Leaving Things Behind

The character of Harry in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a complex one. I think Hemmingway wrote him (and the whole story) brilliantly, but I cannot like him. Despite the fact that he is dying of infection throughout the whole story it was hard for me to even feel sorry for him after a while.

All of Harry’s reminiscences and his present dialogues with Helen and the servant are thoroughly drenched in bitterness. It is evident when he thinks about his lost loves, his affairs, his aspirations, and experiences. He is most bitter of all when he thinks about his lost writing talent.

“It was his duty to write of it; but now he never would….That was one story he had saved to write. He knew at least twenty good stories from out there and he had never written one. Why?”

The sting Harry experiences when remembering the decline of his talent is doubled in that he lost it by becoming just what he had planned to write out clearly for everyone to see. He had planned to write a sort of scoop on the rich from the perspective of an inside-outsider, but he became a part of the system himself, dependent on the rich women he lived with. He is aware of this double standard in his life, of hating the thing he depends on for his comfort, but he does not have the fortitude to completely remove it and return to his writing. The Africa trip is an attempt in that direction, but even he has to admit that it could not succeed in “burning the fat from his soul” because of the presence of Helen and Helen’s money, which, while not extending to luxury on the trip, at least prevents any hardship.

Hardships and luxuries aside, Harry still contracts an infection and gangrene in his leg. Knowing that he is dying, he begins to self-destruct in a way, drinking alcohol despite Helen’s advice, intentionally wounding her, and giving up generally.

“Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and your armour?...Stop it, Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?” “I don’t like to leave anything,” the man said. “I don’t like to leave things behind.”

This seems to indicate a pattern of Harry’s life, then. He never leaves things behind. From his recounted stories it seems that he is constantly on the move: Germany, Paris, Constantinople, rich woman to rich woman. He is convinced that “no thing could hurt him if he did not care,” so he refuses to care, simply pulling everything down around him as he leaves. Only as he is dying he realizes that this pattern of leaving nothing behind, of doing “anything…too bloody long,” means that at the end of his life, there is nothing for him to turn to, no chance for “the company that he would like to have.”

He’s worn everything out—his love, his talent, his life—and since he has left nothing behind, he has nothing left ahead of him but his curiosity and his bitterness.

Harry is convinced that everything is easier and better if you just do not care, and thereby avoid pain. But as he is dying he does not seem content with what that has brought him to, in the end.

Is Harry a Failure?

Hemingway’s character in The Snows of Kilimanjaro is complex and puzzling enough to create confusion and possibly even frustration within the reader as we learn of his habits, successes and downfalls. He drinks, cannot be committed to one woman and admits to himself that he has been unable to write many of the stories he has in his head. But do all these things make Harry a failure?

Initially, I wanted to say yes. He does not have ambitious goals for himself and depends on the wealth of women he’s with to live. Most importantly, Harry has created an entire false persona full of deception in hopes of finding success in that way. Yet as he lies at the base of the mountain with gangrene eating away his life, he begins to reflect on himself as an individual, in which his true character is revealed.

We sit with him as he realizes his faults in love, the reality that he felt more comfortable when “he no longer meant what he said, and that lies were more successful than telling the truth.” We get the impression that he dislikes this conclusion about himself, pointing to his current wife as the “caretaker and destroyer of his talent.”

As Harry lapses into thoughts of stories he could have written about, it becomes evident that he regrets not taking more effort to write about what he wanted to. One big question he continues to ask himself as he nears death is ‘why?’ “He knew at least twenty good stories from out there and he had never written one. Why?” “He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.”

We begin to see Harry not as a failed writer, but as an artist who is struggling with his art form. Hemingway uses Harry to show just how damaging the loss of one’s muse is to a writer, just as he also went through the same struggles in his own life. Hemingway is able to communicate just how deceptive that muse can be, and once infected, he can no longer be in control over his art. It is also important to note that although Harry sees the top of the mountain in his dream right before death, we have no indication that the couple has ambitions to climb to the top of Kilimanjaro; it seems they are only there to hunt.

From first look, it may be concluded that Harry is a failure simply because he never wrote what he most desired to. But when taking a step back and examining the piece from all angles, it is better to conclude that Harry, although not triumphant in any way, is not a failure. He is simply a tragic result of striving for pleasure and success by taking one direction, only to realize that he had taken the wrong path.

