes and had the pinky color that comes of good food. They
were nobody's poor white folks. What need had they to leave
their richness to come look on Janie in her overalls? But they
didn't seem too mad, Janie thought. It would be nice if she could
make them know how it was instead of those menfolks. Oh, and
she hoped that undertaker was fixing Tea Cake up fine. They
ought to let her go see about it. Yes, and there was Mr. Prescott
that she knew right well and he was going to tell the twelve men
to kill her for shooting Tea Cake. And a strange man from Palm
Beach who was going to ask them not to kill her, and none of
them knew”
The End of What?
By morning Gabriel was playing the deep tones in the center
of the drum. So when Janie looked out of her door she
saw the drifting mists gathered in the west— that cloud
field of the sky— to arm themselves with thunders and
march forth against the world. Louder and higher and
lower and wider the sound and motion spread, mounting,
sinking, darking.
The folks let the people do the thinking. If the castles thought
themselves secure, the cabins needn't worry. Their
decision was already made as always. Chink up your
cracks, shiver in your wet beds and wait on the mercy of
the Lord. The bossman might have the thing stopped
before morning anyway. It is so easy to be hopeful in the
day time when you can see the things you wish on. But it
was night, it stayed night. Night was striding across
nothingness with the whole round world in his hands.
Six Eyes Were Questioning God
"Did He mean to do this thing to Tea Cake and her? It wasn't anything she
could fight. She could only ache and wait. Maybe it was some big tease
and when He saw it had gone far enough He'd give her a sign. She
looked hard for something up there to move for a sign. A star in the
daytime, maybe, or the sun to shout, or even a mutter of thunder. Her
arms went up in a desperate supplication for a minute. It wasn't exactly
pleading, it was asking questions. The sky stayed hard looking and
quiet so she went inside the house. God would do less than He had in
His heart.
Janie said. Ole Massa is doin' His work now. Us oughta keep quiet. They
huddled closer and stared at the door. They just didn't use another part
of their bodies, and they didn't look at anything but the door. The time
was past for asking the white folks what to look for through that door.
Six eyes were questioning God.
""The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time.
They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes
straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to
measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the
dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
The Trial
"The court set and Janie saw the judge who had put on a great robe to listen about her
and Tea Cake. And twelve more white men had stopped whatever they were doing to
listen and pass on what happened between Janie and Tea Cake Woods, and as to
whether things were done right or not. That was funny too. Twelve strange men who
didn't know a thing about people like Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing.
Eight or ten white women had come to look at her too. They wore good clothes and had
the pinky color that comes of good food. They were nobody's poor white folks. What
need had they to leave their richness to come look on Janie in her overalls? But they
didn't seem too mad, Janie thought
"Then she saw all of the colored people standing up in the back of the courtroom.
Packed tight like a case of celery, only much darker than that. They were all against her,
she could see. So many were there against her that a light slap from each one of them
would have beat her to death. She felt them pelting her with dirty thoughts. They were
there with their tongues cocked and loaded, the only real weapon left to weak folks.
"She tried to make them see how terrible it was that things were fixed so that Tea Cake
couldn't come back to himself until he had got rid of that mad dog that was in him and
he couldn't get rid of the dog and live. He had to die to get rid of the dog. But she
hadn't wanted to kill him. A man is up against a hard game when he must die.”
Voice, Knowledge, Power
“Now, Pheoby, don't feel too mean wid de rest of
'em 'cause dey's parched up from not knowin'
things. Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh
make out they's alive. Let 'em consolate
theyselves wid talk. 'Course, talkin' don't
amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can't do
nothin' else. And listenin' tuh dat kind uh talk is
"jus' lak openin' yo' mouth and lettin' de moon
shine down yo' throat. It's uh known fact,
Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there.
Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't
tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's
got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh
God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh
The Foregrounding of Gender with Respect to
Identity
A Feminism of Difference, Equality, or Both
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they
come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon,
never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes
away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the
life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember,
and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the
truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
Question:
How is this assertion of feminine strength and the juxtaposition (where women will and
chase their dreams and men never reach for theirs) reinforced and/or complemented by
Janie’s need to find fulfillment in her succession of male partners? Does Hurston imply that
feminine self-realization is something more than self-reliance (the typical measure of a fully
realized man?)
