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Conflict
The sacred notions of love held by Janie are dashed when she is compelled into a marriage that was not based on love and she rushed into a second marriage in order to escape from her first marriage. Janie's first marriage hit the rocks as a result of not having feelings for the man (Logan Killicks).She married Logan Killicks after being pressurized by Nanny. Janie got married to second man Joe Starks but the marriage become terrible for her since Joe was a very jealous man. Joe ordered her around and never allowed her to engage in social interaction such as delivering speech to the townspeople. Joe never allowed Janie to present her opinion. oth marriages were devastating to Janie and therefore her quest for true love became a mirage. She however soldiered on and met her third husband.
Complication
Janie then met her third husband who he considered…
Bibliography
Publications
Ashe, Bertram D., "Why don't he Like My Hair?": Constructing African-American Standards
of Beauty in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Watching God. African-American Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, 1995
Awkward, Michael "The Inaudible Voice of it All': Silence, Voice, and Action in Their Eyes
They know he beats Delia enough to "kill three women" (352). He also has a reputation for cheating on his wife. He is such a despicable person that Old Man Anderson believes he should be killed. Delia seems to be in a losing situation. Her husband hates her and there seems to be nothing she can do. Her strength is overlooked to a certain extent. Through it all, she manages to work and work hard. She retains her dignity when others might have given up.
"Sweat" is really about karma. Delia works hard and she is the only one in the household who does work hard. Sykes is a bum and a moocher. He built a life with Delia through intimidation and regular beatings. e know that she is and he is accustomed to her "habitual meekness" (350). Sykes has been getting away with mistreating Delia for some time and…
Work Cited
Zora Neale Hurston. "Sweat." Textbook. City: Name of Publisher. Year.
Zoa Neale Huston epesent Delia and Sykes in the fist pat of the stoy?
Sykes is clealy a sadist of some sot. When Delia is fightened by the bullwhip, thinking it's a snake and tiggeing he phobia, Sykes laughs at he and does not cae how much he fightens he. It sets up the fact that Sykes will attempt to kill Delia (and fail) by the end of the stoy.
What change can you see in Delia's behavio towads Sykes in the fist pat of the stoy? Discuss what this could tell you about Zoa Neale Huston's attitude towads gende.
Delia stands up to Sykes, seemingly fo the fist time, by telling him that it's he sweat that pays fo eveything. This is tue. Because Delia is doing all the wok while Sykes eaps all the benefits, and sneaks off to copulate with his mistess Betha, it is clea that…
references remind us that Christianity is important to African-Americans because of its messages about the meaning of suffering and slavery (and ultimate deliverance from slavery). A comparison to Jesus reminds us that there can be meaning and redemption even in suffering.
7. Comment on Delia's confrontation with her husband in the third part of the story. In what way (s) could this be important in the story?
By this point Delia is willing to admit "Ah hates you Sykes" (Hurston 7). She is coming to an awareness of how miserable her own situation is -- and it presumably lets Sykes know she might leave him.
8. Towards the end of the story, we see Delia "climbing up
She contemplates her life as an independent woman rather than as her role as a wife, and resists developing another relationship. Her independence is unconventional, and Phoebe tells her so. Unmarried women do not have a place in a traditional southern society. Gender roles are strictly proscribed in Southern society. The way the community perceives Janie is a continual theme in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Social conventions restrict the role of women, preventing them from being self-sufficient and independent. Janie seems unable to find a man who treats her as her equal. Through Janie, Hurston suggests that gender roles are socialized. Janie longs to be free of restrictive gender norms.
Janie eventually falls in love with Tea Cake, which raises issues related to gender and class. The townsfolk disapprove of Janie's relationship with Tea Cake because he is poor and has a low social status. Janie does not mind…
John Dos Passos and Zora Neale Hurston Literature eview
"From the 42nd Parallel: Big Bill" by John Dos Passos
"From their eyes were watching God: the yellow mule" by Zora Neale Hurston
How do John Passos and Zora Neale Hurston feature common working American in their work?
It is said that the best travel writing isn't so much about the destination as it is about the journey. The destination serves no more than an interesting backdrop. Likewise, all the literature about the life of African-Americans and Americans is not just what they have achieved or not achieved in their life, but it's about the history they have created during their journey of pain, misery, comfort, glory or misfortune. After going through the literature of both the authors in their work named "From the 42nd Parallel: Big Bill" by John Dos Passos and "From their eyes were watching God: the yellow…
References
CFlores, (2011) The Yellow Mule in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Retrieved through:
http://youthvoices.net/discussion/yellow-mule-their-eyes-were-watching-god
Passos, Dos (1954) The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson, dust jacket. First edition, 1954,
Doubleday
Self-Realization and Identity in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God
Zora Neale Hurston explores the idea of a young black woman's search for identity in her novel Their Eyes ere atching God. Hurston emphasizes the idea that women, specifically during the twentieth century when this novel was written, need to find their independence and identity without being under the control of men. According to Pondrom, Their Eyes ere atching God has been analyzed as a quest for self-fulfillment or self-identity (181). Bernard also claims that "interpretations of the novel have focused, and continue to focus, on Janie's psychological, emotional, physical, folkloric, feminist, linguistic, and spiritual self" (2). The main character, Janie, is on a quest to find her freedom and her unique identity. Her primary avenues for her self-realization are her marriages to three men -- Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake. Hurston embodies Janie as a strong character…
Works Cited
Bernard, Patrick S. "The Cognitive Construction of the Self in Hurston's Their Eyes Were
Watching God." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.2 (2007):
docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol9/iss2/5>.