Writers and Writing in "Kilimanjaro"

The biography section on Ernest Hemingway in Norton’s Anthology of American Literature discusses two new themes that became apparent in Hemingway’s writing. According to the anthology, “The second new theme, obviously autobiographical, was that of the successful writer losing his talent in an atmosphere of success, celebrity, and wealth.” It goes on to say that this theme is conveyed in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, which also has some biographical elements, as Hemingway used to go on safaris in Africa.

Well, using these words as my guide, I went into the story on the lookout for this ‘fallen writer’ theme. While I could see a little bit of a fallen writer theme, I could see quite a bit of commentary on just writing in general. An example of this is the flashbacks of Harry, the writer and protagonist. At first, I found the flashbacks confusing and I wasn’t sure what purpose they served in the plot. Looking at them again, I found a recurring topic in many of the flashbacks. In one way or another, his writing comes up. In one particular flashback, there’s a neat paragraph on Harry as a writer, which says:

“He had never written any of that [the quarrels] because, at first, he never wanted to hurt any one and then it seemed as though there was enough to write without it. But he had always thought that he would write it finally. There was so much to write. He had seen the world change… He had been in it and he had watched it and it was his duty to write of it; but now he never would.” (1992)

Harry seems to have this duty to write about the things he sees and experiences. Yet something stops him from writing it, whether it’s unwillingness to hurt people or a hesitation in presenting his stories, or whether it’s just getting caught up in his lifestyle. This is one example of how Harry is shown as a writer who fails not because his writing style is poor, but because other factors get in the way of his writing. Another flashback says, “He knew at least twenty good stories from out there [Paris] and he had never written one. Why?” (1996) Why indeed?

Another thing the anthology noted was how Harry blames his wife for his loss of talent, when deep down he acknowledges that it was his own fault. This and the idea of how you can lose your talent is expressed in the following paragraph:

“He had destroyed his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook.” (1988)

I found it interesting that Harry partly attributes his loss of writing talent to not using his talent. Basically, writing isn’t something that can be lost the same way a pencil can be lost-you can’t just accidentally drop it on a sidewalk and misplace it. Instead, you choose not to refine your craft, you choose to do something else instead or you simply get too busy. When you look at it that way, it actually seems quite easy to lose a talent for writing, which is a little scary to think about.

The theme of the writer in The Snows of Kilimanjaro makes me wonder: Are Harry’s reflections on writing also Hemingway’s personal thoughts on writing? It seems like it, but I could be totally mistaken.

The meaning behind the stiff leg

In Faulkner's short story Barn Burning, the stiff leg of Abner Snopes serves to be a metaphor that guides the action in the story. Abner had injured his leg thirty year prior in the Civil War. It is no doubt a constant reminder of the injustice and pain he witnessed and took part of. It seems likely that Abner's morale for justice can be equated with the cruelty and destruction of war.

Honesty is not a virtue for Abner. He tells his son Sartoris early on that "You got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you." Therefore, he encourages Sartoris to lie in court if it means saving the family name. This appears to be the same mentality in a setting like war--no matter what the cost, save your own kind.

He makes this fact known to his son by beating him. In this scene, we first see the mention of Abner's stiff leg, which is a reoccurring theme throughout the story:

"Once more he followed the stiff back, the stiff and ruthless limp, up the slope and on to the starlit road where, turning, he could see his father against the stars but without face or depth--a shape black, flat and bloodless..."


 The first characteristic that Sartoris identifies on his father is most often the stiff leg. He can hear the stiff leg as he says, "it came down on the boards with clocklike finality, a sound out of all proportion to the displacement of the body it bore." To Sartoris, the limp encompasses his father's being which shows how Sartoris views his father as an oppressing man. Abner is not only physically wounded, but emotionally from what occurred previously in his life. His disillusioned notions of justice are usually taken out on his son.