The Horizon
The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the
courthouse came and commenced to sing a
sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of
each and every chair and thing. Commenced to
sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and
sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her
where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of
the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea
Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn't
dead. He could "never be dead until she herself
had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his
memory made pictures of love and light against the
wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon
like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist
of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So
much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to
Cane
By
Jean Toomer
Jean Toomer (1894-1967): A Brief Biography
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Born on December 26, 1864 in Washington D.C. and named Eugene Pinchback
Toomer was from an affluent family and grew-up privileged amongst the upper-class strata of the Black
bourgeoisie in New Orleans and Washington D.C.
In 1914, He enrolls in the University of Wisconsin to study agriculture, but quit after he did not win the
election for class president.
He then attended the American College of Physical Training where he became a devout socialist,
delivering several lectures on socialism in halls for which he paid.
He was denied enlistment into the Army in 1917 and became a Ford car salesman in Chicago
From 1920-1922, Toomer wrote furiously, filling an entire trunk with poems, essays, short stories, and
letters (most of which have never seen publication).
In 1921, Toomer became an administrator at the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Hancock
Georgia, where he first experienced the lives of rural blacks, which would have a profound effect on his
writing of Cane.
After Cane, Toomer published some poetry and essays but never wrote another novel.
Toomer also never wrote again about the African American experience, as he felt his light-skin and
Mediterranean features (as well as his affluence) made that experience irrelevant to him.
He died in Doylestown Pennsylvania on march 30, 1967
Cane was a huge critical success but not a huge financial success. Partially because he never wrote
another novel, Cane fell off the radar until it was re-published in 1960. It has been considered a seminal
novel of the Harlem Renaissance evener since.
Cane: Structure, Major Themes, and Key Symbols
Structure
Cane is not organized like most novels. Rather it is an impressionistic piece, with many poems, characters,
and sketches that are similar in theme.
Though the book has no through-line (no connection from chapter to chapter), but it is considered to be divided
into three parts (set apart from each other with the pages that contain pictures of arcs. It was Toomer’s
intention to create a book that he believed would lead reader on a circular progression.
The first section (“Karintha,” “Reapers,” “November Cotton Flower, “Becky,” “Face,” “Cotton Song” “Carma”
“Song of Son,” “Georgia Dusk,” “Fern,” “Nullo,” “Evening Song,” “Esther,” “Portrait of Georgia,” and “Blood
Burning Moon”) takes place in rural Georgia and concerns itself with the lives of poor blacks.
The second section (“Rhobert,” “Avey,” “Beehive,” “Storm Ending,” “Theater,” “Box Seat,””Prayer,” “Harvest
Song” and “Bona and Paul”) was written on request from Toomer’s publisher, and takes place in the North,
in Washington D.C. and Chicago. It focuses on urban life in all it’s flurry, and also on a series of romances
that fail because of internalized Racism, the awkward position of the Southern transplant, and the
internalization of class prejudices.
The third section is comprised of the novella “Kabnis,” the story of a mixed race man who goes to teach in
Georgia and finds himself attracted b the beauty of the land, but repulsed by its people. After interacting
wit the locals, Kabnis learns of lynching and becomes increasingly paranoid. He gives up on intellectual
life after being fired and takes up physical labor. In the end, he is so degraded he cannot even stand on
his own. It is this downtrodden state that brings the novel full circle, back to the downtrodden of Rural
Georgia.
Major themes: Race and racism, Internalized Racism, Segregation, Miscegenation, Class Anxiety, the
Inadequacy of current Gender Roles and Christianity, Socialism, Sexual Subjugation, Racial terrorism,
Self-Isolation, and Urban Isolation--- the failure of the romances is always meant to point to a failure in the
social fabric that makes real connections between people impossible.
Key Symbols: The cotton and cane plants, fire, lynching, the mill and factory, voice (the narrative and poetic
voices and their flux), Barlo, and houses (theater houses, (Rhobert’s head, and Halsey’s house where
Kabnis ends up in a dungeon).