Peer-reviewed article about the construction of self in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Justice Served
Justice is served in Zora Neal Hurston's "Sweat." The writer shows the central character as a person who is subjected to a great deal of pain through her marriage with Sykes and thus makes his death seem less of a sad incident. This episode actually frees Delia and makes it possible for her to actually consider life without him -- a lifestyle that would involve her doing what she pleases rather than to be pressured by her husband. "She could scarcely reach the Chinaberry tree, where she waited in the growing heat while inside she knew the cold river was creeping up and up to extinguish that eye which must know by now that she knew." (Neal Hurston)
e learn immediately that Delia is the worker in the family. In spite of his attitude and in spite of the fact that he generally employs an authoritarian position when…
Hurston and Hughes
The United States has a history of racist policies towards African-Americans and other minorities. The predominant ruling class of this country has always been wealthy white Christian men. In order to sustain this position of power, all other minorities whether those be based on skin color, gender, or religion have been marginalized and classified as other. This othering has engendered a feeling in those people of the marginalized groups a feeling that in the United States, particularly in the first one hundred years of the nation's history, those othered people have minimal importance and are inferior to the people in power. riters Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were both part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and their works reflected the mentality of the oppressed African-Americans living in the United States at a time when they were still a marginalized people. Using her short story…
Works Cited:
Hughes, Langston. "I, Too." Print.
Hughes, Langston. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Print.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "How it Feels to be Colored Me." Print.
Sweat, by Zora Neal Hurston. Specifically, it will contain a biography of the writer and criticism of her work "Sweat," along with another story.
HUSTON'S "SWEAT" AND ANOTHE STOY
Hurston was born on January 7, 1891. She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all-black town incorporated in the United States. "She received her early education at the Hungerford School, modeled after Tuskegee Institute, with its guiding principles of discipline and hard work; Hungerford's founders had studied with Tuskegee's founder Booker T. Washington" (Hill XVII). An avid reader, she soon learned to love myth and lore, and teachers and friends encouraged her love of books and reading. When she attended college, she majored in English, and began writing for several journals. She wrote "Sweat" in 1926. She also studied anthropology, and traveled to the South to research black folk tales and voodoo. She also wrote plays and journal…
References
Hesse-Biber, Sharlene, Christina Gilmartin, and Robin Lydenberg, eds. Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hill, Lynda Marion. Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale. Washington: Howard University, 1996.
Hurston, Zora Neal. "Sweat." Florida Gulf Coast University. 30 July 1996. 8 Dec. 2002. http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/hurston.htm#sweat
Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Perennial Classics, 1999.
Gender Identity/Male-Female Roles and Power Relationship. In a discussionof characters from "The Awakening" by Despite the fact that there are numerous differences existent in the novels The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Light in August by illiam Faulkner, and Their Eyes ere atching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there are some poignant similarities between these three works of literature. They were all written in the years directly preceding or occurring subsequent to the arrival of the 20th century, and they all deal with issues related to race (albeit extremely indirectly in Chopin's book). Moreover, all of these pieces chronicle definite challenges presented to women due to notions of gender and society that were pressing during this historical epoch. Some of the more salient issues affecting women during this time period, such as marriage and motherhood and the degree of autonomy (or dearth thereof) women had in living their lives is explored…
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Project Gutenberg. Web. 2006. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/160/160-h/160-h.htm
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Collins. 1937. Print.
Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York: Vintage. 1972. Print.
Racism and Society -- Literary Comparison
Zora Neal Hurston's heartfelt essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928) presents the experiences of a young girl as remembered by an adult black woman in the early 20th century. Her narrative is simultaneously disarming and sad, because the good cheer and humor seems to belie justified resentment toward white merican society. She presents an image of cheerful acceptance of racial inequality and the persistent social exclusion and discrimination more than half a century since slavery was abolished. Her tone when relating heartbreaking memories is reminiscent of the "everything happens for a reason" mentality and it seems to be concealing repressed resentment.
There is a glimpse of the anger bubbling under the surface of cheerfulness when the author describes dancing "wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark…
A more self-perceptive example from the same genre is Just Walk on By, by Brent Staples (1986). The author obviously encountered many of the same types of social experiences as Hurston, and, like her, he used metaphorical humor very effectively to convey recollections of painful memories and realizations. The actual social dynamics that Staples describes as a professional journalist are not substantially different from those detailed from the perspective of a child and a young woman. Where Staples and Hurston might differ the most is that Hurston seems to deny her hurt and her anger whereas Staples acknowledges throughout that the social circumstances (still) substantially dictating the lives of many black Americans are part of the very serious social problem of racism and prejudice. Staples accepts his situation, and does so with humor, grace and charm, but he also uses each of those approaches to express his rightful indignation about racism.
Examples would include Staples's first words, "My first victim was a woman," dripping with sarcasm given there was no crime and no victim. He describes making sure that he was not following a woman inappropriately close just sharing the street with her before ran away from him: "As I swung onto the avenue behind her, there seemed to be a discreet, uninflammatory distance between us. Not so." His use of uninflammatory subtly suggests the viciousness of the prejudice about black men and white women. His "Not So" is another dry reminder that there is no acceptable distance behind a white women that a black man can walk comfortably without arousing fear and suspicion.
To express similar ideas, Hurston describes slavery as the price of civilization, but also as something that has provided a "chance for glory" and a "world to be won and nothing to be lost." She says "It is thrilling to think -- to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national stage, with the spectators not knowing whether to laugh or to weep." Staples would probably have written something like "affirmative action is helpful and well deserved; knowing that I'm the most likely person in my graduating class to be wrongfully arrested is not as helpful."
Zora Neale Hurston's story "Sweat" the development of the characters is the most important element of this particular story. Delia, the main character, is a woman who is presented as a victim who has to put up with the constant domestic violence from her husband Sykes. It is those two characters that make up the entire story and it is them who define the meaning of this story. I debated whether the point-of-view would be an element of importance, but decided that without the character's introduction into the story, their point-of-views would not have made a difference. The ending of the story the irony of the characters development since Sykes death was in a sense his own fault. "Delia's work-worn knees crawled over the Earth," shows her hard dedication to whatever it was that she had to do. Regardless of her social situation, she worked hard because she knew she…
Tale as Told by another Character: Sweat - Zora Neale Hurston
Sweat
The spring came along with its flare of sunny afternoons in Florida on that particulate Sunday afternoon. For a given number of women in the small village populated by the black persons would be thinking of what the family would have for supper. However, for Delia Jones, she was still in bed, thinking of her previous life when she was still young and pretty. Then the thought of her poverty and suffering stricken husband hit her mind, and the trail of cursing and lamentations flowed from her mind; and eventually found their way into verbal words oozing from her mouth like the waters of the spring streams of the Amazon. Sure, this situation was getting to the peak of the humiliation and underpinning of poverty and suffering that she could take.