The most telling part of the story occurs when Abner and Sartoris are in the house of Major de Spain and Abner stains their rug from the manure stuck on his stiff legged shoe. I believe this scene presents the central metaphor and meaning in the story. First of all, his stiff leg serves as a metaphor for Abner's rigid views of justice. Because the war treated him unfairly, he now tries to make up for it by believing he deserves more than he receives. It is a permanent thorn in his side. As the show of the stiff leg goes on to stain the rug, it shows how this perspective permeates into all aspects of his life--from his family, to his work and to the society he lives in. Faulkner uses effective descriptive language to convey the scene:


"And now the boy saw the prints of the stiff foot on the doorjamb and saw them appear on the pale rug behind the machinelike deliberation of the foot which seemed to bear twice the weight which the body compassed...


"The boy watched him pivot on the good leg and saw the stiff foot drag round the arc of the turning, leaving a final long and fading smear...He stood for a moment, planted stiffly on the stiff foot, looking back at the house. 'Pretty and white, ain't it?'"


Abner is forced to pay ten bushels of corn to Major de Spain for ruining the expensive rug, but Abner is appalled at the sentence, believing he doesn't deserve to give the major anything. What results is a tragic ending as Abner is killed and Sartoris escapes the scene, fleeting his family and previous life. The only certainty is now Sartoris will no longer be held under the oppression of his father's stiff leg.

My Faulkner

I haven't been a lifelong reader. I wish it wasn't true, but some things must be brought to the light, I suppose. I was a fan of the Harry Potter series in my youth (though I never read the seventh book - another sad confession), and I always read what was required of me in school. Even though I only began seriously getting into literature during my senior year of high school, William Faulkner was there long before. He also walked me through this journey, and now I have encountered him again.

I love Faulkner, but I also hate him. I love that he's familiar to me. I read A Rose for Emily in seventh grade and again when I was a junior, and if you asked me how I felt about it, I would say, "I like it, I guess."

When I decided to get into reading the summer before my senior year, I was at a Barnes and Noble in Seattle, standing at a table with a sign that said something to the effect of "If you're in high school and you like to read, these books are important." I scanned the selection and Faulkner's name jumped out at me. I decided to purchase As I Lay Dying not only because of the familiarity Faulkner's name, but also because the book shared a name with one of my favorite bands at the time.

I put the book on my shelf and forgot about it for a while. Before I read it, I also bought The Sound and the Fury, because a friend of mine recommended it to me. I decided to read both. This is when I grew to hate Faulkner.

I hated the long sentences. I hated the dialect in As I Lay Dying and how it jumped from character to character and how I wasn't sure who was a boy and who was a girl. I hated the long chapters in The Sound and the Fury. I hated how the same story was told four times, and how one of the chapters was not chronologically accurate because one of the characters was mentally retarded. I thought, "Who DOES that?" I finished the books - not because I wanted to, but because I knew I couldn't quit.

When I opened to Barn Burning, my first emotion was genuine excitement. Here was good ol' Bill Faulkner to provide me with some good times. But as I began writing this blog, I remembered all of the bad times I had had with Bill, and how much I grew to hate him. I really hoped Barn Burning would take me back to the good times. I figured that I was a more mature, more knowledgable reader than I had been at that time, so hopefully I would get something more out of Faulkner.

After reading this story and taking into account my past experience with Faulkner, I decided that Faulkner had mastered this method of storytelling. Once again, Faulkner uses the viewpoint of a child going through hardships to tell the story of desperation in the Great Depression/Dust Bowl era. Faulkner plays off the innocence of Sartoris to get the reader to sympathize with the desperation the family is going through. He does the same thing in As I Lay Dying as the children carry their mother's casket to be buried, the youngest children unaware of what is happening.

In the beginning, Sartoris does not understand the trial what his father has done. All he knows is that Harris is the enemy. This innocence carries the tone throughout the novel as he does not understand a world of desperation, violence, and his father's sinister ways. Faulkner does an excellent job of getting the reader to connect to the young character and decipher their situation through the eyes of a child. He reveals the harsh lifestyle of this time through a gentle medium.

In the end, my heart broke for Sartoris. I can't imagine that he fully grasped the magnitude of his father's death or the extenuating circumstances. That's when I realized that this was a common motif in the other novels I had read by Faulkner. It almost made me want to go back and read through those stories again, just so I could have my heart broken by these poor children again. Maybe I'm just a sucker for those poor kids.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Faulkner.