Part one combines, (among other things) hypocrisy,
physical beauty, restrictive religious codes, and
psychological trauma. Sex and relationship isn’t what it
should be, nature is disrupted, the women are symbolic
figures, stifled and trapped. It also invokes the black mans
incapacity to comprehend the beautiful in his own heritage
Arc I
or
The Beginning of the Circle
Dante the Pilgrim and The Divine Comedy
Talking Points
1)
Keeping in mind that this is both, in a sense, the beginning and ending of
Cane, what is the rhetorical effect produced by the opening lines’ depiction of
a sunset and its accompanying juxtaposition of the human and non human?
How does it make a commentary on Karintha and what is the nature of this
commentary? Why begin a book with a figure who is unredeemable?
2)
What is the effect produced by the opening lines’ call to the reader to see at
sunset? What ironies are present? What do they suggest?
3)
Keeping in mind that Karintha has been sexually objectified by men since
childhood and, in turn, left to run sadistically wild, what is the effect produced
by the passages descriptions of “young men”? What is the rhetorical
significance of their actions and assumptions? How does the manner in which
they intend to woo Karintha offer us insight into gender relations in this
society?
4)
What is the rhetorical effect by the repetition of the phrase “Katrina is a
woman”?
5)
How would you describe the narrative voices description of the birth? What is
the rhetorical effect produced by it? Is this justifiable infanticide given all the
resentment that Karintha rightfully has? What is the symbolic import of striking
at the baby to get back at the young men? And what is the polemical effect of
having the cremation occur at the mill and the symbolic import of “pyramidal
sawdust” ? How does it make about how economic and gender relations in
this arena conspire against Karintha, and does it contextualize her sadistic
vengeance?
6)
What is the effect produced both by the making the composer of the song
anonymous and the narrators juxtaposition of the holy and unholy? How does
it make us think of the role of Christianity in this community? How does it
change the narrative voice and what are the effects of this change?
7)
Describe how movement is presented in this passage and explicate the
rhetorical, meta-textual, and polemical effects of this presentation for the
novel?
8)
Name all of the major themes in the novel that this passage set-up, or frames,
at the novel’s beginning? How does the introduction of all these themes make
Karintha in and of herself? And What are the rhetorical and polemical
implications of making Karintha a symbol?
Karintha
…skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
Cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
….When the sun goes down.
Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty
perfectas when the sun goes down. [….]
Karintha is a woman, Young men run steel
mills to make her money, Young men go to
the big cities to build her a road. Young
men go away to college. They all want to
bring her money. These are the young men
who thought that all they had to do was to
count time. But Karintha is a woman, and
she has a child. A child fell out of her womb
onto the pine-needles in the forest. Pine
needles are smooth and sweet. They are
elastic to the feet of rabbits…A saw mill
nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile
smoldered. It is a year before one
completely burns. Meanwhile, the smoke
curls and hangs in odd wraiths about the
trees, curls up, and spreads itself over the
valley…. Weeks after Katrina returned
home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it
like water. Some one made a song:
Smoke is on the hills. Rise up.
Smoke is on the hills, O rise
And take my soul to Jesus
Talking Points
Reapers
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done.
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, started, squealing bleeds.
His belly close to the ground. I see the the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.
1)
Keep in mind that reapers follows Karintha. What similar themes
to do you see in both pieces? How does on section link to the
other, and what is the rhetorical effect produced by this praxis of
linkage? How does this speak to the structure of Cane? Does it
undermine the reigning assumption of a disjuncture between the
chapters? Or is something more going on here?
2)
What text is invoked by the poems invocation of scythes and black
horses? What is the rhetorical effect produced by the invocation
of this text? How does this effect resonate as an echo with
themes and impressions contained in Karintha? Keeping Dante’s
circular progression of the Pilgrim poet in mind, how does Cane
rework the spiritual and poetic economy of The Divine Comedy?
3)
Here, and in “November Cotton flower,” agriculture surfaces as a
major theme. What is the symbolic import of the reaping of cane
here? Does it offer a commentary on Cane the novel as a
project?
4)
Why do you think the persona offers us such a stark portrait of the
accidental killing of the rat? What is the significance of the
persona’s entrancement with the rat in light of the reaper’s
complete disregard for it? What might the rat be symbolize?
5)
What do you make out of the fact that blood-stained scythes seem
not to bother the reapers at all? How might this speak to the
historical legacy of slavery in this arena? Does the vexing detail
that the reapers are “cutting shade” help us to answer this
question?