Delia sat up in her bed of…
References
Anders Bjorklund, Donna K. Ginther, and Marianne Sundstrom. "Family Structure and Child
Outcomes in the U.S.A. And Sweden." Journal of Population Economics 20.1 (2007):
183. ProQuest. Web. 24 Aug. 2013.
Hurston, Zora N. Novels and Stories. New York, NY: Libr. Of America, 1995. Print.
Janie in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God and Celie in Alice alker's the Color Purple
The main character and narrator of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes ere atching God (1937), Janie, has much in common with the narrator and main character Celie within Alice alker's novel The Color Purple (1982). Each speaks authentically, in her own voice: the too-often ignored voice of an African-American female in a white male-dominated society. For both characters, however, authenticity of voice has come at great cost, and through the surmounting of numerous obstacles, the greatest of these being the fears and the lack of confidence within themselves. I will discuss several common characteristics of Celie and Janie within these two novels by female African-American authors.
As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. suggests, fear and hesitancy by African-Americans, male and female alike, to speak authentically, has deep roots: "For just over two…
Works Cited
Berlant, Lauren. "Race, Gender, and Nation in The Color Purple" in Modern
Critical Interpretations: Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Harold Bloom (Ed.).
Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House, 2000. 3-11. Questia Online Library.
Retrieved May 22, 2005, from:
This renunciation, depending on one's perspective, represents either a willful act of sacrifice or a selfish act of disobedience. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, however, frames this problematic deed in neutral terms in her analysis of the text, which focuses on its ambivalence toward the role of ancestral knowledge in identity formation. Paquet (2009) asserts that Janie "repudiates the values of her surrogate parents in her conscious quest for selfhood" (p.501). She also suggests that ancestral knowledge operates merely as a means to "psychic wholeness" in the novels and argues that the text is successful in exploring "the divorce from ancestral roots that accompanies conventional notions of success" (p. 500) Indeed, this tension between ancestral knowledge and individualistic goals is why Janie has to grapple with interpreting the nature of the knowledge imparted in her moments of coming to consciousness. Specifically, she wants to interpret the mystery conferred to her through the…
Works Cited
Jones, Sharon L. A Critical Companion to Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Reference to her Life and Work (New York: Facts on File, 2009)
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Print.
Morrison, Toni. "Intimate Things in Place': A Conversation with Toni Morrison." The Massachusetts Review. By Robert Stepto. 18.3 (1977): 473-89. JSTOR. Web. 9 December 2009.
Ramsey, William M. "The Compelling Ambivalence of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." The Southern Literary Journal. 27.1 (1994): 36-50. JSTOR. Web. 26 October 2010.
Magic as a Central Theme in "Moses, Man of the Mountain"
There has been magic in the world since time began. Even in the scientific world that has little to do with metaphysics, magic has a significant place because how can a scientist explain the tiny bit of matter that became the universe unless they do so with magic. Throughout history it has had a significant place because there are many things about this world that people still cannot explain, so they reason that there must be some unseen force behind it. Zora Neale Hurston saw this in the Biblical story of Moses, as have many others. He was able to do wondrous things with the staff he carried, the rod of power (Hurston), because of its magic. This paper discusses a central theme, magic, as it is developed in Hurston's book "Moses: Man of the Mountain" from the perspective…
Works Cited
Elrod, Eileen R. "Moses and the Egyptian: Religious Authority in Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative." African-American Review 35.3 (2001): 409-427. Web.
Hurston, Zora N. Moses: Man of the Mountain. New York: Harper Collins, 2008. Print.
Mark, D. "Moses, Man of the Mountain -- Zora Neale Hurston." A Noble Theme, 2011. Web.
Osahon, Naiwu. "The Jews Lied Against Africa to Ascend." Modern Ghana, 2009. Web.
pain when it comes to being different. In both Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" and Richard Rodriguez's " Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" the two writers discuss the differences they come upon that molded their principles and sentiments as they grew older. For Hurston hers was about being of a dissimilar race than her environment. For Rodriguez, his was about being different by communicating in another language. Both felt the effect it had on not just their lives, but also their thoughts as they matured into adulthood.
Rodriguez and Hurston viewed their differences as some sort of handicap. Each author imagined themselves in some way as being handicapped in life, of either not comprehending the language or not comprehending being of a different race. However, both authors found a way to overcome their personal struggles through turning these thoughts and struggles into growing…
Jim Crow Florida:
Views expressed by James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston
This paper will examine the lives and beliefs of James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston as well as exploring each of these individuals interpretation of class and gender in relation to race. This paper will answer the question as to whether their personal reflections of Jim Crow Florida were similar or different and how so.
Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, dramatist, folklorist, and anthropologist was born in, Eatonville Florida, on the day of the 7th, she "heard tell," of January in 1903. It is fairly certain that she was the fifth child born in a total of eight to her parents. That which Hurston, "heard tell" were her brothers different versions of her date of birth appearing to her that none of the brothers actually remembered exactly when she was actually born.
Her father, after her mother…
Bibliography
Glassman, S. & Seidel, K. eds. "Zora in Florida" Orlando: U. Of Central
Florida P, 1991 [Online] Website avaliable at http://www.literaryhistory.com/20thC/Hurston.htm
Learning Adventures in Citizenship " Zora Neale Hurston" [Online] available at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/laic/episode5/topic2/e5_t2_s4-zn.html
Learning Adventures in Citizenship "James Weldon Johnson" [Online] available at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/laic/episode5/topic2/e5_t2_s5-jw.html
Horizon in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God
The horizon is the line which forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky. The horizon is as far as you can see. The horizon appears to be the furthest point you can reach, but is not a place you can actually travel to. The horizon blurs at the line between earth and sky. The horizon is always present, no matter where you are or which direction you are facing. The horizon is where the sun rises and where the sun sets, representing a process coming full circle. These are all features of the horizon and they are all relevant to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God.
The novel suggests the importance of the horizon because it begins with it and ends with it. In the opening of the novel, Hurston writes:
Ships at a distance have every…
Works Cited
Barbeito, P.F. "Making Generations' in Jacobs, Larsen, and Hurston: A Genealogy of Black Women's Writing." American Literature 70.2 (1998): 365-95.