The Journey of Injustice

“The boy said nothing. Enemy! Enemy! He thought; for a moment he could not even see, could not see that the Justice’s face was kindly.” Many questions are asked as the reader reads the beginning pages of Barn Burning . Why is this small child worried about telling the truth? What is he trying to hide? And most importantly as the story progresses, why is he protecting his father? As you can see by the initial quote this child thinks the Justice of the Peace is an enemy and after reading more you find it is based solely on what his father has taught him and by what he has been told. He doesn’t take into effect that this “enemy” might not be an enemy and instead might help him. His mind is too clouded by the persuasion from his father (whether it be good persuasion or violent persuasion) and his family to understand legitimately what is right and what is wrong. There is a theme of justice being injustice throughout the entire novel which I will discuss at the end of this blog. For now I will talk about how this short story is about the journey into manhood for our main character, the young boy.

At the very beginning this story starts off with a small child being questioned about his knowledge on the transaction between his father and their neighbor. You can tell immediately that the child does not know what to say and is scared for his father’s reaction to the events transpiring. Anyone can see that he is ruling his family by violence and that his word is law. This story continues in the perspective of our young characters mind and you see how his family works together and how dysfunctional they are. During each “action scene” or scene that describes his father lashing out with violence or burning yet again another barn the young boy can be seen debating whether or not this was okay. But unfortunately he never had time to do anything about it because his father always ordered him to participate or to get his family to safety. That child was always unsure about his father’s actions but he was then pushed into participating in some way. As the story comes to its end you can even see the debate of man versus child found within this young boy as he is carrying the can of oil towards his father. He cried out to his Dad asking him to send someone to warn the family, like last time, but his father will not listen and this is where the boy reaches manhood. He fights against his father and his family in order to do what is right. Once he is free he does exactly that and his actions cause his father’s death. This shows you his transition from boy to man found within this story but it also brings back up the question of justice and how it was portrayed.

I think it was a portrayal of justice being injustice. What I mean by this is that every time “justice” should have been done it is not real justice and then when “real” justice happens it is still an injustice. I know that might be confusing so let me explain. First let’s understand the definition of the word justice. Justice is the moral principle determining just conduct or the quality of being just; righteousness equitableness, or moral rightness (Webster’s Dictionary). So based on the definition at the beginning instead of justice happening, the father of the young boy is not held accountable and instead he is just asked to leave the country. That is an injustice-which is a violation of the rights of others or an unjust or unfair act (Webster’s Dictionary). Further down the father is asked to pay the family back for ruining their rug and instead he decides to burn yet again another barn-theirs. When his son gets away to warn the family the result is that the father gets shot that may seem like justice but in fact it is not real justice. This was another person taking justice into their own hands and killing someone by deeming it justice. The father needed to be held accountable for his actions but it was not up to that family to decide that. So in the end you think justice has been served but in fact it was yet again another injustice. You may or may not agree with me and that is okay but these are the conclusions I found within the story.

Burning Bridges......

I really like this short story by Faulker. Though it is a short story, it was a complex story because of the characters. Sartoris and his father are especially complex and the tension between the two as they interact definitely left me sympathizing for both. The difficult relationship that Sartoris has with his father is hostile yet Sartoris is completely loyal to his father. At first I thought it was because he lived in fear of his father and what he could be capable of. But as I read on, I saw it was something different. Sartoris loves his father. He loves him and so he lies for him and obeys him; hoping and praying that there is good somewhere in his father that it would surface. Faulkner allows us to see that hope, love and pleading for his father when he allows us to read Sartoris’ thoughts. “Maybe he will feel it too. Maybe it will even change him now from what maybe he couldn’t help but be” (Page 1960, Norton). He holds onto a hope that maybe his father will someday change but that day never comes. Throughout the story I see a goodness and seriousness that resides in this young boy, a seriousness that is beyond his years. When he and his family travel to another farm, he surveys the land and the house and for a moment, forgets his father and their troubles. “They walked beside a fence massed with honeysuckle and Cherokee roses and came to a gate swinging open between two brick pillars, and now, beyond a sweep drive, he saw the house for the first time and at that instant he forgot his father and the terror and despair both, and even when he remembered his father again the terror and despair did not return. Because for the twelve moving, they had sojourned until now in a poor country, a land of small farms and fields and houses, and he had never seen a house like this before” (Page 1959). Sartoris looks at the grandeur of the scene and believes it to be safe from the deviousness and evil working of his father. “They are safe from him. People whose lives are a part of this peace and dignity are beyond his touch, he no more to them than a buzzing wasp: capable of stinging for a little moment but that’s all; the spell of this peace and dignity rendering even the barns and stable and cribs which belong to it impervious to the punt flames he might contrive…..” (Page 1959). When Sartoris’s father attempts to burn down De Spain’s barn, he goes against his immoral father, warns De Spain; choosing independence and right. Despite how hard Sartoris’s journey may be he chooses another path apart from his father and his family. He chooses the moral path and never looks back.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me-Hurston