6)
What do you make of the detail that, despite the fact that it is
clearly cane being reaped, the persona calls cane “weeds”?
Talking Points
1)
For a minute, think of Becky as a refashioning of Hester Prynne from The Scarlet
Letter. Hester finds herself the sacrificial victim for a crime that is communal but
not acknowledged as such. For what similarly communal “crime” is Becky
sacrificed?
2)
We know that Becky was ostracized from both the black and white communities for
her “crime,” and yet members of these communities continue to secretly feed and
house her? What are the significance of this fact? How does it represent an
attempt to confine Becky, and what is the symbolic importance of this confinement?
3)
What do you make of the fact that it is the “chimney” is what cause the house to
collapse? How could the symbolic importance of this detail inform a reading of
Toomer’s ongoing critique of gender roles and relation in the novel?
4)
What effect is produced by the shifting narrative voice in these passages (of the
move from 3rd person, to a “we,” to an “I’ and, finally, back to the third person?
How would you characterize the rhetorical effect produced of this voice taken as a
composite? How does this fact comment on the theme of hypocrisy at work in the
piece?
5)
Becky is buried in a pile of wood. We know, from elsewhere in the novel
(especially in Blood Burning Moon” that stakes are associated with the pyre of a
lynching? What do you make of the the import of this symbolic lynching? What are
the ironies involved and how does this speak to Cane’s vexed positioning of white
womanhood and enhance the ongoing theme of miscegenation in the novel?
6)
“Becky was a white woman” resonates with the earlier repetition of “Karintha was a
woman” in a unique way? How does this resonance tie the two characters
together, and how does it also position them in dramatically different ways? How
does the fact that we almost know nothing of the physical Becky (in contrast to
Karintha) help enrich this picture? How does it further speak to the structure of the
first section?
7)
Barlo, one of the few repeated figures, surfaces here as a preacher. Given Becky’s
Catholicism (which also ostracizes her), what do you make of the symbolic
significance that Barlo tosses his bible on Becky’s “mound”? How does the
“aimless rustle” of the pages enhance the ongoing theme/critique of Christianity in
the Novel?
8)
What do you make of the contrapuntal repetition of whispers to Jesus? From
whom might these whispers come beside the narrator?
Becky
The boys grew, Sullen and cunning,,, O
pines, whisper to Jesus; tell Him to
come press sweet Jesus-lips
against their lips and eyes…..[….]
No one dared ask. They’d beat and
cut a mans who meant nothing at
all in mentioning that they lived
along the road. White or Colored.
No one new, at least of all
themselves. They drifted from job
to job. We, who had cast their
mother out because of them, could
we tae them in?
[….]
The last thing I remember was
whipping Dan like fury, I remember
nothing after that--that is, until I
reached town and folk crowded
around to get true word of it.
Becky was the white woman
who had two Negro sons. She’s
dead, they’ve gone away. The
pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible
flaps its leaves with an aimless
rustle on her mound.
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbeque,
Georgia Dusk
Talking Points
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds.
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented
mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
1)
The poems first stanza re-invokes two key elements of the text we’ve
already explored. What are they, where do they come from, and how are
they refashioned here? What is the rhetorical, polemical, and symbolic
import of this refashioning?
2)
The “feast of moon and men” foreshadows the lynching of Tom in “Blood
Burning Moon.” Taken in conjunction with the mention of barking
hounds, an orgy, cane-lipped scented mouths, folk song, and soul songs,
how does this foreshadowing work? What key and repeated themes and
tropes does it invoke? How might this “genius of the South” be, and how
does this invoke the legacy of slavery? What effect does the invocation
produce?
3)
The pyramidal sawmill re-appears again here in the third and fourth
stanzas, and seems to re-invoke both Karintha and Becky with the
phrase “former docile.” What effects do these re-invocations produce
and what is their significance? What is further achieved by positioning
these re-invocations in a seemingly banal description of industry, both
agricultural and at the mill? How is this offering a critique on both
Southern economic injustices, and why is this economic critique tied to
the critiques of gender and the spectre of lynching that permeates the
entire novel?