Bond, C. "Language, Sign, and Difference in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. K.A. Appiah & Henry Louis Gates. New York: Amistad Press, 1993: 204-217.
Hurston, Z.N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
Lillios, A. "The Monstropolous Beast': The Hurricane in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Southern Quarterly 36.3 (1998): 89-93.
Community and the Impact on the Individual
How do individuals exist as part of a community and what does this means to a person's individuality? This is a key question explored by Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes ere atching God and by Carson McCullers in Ballad Of The Sad Cafe. Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers both include a setting that represents the community. In Their Eyes ere atching God the setting is the porch, while in Ballad Of The Sad Cafe the setting is the cafe. The two settings both represent people existing as part of a community, rather than individually. The two settings also represent the conflicts that occur because people exist as part of a community. Overall, Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers both show the conflict that occurs as an individual tries to align their own needs with the needs of the larger community. In…
Works Cited
Fowler, Doreen. "Carson McCullers's Primal Scenes: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43 (Spring 2002): 260-71.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
Johnson, Barbara. "Metaphor, Metonymy and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1986: 157-73.
LitKicks. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 2005. Retrieved April 26, 2005. URL: http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/page.jsp?what=Harlem%20& ; who=picasso
prejudice is bad actually convince the reader?
A Buddhist monk, famous among his peers for the calm and serenity he constantly expressed, received the visit of a young man one day. The latter had come intent on disturbing the monk's peace and reputation and began attacking the master with a conglomeration of verbal expressions that even the foulest of men would have bowed their head in shame. Each word that came out of the young man's mouth was one more colorful than the other. And no remark that he addressed to the monk had anything but a pejorative sense of direction. As the young man went on to gesticulate vividly in a body language that matched his most "candid" acts of expressing, the Buddhist monk did nothing but gently smiled, causing the young man to build up more steam. Exasperated and drained out of energy, the man finally gave up…
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. "Graduation." Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
Hurston, Zora. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
Kincaid, Jamaica. "On Seeing England For the First Time." Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
Staples, Brent. "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space." Web. 7 Nov. 2013.
Again, we see a strong, confident woman in Janie. She is also mature. Hattenhauer maintains that we can see this in they way Janie understands certain truths about life. She states that the "tragic truth, Janie has learned, is something no one could have told her, and something she cannot tell anyone" (Hattenhauer). hile Janie may be in denial of her immediate death, it is clear that she knows it will come to her sooner or later. hen she tells Phoeby that so many individuals never see the light at all, we know that "she sees the light at last: her fate is to wait and see if God's will is to take her life" (Hattenhauer). This is proof that Janie has emerged a strong, independent woman.
Their Eyes ere atching God is a glorious and painful story of one woman's discovery of her own voice. Janie evolves as a…
Works Cited
Hattenhauer, Darryl. "The Death of Janie Crawford: Tragedy and the American Dream in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.'" GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed April 05, 2008.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. 1998.
SEAT: a Case for Self-Defense
Literature plays many roles in our lives; it entertains us, frightens us, and thrills us, but if written well it also teaches us and gives us a greater understanding of ourselves and human nature as a whole. hen an author puts pen to paper he should have a story to tell or information he feels he must impart to the world at large so that the reader has a greater understanding of the life that surrounds him. Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston does that very well. Delia, the protagonist, attempts to live a moral and upright life, never dreaming of taking a life. Yet ultimately to save her own life she must use self-defense at the expense of her husband's life. Following this theme Hurston uses religious symbolism throughout her story to emphasize good and evil and the effect our choices have on our lives.…
Works Cited
Borkat, Roberta F.S. "The Evil of Goodness: Sentimental Morality in The London Merchant." Studies in Philology 76.3 (1979): 288-312. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 15 Dec. 2010.
Harold, James. "Infected by evil." Philosophical Explorations 8.2 (2005): 173-187. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 15 Dec. 2010.
Hurd, Myles Raymond. "What Goes Around Comes Around: Characterization, Climax, and Closure in Hurston's 'Sweat'." Langston Hughes Review 12.2 (Fall 1993): 7-15. Rpt. In Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 80. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Dec. 2010.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Sweat." E. Fictions. (2003). Ed. Joseph F. Trimmer, Wade Jennings, and Annette Patterson. London: Heinle & Heinle. Print.
Hate
There are a number of poignant similarities between Mama in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" and Delia in Zora Neale Hurston's short story "Sweat." Both women are matriarch figures, African-American, and live in rural surroundings. As such, they each have a healthy dose of what is referred to as common sense -- although to other cultures and outsiders they may talk and act like simple, ignorant country bumpkins. Perhaps it is this perception of the two that makes them so accommodating to the will of others. But the principle similarity between each of these women is that she has a threshold for her tolerance level, and once it is broached she acts in a way that is belied by her simple, rustic manners.
There are domestic issues plaguing each of the matriarchs in their respective tales, which substantially contribute to the point at which they refuse to tolerate…
Racism
Personal anecdotes related to the experience of prejudice are usually the most effective means of convincing an audience that prejudice exists, and that it is painful. Moreover, an effective author connects the issue of prejudice to broader issues that all readers can relate to regardless of their personal experiences. Thus, it is important to show how the society suffers from prejudice too. African-American authors are in the position of sharing personal anecdotes about prejudice from within the framework of what is supposed to be a free, open, and tolerance society. Because of the paradoxes in American society, prejudice seems even more terrible and ironic. Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, and Brent Staples are all African-American writers who offer convincing arguments about prejudice.
Maya Angelou's autobiographical essay entitled "Graduation" is about her high school graduation in a segregated public school in Arkansas. Angelou's story is like that of other black…
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. "Graduation." "Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay." DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, (2008).335-342. Retrieved online: http://ap-english-language.phoenix.wikispaces.net/file/view/Maya+Angelou+Graduation.pdf .
Hurston, Zora. "How It Feels To Be Colored Me." "Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay." DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, (2008). 159-161. Retrieved online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/grand-jean/hurston/chapters/how.html .