Hurston's background is that she was born in Alabama and moved with her family to an all-black town in Eatonville, Florida. Her father was a baptist preacher who you could tell probably had a great deal of influence on her life to speak with so much eloquence, power, and truth. But she was known for her high spirits. When she sought her degree at Howard University, she gathered a reputation for telling stories as a genius storyteller. She was known for telling stories about her childhood with a high level of wit, fun, and charm. She was a master conversationalist telling of side-splitting tales that captured the hearts of many. Her writings also seek to communicate the longings, passions, secrets, hidden desires, sorrows of the black culture of the time. However, well off white people were the main sponsors of and the chief audience of her work so there was this sort of paradoxical, tension going on that she had to live through. Her work was not popular with the male intellectual leaders of the community. She quarreled with famous writer, poet Langston Hughes because she rejected the idea that a black writers chief concern should be how blacks are portrayed to the white reader. She did not write to "uplift her race," because in her view it was already uplifted, which is a powerful and bold statement into the testimony of her character.

She also seemed greatly influenced by The Great Depression. She speaks about race with literal ease and uses language to describe situations that can leave you breathless. Her best work, in my opinion, is her work of literature entitled, "How it Feels to Be Colored Me." She offers a candid, truthful, down to earth, and even, humorous explanation of her colored life in a Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. But her deepest words are, "But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sorrow school of Negrohood who hold that nature has somehow given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife." This quote was powerful too, "At certain times I have no race, I am me." These thoughts are extremely powerful identity shaping realizations that speak to her transcending a black generation and a black culture that looked to point to the sorrow, she tried to point more to the joy, the pride of being from a Negro town, a pride in her heritage and identity as a black woman. Her boldness in this lyrical confession and her ability to speak truth in her writings is to be greatly admired and esteemed. She has made an effect on the world through her writings that I believe is for the better, for the good of society. Giving life to her race and taking what was broken and making it beautiful.

The Amazing Race

I've never had soul. I listen to gospel music or watch an African American worship service with despair as I realize just how terrifically un-fly I am. What they turn into an earthshakingly good time, I turn into a lesson about funeral etiquette and how to successfully pose for hatted man with an easel. Nothing I can do changes this fact. But it is in these nihilistic moments that I have come to realize the intrinsic worth of cultural differences. Every race has something to offer that is unique and valuable. Even though I will never be able to dance or evoke the dancing of others, I can still have a deep appreciation of those who can.

This is why I particularly liked reading Zora Neale Hurston. As a woman who came from an entirely black community she had a thorough understanding of African American culture. One can see this in “The Eatonville Anthology.” Basically, the Anthology is a collection of the lives of various fictional black folk. Obviously, I don’t think that she meant for this to encompass every black person on the planet, but the glimpses that she gives are still very specific to how she viewed her culture. For instance, an old fashioned hoedown takes place in part XI where young blacks are seen dancing the night away: “Sweating bodies, laughing mouths, grotesque faces, feet drumming fiercely. Deacons clapping as hard as the rest.” A sly woman named Cal’line successfully mocks her husband by donning his clothing in part XIII. In “How it Feels to be Colored Me,” Hurtson talks about how jazz deeply excites her (to which the white man nearby does not experience. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll assume white people intrinsically have less soul).The energy and drive of black people is thus conveyed nicely. And there is a sense of pride in these good moments that also comes across the page (pride in the uniqueness of her culture).