4)
What do you make of the invocations of “race mysteries,” “High Priests”
and the “Juju Man”? How does their framing of vestiges speak to the
historical legacy of slavery in the South? How does the re-invocation of
sunset and night play into all of this>
5)
What are the multiple ironies produced and multiple rhetorical effects of
characterizing the voices in the penultimate stanza as “a chorus of the
cane”?
The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.
Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
Their voices rise...the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain..
Their voices rise...the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars.
O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
6)
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
The last stanza begins with an elegiac apostrophe, but then makes
mention of “virgin lips” and “cornfield concubines” What multiple ironies
are at work here? How do these ironies continue to develop the theme of
Christianity in the book?
Talking Points
Esther
1)
The air was is thick with tobacco smoke. It makes her sick
She wants to turn back. She goes up the steps. As if she
were mounting to some great height her head spins..
She is violent dizzy. Blackness rushes to her yes. And
then she finds that she is in a large room. Barlo stand
2)
before her.
“Well, Im sholy damned--skuse me, but what, what
brought you here, lil white gal“
“You.” Her voice sounded like a frightened child’s that
calls homeward from some point miles away,
“Me”
3)
“Yes, you Barlo”
“This aint the place fer y. This aint the place fer y,”
“I know, I know. But I’ve come fo you.”
“For me to What”
She manages to look down and straight into his eyes.
His is slow at understanding. Guffaws and giggles break 4)
out from all around the room. A coarse woman;s
remarks, “So that’s how th dictie niggers do it.” Laughs.
“Mus give em credit fo their gall.”
5)
Ether doesn’t hear. Barlo does. His faculties are
jogged, She sees a smile, ugly and repulsive to her,
working upward through thick licker fumes. Barlo is
hideous. The thought comes suddenly, that conception 6)
with drunken men might be a sin. She draws away, froze.
Like a somnabulist she wheels around and walks down
the stairs, Down them. Jeers and hoots pelter bluntly
upon her back. She steps out, There is no air, no street,
the town has disappeared.
In Esther, we see an incarnation of a classic figure that Helga
Crane also embodies. What is this classic figure? How is her
status as tragic reworked here? In other words, to what does
Ether fall victim to in this passage? Why is Barlo both a figure
of apocalyptic desire in Esther’s earlier dreams (where she
wishes him to overcome her), a figure of reverence in his
trance, and a figure of repulsion for her? What do her
conflicted feelings of desire and repulsion for barlo say about
Esther?
What is the rhetorical and symbolic effect produced by the
knowledge that Barlo is both a prophet and a profiteer? How
does this continue to enhance Toomer’s treatment of
Christianity? How might Barlo’s status as the best cotton
picker inform our understanding of Esther’s conflicting feelings
about him?
What does dictie mean? What multiple prejudices are being
invoked with its use? How does the invocation of these
prejudices inform our understanding of both Esther and Barlo’s
and the “coarse woman[‘s] treatment of her? How does this
help us understand Barlo’s repeated claim that “This aint the
place fer y”?
What purpose does the almost comical marking of dialect
serve in this passage? To what multiple communities and
tensions between these communities does it point?
The second arc of Cane cane will be dominated by “missed
connections.” What ate the causes of misconnection in this
passage and chapter?
Upon Esther’s disenchantment with Barlo (her ginal state in a
story that offers a progression of desire and disgust), she is
struck deaf, described as a “somnambulist” for who “there is
no air, not street” and for who “the town has disappeared.”
How do you make sense of Esther’s thorough encasement in
her own mind by the story’s end?
Talking Points
Portrait in Georgia
Hair--braided chestnut.
coiled like a lyncher’s rope,
Eyes--fagots,
Lips--old scars, or the first of red blisters,
Breath--lost to the sweet sent of cane,
And her slim body, white as ash
of black flesh after flame.
1)
The manners in which the portrait of this
Southern lady is described is quite telling.
What form of violence is invoked by this
description? How does it offer a
commentary on gender and racial terrorism
in Toomer’s Georgia?
2)
Are there spectres of multiple victims in this
poem? If so, how are they, and how would
you describe their victimization?
3)
“Portrait” prefigures “Blood Burning Moon”
where we encounter a graphic depiction of
lynching. However, the two frames (or
reasons that surround the lynchings as we
will see differ dramatically). What is the
persona implying about why lynching
happens by describing the portrait in this
way?