Staples, Brent. "Just Walk On By." "Occasions for Writing: Evidence, Idea, Essay." DiYanni, Robert, and Pat C. Hoy. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle, (2008). 153-155. Retrieved online: http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/rspriggs/files/staples%20just%20walk%20on%20by%20text.pdf.
Prejudice
hat is it like to experience prejudice on a daily basis? Many, if not most, whites do not know what it is like to be a member of an underclass. It is important to understand the structural elements of prejudice in a society. It is also important to understand how to deal with prejudice on a personal level. There are many ways to deal with prejudice. One is to fight back, and direct anger and frustration outward. The problem with this method is that fighting back sometimes entails physical aggression, and can be harmful to self and others. Another method of dealing with prejudice is to internalize the sense of inferiority and come to believe in the stereotypes and biased beliefs. The problem with this method is that it only promotes prejudice and allows for its perpetuation. Furthermore, internalizing inferiority can lead to problems like mental illness and disharmony…
Works Cited
Angelou, Maya. "Graduation." Retrieved online: http://ap-english-language.phoenix.wikispaces.net/file/view/Maya+Angelou+Graduation.pdf
Hurston, Zora Neale. "How it Feels to be Colored Me." Retrieved online: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/grand-jean/hurston/chapters/how.html
Staples, Brent. "Just Walk on By." Retrieved online: http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/rspriggs/files/staples%20just%20walk%20on%20by%20text.pdf
men Janie's life influence: Logan Jody Tea Cake. 5-8 specific details quoted
Their Eyes Were Watching God
African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston has made a strong presence within the inter-war period and her most impressive book was Their eyes were watching God, the life story of Janie Crawford. Janie's life was dramatically marked by three men -- all of which were her husbands, at one point in her life.
Janie's first husband is Logan Killicks. Logan is an older man who became interested in Janie as a companion to running his farm. He was in fact looking for a wife to help around the house and help him keep the farm. The marriage had been arranged by Janie's grandmother, Nanny, who had been raped and had seen the same tragedy happen to her daughter. Janie was the result of two generations of rapes and Nanny was trying to ensure that…
References:
Awkward, M., 1990, New essays on Their eyes were watching God, Cambridge University Press
Hurston, Z.N., 1937, Their eyes were watching God, University of Illinois Press
Clash of Identities
Is a private identity a curse or a blessing? Is it necessary or valid to hide who you really are? According to "Aria: Memoir of a bilingual childhood" by Richard Rodriguez and "How it feels to be colored me" by Zora Hurston, creating a private identity and leaving your public identity behind, may be necessary, especially living, growing or entering an environment where it is not that accepting to cultural differences, there is probably not other culture during these times such as the exchange students from the Islam culture from the Azerbaijan State that can relate. "You need to study abroad! In the United States!" are two sentences many high school seniors, that do not live in the United States, hear from their mothers, fathers and counselors. There is a current obsession for children to get educated in the United States. The Azerbaijan State has gone as…
Works Cited
Author's last name, first name. Title of Book. City: Publisher, Year.
Author's last name, first name. "Title of Article." Title of Publication Date Published: Pages.
Author's last name, first name. "Title of Online Article." Title of Online Publication Version (Year Published): Pages. Date Accessed .
"Title of Article." Title of Media. CD-ROM. City: Publisher, Year.
Some artists, such as Aaron Douglas, captured the feeling of Africa in their work because they wanted to show their ancestry through art. Others, like Archibald J. Motley Jr., obtained their inspiration from the surroundings in which they lived in; where jazz was at the forefront and African-Americans were just trying to get by day-to-day like any other Anglo-American. Additionally, some Black American artists felt more comfortable in Europe than they did in America. These artists tended to paint landscapes of different European countries. Most of the latter, however, were ostracized for this because many black politicians felt they should represent more of their African culture in their work (Campbell 1994, Powell and Bailey).
Whatever the case, most African-American artists during this period of time had a similarity that tied them together. Black art was often very colorful and vivacious; having an almost rhythmic feel to it. This was appropriate…
REFERENCES
Allego, D. "Margaret Walker: Biographical Note." Modern American Poetry. 1997. Cited in:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/walker/bio.htm
Beaulieu, E. Writing African-American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and About
Women of Color. Greenwood Press, 2006.
As an anthropologist, as she observed hoodoo practices of Southern blacks and became such a hoodoo priestess herself, she embraced subjectivity. (79) historian and woman ahead of her time, Hurston thrived not only, out of necessity on the physical margins of academia, but also on the professional margins of 'writing history.' But her techniques not only "became spaces of perspective" and "turned black folk" into legitimate subjects. Her perspective also made for a better writing of American history in general because it included the voices of marginalized figures. (118) Zora Neale Hurston took advantage of her "heightened penchant" for interdisciplinary study "to forge some of the first substantive academic research on African-Americans" but highlighted the need for interdisciplinary and openly subjective historical study in general, particularly of those peoples deemed to be marginal to mainstream 'written' American society and history. (138)
Hurston studied Black culture partly to recover her own…
Works Cited
Des Jardins, Julie. Women and the Historical Enterprise: the Female American Historian. University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Multi-Ethnic Literature
The focus of this work is to examine multi-ethnic literature and focus on treating humans like farm animals that can be manipulated for various purposes. Multi-Ethnic literature offers a glimpse into the lives of the various writers of this literature and into the lives of various ethnic groups and the way that they view life and society and their experiences. Examined in this study are various writers including Tupac Shakar, Dorothy West, Petry, and others.
A Rose Grows From Concrete
One might be surprised to learn that Tupac Shakar was the writer of many sensitive poems. Upon his death in 1996, Tupac's mother released a collection of poems entitled 'A Rose Grows From Concrete', which includes various love poems among the 72 poems in the collection. Tupac writes:
Things that make hearts break.
