Hurston & Wright // Julia Spangler

How does Hurston challenge the conventional ways African Americans are portrayed in literature?

In the secondary source “What White Publishers Won’t Print,” Zora Neale Hurston laments the lack of emotionally complex minority characters, particularly African Americans, in literature. She argues that the absence of relatable African American characters plays a role in maintaining the tension between races, since people are prone to dislike that which they do not understand. The average white reader would never relate to a simplified, stereotyped black character “picking away on his banjo and singing and laughing,” which reinforces the reader’s belief that individuals of other races lack emotional depth (1606). Hurston wants publishers and readers to realize that minorities “can and do experience discovery of the numerous subtle faces as a foundation for a great and selfless love, and the diverse nuances that go to destroy that love as with others” (1606). Is she successful in achieving this in her own work?

I believe Hurston was successful. Delia, the main character of Sweat, leads a simple, repetitive existence but has a complex interior life. First of all, she carries the burden of a loveless, abusive marriage. Delia has experienced disillusionment as profoundly as any white Hemingway protagonist. Second, she possesses a certain power, since she is the breadwinner in her family and owns their house. While the narrator says that Delia had previously been quiet and shy, in this story Delia realizes her own power and stands up to her husband. But even this change isn’t a flat, 180-degree flip: while refusing to be dominated by Sykes anymore, she still “attempt[s] a timid friendliness” (568 ). Delia is at once strong, timid, fed-up, devout, and somewhat murderous, a far cry from the banjo-picking and “intellectual” African American stereotypes Hurston mentions in her essay. Hurston successfully gives readers the kind of minority character that helps build bridges between races instead of widening the gap.

What biographical overtones are evident in The Man Who Was Almost a Man? How was Wright’s adolescence similar to Dave’s, and are these similarities significant?

In “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” Dave Saunders experiences a coming-of-age struggle. After sneaking off to work with his two-dollar gun, Dave accidentally shoots a mule belonging to his employer, Jim Hawkins. Though he avoids serious punishment, he will have to work for two years to pay off the price of the mule. To Dave, this situation is unbearable, since everyone he knows thinks of him as a boy (especially after the mule incident), and he is certain that he is a man. Fueled by anger at their patronizing attitude (“something hot seemed to turn over inside him each time he remembered how they had laughed”), Dave impetuously hops onto a passing train with nothing but the empty gun in his pocket (1375).

Dave’s directionless flight bears a striking resemblance to the author’s own life. In “Reading Fiction,” Richard Wright describes his own desire to flee from the southern life of his adolescence: “I was now running more away from something than toward something. But that did not matter to me. My mood was: I’ve got to get away; I can’t stay here” (1570). He too clung to a symbol that to him represented the manhood and freedom he craved. Dave’s symbol was the gun, and Wright’s was books. Just as Dave placed all his hopes and dreams on the idea of a gun without caring about its type or quality, Wright acknowledges that his “belief in books had risen more out of a sense of desperation than from any abiding conviction of their ultimate value” (1571).

The similarities between Wright’s own experience and Dave’s story are too obvious to ignore. But what significance might they have to a reading of the story? After reading Wright’s essay, I think he might have intended to make Dave more sympathetic than he initially comes off. While reading the story, I thought of Dave as kind of a stupid kid who doesn’t know what he wants and who only cares about himself. However, if Wright himself was much like Dave in his youth, he surely didn’t intend to skewer Dave’s confusion. Wright testifies that, despite his harsh upbringing, “it had never occurred to [him] that [he] was in any way an inferior being” (1572). Perhaps this story is part of Dave’s journey to discovering the self-worth that Wright had intrinsically felt.

How do both stories make use of local language?

Both Sweat and The Man Who Was Almost a Man utilize the distinctive language of the southern United States, almost to an indecipherable degree. “Ahm ol enough o hava gun,” Dave says to himself (1367). “You knows how skeered Ah is of snakes,” Delia tells Sykes (564). It takes the reader a while to get accustomed to the different spellings and pronunciations of words, but the language is necessary to create the appropriate setting and tone for each story. The contrast between the colloquial dialogue and the academically correct narration, Charters mentions in the introduction to Wright’s story, highlights the differences between the lives of the white and black characters, as well as between black characters and white readers. Flannery O’Connor, in “Writing Short Stories,” advises a group of Southern writers not to avoid the use of local language and mannerisms. According to O’Connor “an idiom characterizes a society, and when you ignore the idiom, you are very likely ignoring the whole social fabric that could make a meaningful character” (1624). The social context of today’s two stories is vital to their understanding, and both authors successfully place their characters in authentic environments via their speech patterns. How much less would we know about Dave Saunders if his dialogue and inner thoughts had been written in standard English? Would Delia’s exasperation with Sykes have rung as true if it had been grammatically correct? While the unconventional spelling makes reading a little more difficult, I think it is necessary for conveying the setting and characterization of these stories.