But there is an element here that is intriguing. Among the good and funny characteristics that she shares, there are also a good number of bad qualities. Abuse shows up in VI, IX, and X. Abuse from brutal husbands shows up specifically in X and IX (“He answered that she just did it for spite and that his fist was just as hard as her head”). Immoral acts such as thievery and prostitution take place in VI and XII. I pondered for a while about why she would include these qualities, especially as a Harlem Renaissance writer who shared seats with the more aggressive Hughes (who more assertively shared his tiffs with black discrimination) during a time where blacks were far from equal. It would seem that African Americans were already represented poorly enough without stories documenting their weaknesses.

However, I also couldn’t shake how much more honest this approach seemed. Hurston seemed to adore her culture, but she wasn’t afraid to shy away from where it fell short too. I believe this was done on the concept of equal humanity. Hurston talks about this in “How it Feels,” “I have no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored. I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within boundaries.” This particular writing began with statement, “I remember the very day that I became colored.” She seemed to believe in her human identity on terms of her humanity rather than society. Maybe the reason for her inclusion of flaws was that humankind, both in its own good and bad ways, shares the same problems and weaknesses. In other words, this is a place where people can become equal.

I think that Hurston is trying to show that black people aren’t perfect, but in their imperfection they are as equally human as whites. Perhaps her reason for choosing this angle was to more or less say, “Black people aren’t greater than anyone else; they are just like everyone else in this way.” So it is more an attempt to show rather than tell. She still makes an interesting distinction here. Rather than calling everyone identical, she does seem to hold to a black identity, but it isn’t the racist black identity. In “The Eatonville Anthology,” How it feels to be Colored Me,” and in “The Gilded Six-Bits,” there is a clear sense that blacks have certain universal qualities. Personal energy, for example, shows up in all of the stories. The dialect in each story is also the same. What I think this means is that there is a real black identity that transcends the white racist’s view, “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background,” “He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.”

It is important to note that Hurston never explicitly says that she is proud of her ethnicity. But in light of, one, the prominence of unique black culture in her writings, two, the attachment to the idea of being herself and being alright with where she comes from, and three, the historical context in which this was written, I think it is safe to say that she had a concept of freedom and identity that was rooted in a moral reality. This doesn’t help me dance, but it does give me an excuse to reflect and be uptight for a bit longer.

"Race Does Not Exist"

What really surprised me when reading the biography of Zora Neale Hurston was that she “quarreled especially with Langston Hughes; she rejected the idea that a black writer’s chief concern should be how blacks were being portrayed to the white reader.” The biography goes on to say that Hurston felt she didn’t have to uplift her race because it was already uplifted. I guess I was so surprised by this because the era in which Hurston was writing was one marked with so much racism. She withstood the oppression and stayed confident in who she was despite everything. “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” shows Hurston’s attitude about her race. She says that she is constantly reminded that she is “the granddaughter of slaves” but this reminder “fails to register depression” within her. When I first read this sentence I couldn’t believe what she was saying. How could she not be angry about all of the years of oppression and inhuman treatment that her people went through? Is she just disregarding all of the horror that her ancestors bore? After reading on, I realized that she is not disregarding it, but has grown from it. She doesn’t see herself as someone bound by her race and is happy “to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep.” Hurston uses the analogy of the start of a race to explain her view on her ancestors. “The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said, “On the line!” The Reconstruction said “Get set!”; and the generation before said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.” She says that she has paid through all of her ancestors to get where she is today.

I didn’t understand Hurston’s joke that she uses to begin “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” so I looked up a commentary on it by Cheryl A. Wall of The Scholar and Feminist Online. Hurston’s joke says, “I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian Chief.” Wall says, “The joke is aimed both at those whites who would assume that blackness is a problem requiring a solution, or at least an explanation, and at those blacks, almost certainly including race-conscious New Negroes, who want it understood that they are not merely black.” Hurston claims her race but realizes that it is not biologically, but socially defined. Dr. Reynolds (TIU professor) always says that “race doesn’t exist” because race cannot be found in DNA. We know that there are different pigments of skin but the real difference comes because of social barriers. Hurston acknowledges this when she says, “I remember the very day I became colored.” She speaks of her hometown, Eatonville, where everyone around her was black. She knew nothing of discrimination and the evils of racism until she left Eatonville to go to school and make a life for herself. She refers to this journey as Hegira – “the forced march of Muhammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. hence any forced flight or journey for safety.” Although she feels this journey has been forced, she “asserts that any incongruity between the “colored” and “me” of its title has been resolved” (Wall).