Pretty smiles
Deceiving laughs
And people who dream with their eyes open
Lonely children
Unanswered…
Bibliography
Jones, SL (2012) Rereading the Harlem Renaissance: Race, Class and Gender in the Fiction of Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy West. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2002. Retrieved from: http://books.google.com/books?id=NeRtokbeXDEC&dq=social,+political+and+economic+oppression,+created+a+climate+in+which+Dorothy+West+felt+compelled+to+refrain+from+completing+or+actively+pursuing+a+publisher+for+The+Wedding.+West%E2%80%99s+nearly+half-a-century+space+between+publication+of+The+Living+Is+Easy+ (1948)+and+The+Wedding+(1995)+signifies+the+complexities+of+African+American+literature+and+the+debate+over+which+aesthetics%E2%80%94folk,+bourgeois,+and+proletarian%E2%80%94should+take+preeminence+at+a+given+time&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Edwards, Walter. "From poetry to rap: the lyrics of Tupac Shakur. " The Western Journal of Black Studies. 26.2 (Summer 2002): 61(10). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. College of Alameda. 17 Sept. 2008
Hale, JC (1985) The Jailing of Cecelia Hale. University of New Mexico Press. Retrieved from: http://books.google.com/books?id=eW6RGpubQ9UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Pat Mora (2012) Artist Page. Retrieved from: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/mora_pat.php
Money destroys and is the root of all evil, Hurston implies. Far from bringing people together, the coveting of money almost drives two happy people apart.
However, it is important to note that, while not rich, Missie and Joe are not impoverished. They have enough money to eat reasonably well, to go out for ice cream, and for small luxuries. Hurston is careful to note that the couple has already saved some money to support the coming child. To live in absolute poverty, in the midst of despair, is a very different matter. That is the life situation of the title character of "Sonny's Blues." The title of the story, which refers to 'blues music', underlines how the blues are a powerful symbol of hope and despair. Sonny's love of music, is what still remains 'good' about him, what still gives him hope, even when he is an addict. "I…
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." From Literature and Ourselves. Longman, 2008.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "The Gilded Six Bits." From Literature and Ourselves. Longman, 2008.
Fiction has the unique attribute of being able to be relatable to a person regardless of its implications to real life. No matter how bizarre a plot or character might be, it is the meaning behind everything that is obvious that makes the interpretation of stories unique and applicable to the human experience. This is greatly demonstrated in a collection of quotations from a variety of stories that all share one commonality: survival. No matter how tough things go, and no matter what life's circumstances can be, survival is the ultimate goal, and these stories all bring together that philosophy in a variety of ways, but all coming up with the same equal concept.
Nothing brings on this notion of survival more than Zora Neale Hurston does in her story "Sweat." Life is all about how hard one works in order to be able to excel and in order to…
African-Americans: Harlem Renaissance and the Black Power Movement
History does show that America has been a nation that has been seeing itself do some changes that have been happening over and over again. Also, America is recognized as being the home of the free and the brave. However, this nation that is considered to be beautiful has not at all times been this way. America has had to gone through a lot of ups and many downs to become the beauty that many look at today. Racial discrimination had a very strong part in American society. Although today, there are still racial dissimilarities. These racial dissimilarities are not as bad as they were in the back in the days of slavery and afterwards. Two of the main explanations that positive steps have been made in the direction of removing racial disparity is the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Power Movement.…
Countee Cullen was another individual who played a part in the Harlem Renaissance. His works attracted critical attention at New York University. COLOR which was his first collection of poems, (1925), was printed before he completed school. Countee was recognized as being a part of the fresh generation of new authors that came out in the renaissance. Countee in 1927, printed two more books of verse - The Ballad of the Brown Girl and Copper Sun - and revised a collection of Negro poetry called Caroling Dusk. By 1928, he was the receiver of the Guggenheim comradeship and made the decision to do some work in Paris. In Paris, Cullen found a way to live for two years and went through fairly any racial discrimination there (Lewis, 2011).
During the era of the renaissance men were not the only active writers but women played a huge part as well. For instance, Zora Neale Hurston was a female that was known for being flamboyant and a colorful figure that brought in a lot of disagreement whenever and wherever she came on the scene. Hurston was a significant African-American woman author of the Harlem Renaissance. Also, she received the most acknowledgement for achievements and was the most productive of the women in the Renaissance era. Different the other authors of the Renaissance, Hurston was not really considered to be a writer by training. Moderately, she was an anthropologist and was trained to observe. This training is what makes her literary contributions so unique. Hurston developed skills in careful observation, recording such observations and presenting them intact to a reading audience. In this sense, she was more than just another writer. She was a folklorist as well. In this was her strength.
There were many achievements during the "roaring twenties" by African-Americans. They excelled in all forms of art during the time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Without this period of time, our modern day arts could have been quite different.
Harlem Renaissance
How does literature contribute to history, and what does the Harlem Renaissance reveal about U.S. History?
Modern U.S. History
Content Learning Objective (content and product):
e.g., students will be able to [content analysis] by [product and activity].
What historical content will students know at the end of the lesson?
At the end of the lesson students will know the literary significance of the Harlem Renaissance within a historical context. Specifically, they will understand how the literary aspirations realized through the Harlem Renaissance contributed to United States history in terms of literature and the fine arts.
State using Formal Objective format.
Historical Thinking Learning Objective (thinking skill and product):
e.g., students will be able to weigh [historical thinking learning objective] by [activity].
Describe what students will know and be able to do at the end of the lesson related to your chosen historical thinking skill.
The students will be…
Synthesis: This quote is similar to a comment Nick makes about the Tom and Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gatsby: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made" (188). Though the Buchanans are not exactly like Mama Elena in their motives, and completely unlike her in their "carelessness" because Mama Elena's destructive impulses are controlled and purposeful, both quotes demonstrate the selfishness and amount of control that the characters involved like to exert on the others around them.
Dialectic Journal #2
Quote: "Each person has to discover what will set off these explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes…
Given that Christianity tended to view history as progressive, and Christ's sacrifice and the event of Christendom being the ultimate apex of earlier civilization, the past was often seen as an inferior precursor to the present in a particularly judgmental light -- hence the persecution of certain groups as infidels and outsiders. It is the historian and the anthropologist's duty to unpack such cultural assumptions and to view the world through a less morally-clouded and self-justifying lens.