4)
What is the effect produced by the symbolic
import that the persona is literally
describing a “portrait” as opposed, to say, a
photograph?
Blood Burning Moon
Drag him to the factory, Wood and stakes already
there. Tome moved in the direction indicated,
But the had to drag him. They reached the
great door. Too many to get in there. The
mob divided and flowed around the walls to
either side. The big man shoved him through
the door. The mob passed in from the sides.
Taut humming. No words, A stake was sunk
into the ground. Rotting floor boards piled on
it. Kerosene pored on the rotting floorboards.
Tom was bound to the stake, His heart was
bare. Nails’ scratches little lies of blood trickle
down and into his hair. His face, his eyes
were set and stony, Except for irregular
breathing, one would have thought him
already dead.[….] The mob yelled. Its yell
echoed against the skeleton stone walls and
sounded like a hundred yells, Like a hundred
mobs yelling.. Its yell thudded against the
thick front wall and fell back. Ghost of a yell
slipped through the flames and out of the
great door of the factory [….] Louisa, upon the
step from home, did not hear it, but her eyes
opened slowly. They saw a full moon glowing
in the great door, The full moon, an evil thing,
an omen, soft showering the homes of folk
she knew. Where were they, these people?
She’s sing, and perhaps they’d come out and
join her. Perhaps Tom Burwell would come.
An any rate, the full moon in the great door
was an omen which she must sing to”
Red nigger moon. Sinner!
Blood-burning-moon. Sinner!
Come out the fact’ry door.
Important fact- At the time of Cane’s composition, Walter White was conducting extensive economic and
sociological studies that proved most lynching was not the outcome of any sexual transgression, but rather the
result of racism playing-out in a scarce job market. Toomer was well aware of White’s preliminary findings.
1)
Recall that it is Bob Stone’s jealousy of Tom Burwell that leads him to attack Tom, to his
death, and, ostensibly, to Tom’s lynching. Also recall the narrative point that Tom is in
love with Louisa but also fears being paired with her because he fears a further loss of
social status (his family has already fallen quite a bit for other reasons). Given these
factors, in conjunction with his “superior” class and race status vis-à-vis Tom, what do
you make of his decision to try to stab Tom? How does it further develop Toomer’s
treatment of the intersecting themes of class, racism, and miscegenation? In other
words, what commentary is made by having Bob act as he does (and for the reason he
does) when he attacks Tom?
2)
What do you make of the the symbolic import that Bob’s throat is slit (his head cut off)?
What does it suggest about Tom (who is second only to Barlo in strength in the novel?
How does Bob’s decision to use a knife (in light of Tom’s conviction for knifing someone)
cast additional symbolic light on the act?
3)
What is the irony of Tom’s name? How does this irony represent a refashioning of an old
stereotype, and describe the nature and implications of this refashioning? Where does
this refashioning metaphorically reposition Bob?
4)
How would you describe the factory in question, and to what aspects of the passage
would you point to support your argument? Given it’s nature, what does the nature of the
factory suggest about the socio-economic conditions and their relationship to lynching in
Toomer’s Georgia?
5)
Tom suffers through his lynching in a manner suggestive of another figure? Who is this
figure, how do you know, and what is the metaphorical resonance of this tie? What
purpose does this tie serve, and how does it continue Toomer’s treatment of the theme of
Christianity? What does it suggest about the relationship between Christianity and Racial
terrorism?
6)
Like Becky and Karintha, we know very little of Louisa. She is more of a symbol than a
fleshed-out character. What do you make of the meta-textual stakes involved in
Toomer’s decision to portray her as such? How does it speak to the novel’s ongoing
critique of the inadequacy of contemporary gender roles? What role does the fact that
Louisa is a symbol, or more of an object to fight over than a person, play in all of this?
And, finally, how does it help us to account of Louisa’s lost in the symbolic, for her vision
of “full moon” glowing in the factory? What is the significance Louisa’s ability to perceive
these events only in symbolic terms? Is her ignorance simply a matter of not knowing
what’s happening? Or does it point to something more? If so what?
7)
What do you make of Louisa’s song? What are the multiple ironies at work? What effect
is produced by the invocation of dialect in the final line?
8)
Describe the work accomplished by the manner of narrative and thematic progression of
the novel’s first arc.