At the end of the essay, Hurston compares people to stuffed bags. She says that the bags may be different colors, but the stuffing “might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly.” Simply put, the color of our skin or the color of the bags may be different, but what is inside is similar. “Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place – who knows?”

Hurston's Anthropology

                Zora Neale Hurston is arguably one of the most notable and best writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. There are two main features of Hurston’s writing that set her apart from the other writers of the Harlem Renaissance – her willingness to accurately portray humanity and the dialectal speech of many African-American characters. The culmination of these traits in her writing leads to the distinct tone of a much more genuine literature than many of us have become accustomed to. Recently, we praised poets for their ability to be “raw” and “genuine;” Hurston although writing in a different genre accomplishes the same feelings and goal.

                The Norton biography notes that Hurston fought with the American great Langston Hughes over the portrayal of black characters and a black writer’s purpose. Hughes thought that African-American literature should “uplift” the race, portraying African-American characters only as good. This type of portrayal would obviously create a mis-anthropic view of African-Americans and more specifically humanity (NAAL, 1701). Hurston, likely because of her strong upbringing, believed that the African-American race was already “uplifted” and wrote in a way that portrayed all her characters as “good and bad, strong and weak” (NAAL, 1701).  The willingness toward portrayal of the bad is readily, and humorously, seen in The Eatonville Anthology.

                However, the depth of the characters both good and bad is much greater in The Gilded Six-Bits.  Joe is a loving husband, but he is allowed to be angry and stay angry for a stretch of time. Missie May is a loving wife who cheats on her husband and is allowed to go through many emotions from shame, sadness and grief. The spectrum of emotions allows the characters to develop depth and become much more realistic. It would have been easy for Hurston to succumb to the pressure of one-dimensional characters and not allow hardship and sin to enter the lives of her characters. Without such a spectrum of emotion, hardship, and sin, the forgiveness in the end of The Gilded Six-Bits would have been something to take lightly. Rather, Joe’s willingness to forgive Missie May and return their lives to normal is a blessing not only to Missie May, but the reader as well. By allowing ourselves to deny depravity through showing only one-dimensional characters, we also deny the beauty of grace and forgiveness. Hurston’s  willingness to show life as it is, rather than as it should be creates a more “genuine” and “raw” form of prose than Hughes was advocating for, and this rawness makes her literature even better.

                Hurston was not only genuine in her emotional and active portrayal of her characters, but also in their speech. Hurston studied anthropology and was even granted a fellowship to study African-American storytelling and dialect (NAAL, 1700-1). It was this work, knowledge and interest that led Hurston to write her characters’ speech dialectally (NAAL, 1700-1). To be honest, the first time I had to read Hurston it was this dialectal speech that turned me off from her and made me irritated. However, as I have grown, Hurston’s writing has grown on me. Dialects and accents are not only an African-American occurrence, we all have them. I do. You do. None of us speak exactly as we write. Hurston’s choice to add this dimension to her characters gives them more depth and reality. You can hear the emotion in Missie May and Joe’s voices when they are flirting, fighting and everything in between. This type of realism would not have been possible if they had spoken as though they were writing an essay, with perfect pronunciation, diction and grammar.

                Not long ago blogs were written in praise of Moore’s ability to write raw and genuine poetry. If we are able to unashamedly praise an author for putting herself ‘out there’ by writing raw poetry, the same should be done for prose. Hurston writes beautiful raw prose, allowing her characters to truly be and demonstrate humanity. The Gilded Six-Bit shows characters who have a range of emotion, make mistakes and speak as though they are real. It is these types of characters that readers will learn from and grow, not the one-dimensional singularly orientated type of characters. 

Also on a side note, who else would fight with Langston Hughes over his ideas of ‘blackness’? This woman deserves some serious props for that one.