References
Episode 2: Conquest. (2005). Guns, Germs & Steel. PBS. Retrieved May 31, 2011 at http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode2.html
Anthropological research project: Celebrating women anthropologists
URL: http://anthropology.usf.edu/women/index.html
his website catalogues the research of famous women anthropologists throughout the ages. It has a specifically feminist slant, and details the research these women engaged in, along with their personal struggles for recognition in the field. While most people are familiar with the work of Margaret Mead in Samoa,…
This website catalogues the research of famous women anthropologists throughout the ages. It has a specifically feminist slant, and details the research these women engaged in, along with their personal struggles for recognition in the field. While most people are familiar with the work of Margaret Mead in Samoa, Zora Neale Hurston's cataloging of African-American folklore and Dian Fosse and her work with primates, the accomplishments of other pioneering female anthropologists have often been forgotten.
Even during the 19th century, women such as Alice Cunningham Fletcher studied other cultures from an objective anthropological lens. Fletcher acted as a consultant to President Grover Cleveland on the 'Indian Problem,' studied and recorded Native American music, customs, and language, and also acted as an advocate for the restoration of Native American land. Ellen Irene Diggs, an anthropologist who studied with W.E.B. DuBois researched, proofread and footnoted DuBois' work Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. She was one of the first anthropologists to study the relationship of African and Cuban history and heritage.
Mary Nichol Douglas Leakey, a biological anthropologist, had no formal university training. Yet she discovered the skull of Proconsul africanus in Kenya 1947-48, the skull of an early human prototype Zinjanthropus in Olduvai Gorge in 1959, and 3.5 million-year-old footprints in Laetoli in 1976. These discoveries made major contributions to the understanding of the development of humanity. Leakey's work and the work of other women is testimony to the fact that even when denied a full range of opportunities to practice their craft, female anthropologists have used the opportunities they have been given to shine and make major contributions to the advancement of knowledge. Women anthropologists, as reflective of their marginalized place in society, have also been apt to fuse social activism with their discipline. They have used knowledge as a method of advocacy, and made education of the public a means to restore dignity and justice to the social perceptions of marginalized peoples.
Short story -- A brief story where the plot drives the narrative, substantially shorter than a novel. Example: "Hills like White Elephants," by Ernest Hemingway.
Allusion -- A casual reference in one literary work to a person, place, event, or another piece of literature, often without explicit identification. It is used to establish a tone, create an indirect association, create contrast, make an unusual juxtaposition, or bring the reader into a world of references outside the limitations of the story itself. Example: "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot alludes to "Paradise Lost" by John Milton.
epetition -- The repeating of a word or phrase or rhythm within a piece of literature to add emphasis. Example: The story of Agamemnon in The Odyssey by Homer.
Blank verse -- Unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents, most closing resembling the natural rhythms of English speech. Example: "The…
References:
Wheeler, Dr. L. Kip. "Literary Terms and Definitions." Web.
"Word List of Literary and Grammar Terms." Web.
suck-egg mule!": An Examination of Southern Euphemisms
Euphemisms lend languages a colorful and meaningful quality that is not easily achievable otherwise, and all languages share this common linguistic feature to some extent. Although euphemisms provide a useful linguistic shortcut and add flavor to conservations and writing, they are one of the more challenging aspects of learning another language because of their esoteric qualities and subtleties of meaning that defy ready analysis by outsiders. In the case of the American South, the euphemisms that have emerged over the years may likewise appear to be almost from another country to Americans living in California, say, or New York because of these same esoteric qualities. In order to avoid being labeled a "dirty ol' suck-egg mule" in this regard and as discussed further below, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature to identify traditional and modern euphemisms used in the American…
References
Anders, S. (2006, January 24). Smith Anders. Baton Rouge Advocate, 1.
Black's law dictionary. (1999). St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.
Censer, J.T. (2010). Mary Bayard Clarke's Plain-folk humor: Writing women into the literature and politics of reconstruction. Journal of Southern History, 76(2), 241-242.
Crabtree, S. (1996, May 13). Will third parties be the charm in 1996? Insight on the News,
Cullen Poem
Cullen's "For a Lady I Know": Biography in Poetry
Counte Cullen, a prominent poet of his time and a standout from the Harlem Renaissance, illuminates the extremely controversial issue of racism towards African-Americans as well as societal class issues in "For a Lady I Know." His short poem (only two stanzas) is terse as it illustrates the inequalities African-Americans face as well as the ignorance and superior attitude rich white people often have towards them. It is not often that such a short work can accomplish conveying copious amounts of information and elicit numerous feelings in one reading but "For a Lady I Know" certainly does.
As popular as he was, it is interesting to learn that Counte Cullen's life is shrouded in mystery. He was born Cullen Porter in 1903 but the location of his birth is much debated even today. New York City and Baltimore have…
Civil ar
From Slavery to African-American
By the beginning of the Civil ar, there were some four million African-Americans living in the United States, 3.5 million slaves lived in the South, while another 500,000 lived free across the country (African pp). The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 granted freedom to all slaves in the Confederacy, and the 13th Amendment of 1865 freed the remaining slaves throughout the nation (African pp). During the Reconstruction Era, African-Americans in the South gained a number of civil rights, including the right to vote and to hold office, however, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, white landowners initiated racial segregation that resulted in vigilante violence, including lynchings (African pp).
This resulted in the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the North during the beginning of the twentieth century (African pp).
From this Great Migration came an intellectual and cultural elite group of African-Americans that grew…
Work Cited
African-American. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American
Man's Ability To Treat Humans Like Animals
It is a vivid fact that the feelings of cruelty, discrimination and racial distribution are embedded well in to human nature since its very inception. This world depicts several cases where humans treat other humans like animals and ignore their right of living peacefully and according to their own will. This article highlights the work of several writers who have depicted the different ways in which humans have been treated brutally by other humans. Majority of the cases deal with racial discrimination and poverty-based cruelty issues encountered by humans. The article presents an in depth analysis of the works of seven different writers and how their works represent the ill treatment encountered by the human race.
Charles Chestnutt's "Po Sandy" and its Linkage to Human Cruelty
"Po' Sandy" written by Charles Chestnutt is basically the story of Sandy, who is made the slave…
Works Cited
Chestnutt, Charles. Charles W. Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays, USA: Library of America,
2002.
Esposito, Scott, "The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe," Los Angeles Times,468, 7 March 2010.
Mackay, Marina. The Cambridge Companion to The Literature Of World War II, New York,
O rother, Where Art Thou?
Homer in Hollywood: The Coen rothers' O rother, Where Art Thou?
Could a Hollywood filmmaker adapt Homer's Odyssey for the screen in the same way that James Joyce did for the Modernist novel? The idea of a high-art film adaptation of the Odyssey is actually at the center of the plot of Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Contempt, and the Alberto Moravia novel on which Godard's film is based. In Contempt, Prokosch, a rich American dilettante film producer played by Jack Palance, hires Fritz Lang to film a version of Homer's Odyssey, then hires a screenwriter to write it and promptly ruins his marriage to rigitte ardot. Fritz Lang gamely plays himself -- joining the ranks of fellow "arty" German-born directors who had earlier deigned to act before the camera (like Erich von Stroheim in Wilder's Sunset oulevard, playing a former director not unlike himself, or…
Bibliography
Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock'N'Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Print.
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: the Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Print.
Connors, Catherine. Petronius the Poet: Verse and Literary Tradition in the Satyricon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.
Doom, Ryan P. The Brothers Coen: Unique Characters of Violence. Santa Barbara, Denver and Oxford: Praeger / ABC-CLIO, 2009. Print.
lack Intellectuals, by William M. anks. Specifically, it will briefly state the main themes/ideas of the articles, and discuss the impression the book made on the reader.
LACK INTELLECTUALS
William M. anks attempts to survey the culture and society of black intellectuals in his book, and looks at their history. His main thesis seems to illustrate the many obstacles blacks have had to face in order to gain education during their history in the United States. He clearly shows it has not always been easy for intellectual blacks to make their way in America, or even receive a good education. anks discusses some very prominent black American intellectuals, such as Alexander Crummell, Frederick Douglass, Anna Cooper, W.E.. Du ois, Alain Locke, and Toni Morrison. In addition, he discusses how even the more educated slaves acted as resources to the people around them, and served as an inspiration to others who…
Bibliography
Banks, William M. Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996.
Racism and Society -- Literature Response
Race and Identity as Functions of Societal Labeling and Expectations
Two pieces of 20th century literature exemplify the alienation felt by African-Americans in the United States. One of those works, authored by Zora Neal Hurston in 1928, is the essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me, which vividly illustrates the degree to which the identity of a black person in the pre-Civil Rights era was defined by white society. More importantly, Hurston's work also illustrates how much of a conflict and perpetual struggle African-Americans experienced internally if they tried to maintain their own self-identity. hereas many blacks of that era bought into the expectations foisted on them by white society, others resisted this artificial identity that was imposed on them. Hurston clearly was shaped by this dynamic and bitterly resisted the self-identity that she was expected to have accepted and reflected to get…
Works Cited
Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Nickel and Dimed: on (Not) Getting by in America. New York,
NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Hurston, Z.N. (1928). How It Feels to Be Colored Me.
Staples, B. (1986). Just Walk on By.
acism and Society -- Literature Letter
Senator Mitch McConnell
317 ussell Senate Office Building
Dear Senator McConnell:
I am writing to express my reaction to your four-year effort to ensure the failure of the presidential administration of President Barak Obama. First, let me say that I have never been a politically-oriented person; I am not even a registered voter. However, I have been monitoring news reports about the current state of the nation and of the disgraceful abuses of power exhibited by you and the other high-ranking members of your epublican Caucus. The manner in which you and your colleagues have reduced the U.S. Congress into a dysfunctional and ineffective Legislative Branch of our government (Grunwald, 2012) is the reason I am writing, the inspiration for this letter comes from my recent exposure to several pieces of 20th Century literature with which you might not be familiar. Copies of them…
References
Edwards, G., Wattenberg, M., and Lineberry, R. (2009). Government in America: People,
Politics, and Policy. New York, NY: Longman.
Goldfield, D., Abbot, C., Argersinger, J., and Argersinger, P. (2005). Twentieth-Century
America: A Social and Political History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-
Treatment of Bipolar Disorder?
Grade
The article what is the treatment for Bipolar Disorder by G. ayel revolves around the treatment options for Bipolar Disorder. The article lacks a proper introduction which otherwise would have begun with the explanation of bipolar disorder giving a brief overview about the maniac and depressive episodes along with the need to treat the disorder before proceeding onto the treatment procedures. Despite this, the author presents a coherent logical progression and sequence in his article by clearly describing the role of medicines such as antidepressants and antipsychotics. Although several terms such as mood stabilizers and psychotherapy are not elucidated, the order of ideas presented by ayel Michael in his article is vital in understanding the treatment strategies of bipolar disorder.
The main point of the writer is to explain the ways in which Bipolar Disorder can be treated. Since the writer has not explained the…
References
Hurston Z. The Gilded Six-Bits. Redpath Press. Minneapolis. 1993. 26th December, 2011.
Gender and Violence
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass and Their Eyes Were Watching God share much in common, though the works were written at different points in time. Douglass's autobiography first appeared in 1845, written to prove that a slave could develop, virtually unaided, into a moral and intellectual human being, and a speaker of power and eloquence. Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God appeared almost a century later in 1937 and is seen as a work that documents the legitimate experiences of black people, especially women. Yet, protagonists whose lives were shaped by violence, oppression, patriarchal control, and a quest for personal freedom characterize both works. One reason that could be attributed to the stark similarity in Douglass and Hurston's narratives is the historical context and effects of slavery and oppression of the black people. Thus, the blatant enslavement and brutality described by Douglass manifests itself in…
References
Douglass, F. (1995). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Unknown
Dover Thrift Edition).
Hurston, Z.N. (1978). Their Eyes Were Watching God. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
. . "
"I don't recall having sold the house," Ned said, "and the girls are at home."
(Cheever)
In the narration Ned continues on his journey home. Once he is home it is revealed that his house is indeed empty and his wife and daughters are gone. This is just one example of the conflict that exist in this narration between was is reality and what is illusion.
In addition to this aspect of conflict in The Swimmer, there is also a great deal of conflict associated with Ned's ability to swim across the county. This conflict exist because Ned also drank strong alcoholic beverages throughout his journey. It would have been next to impossible for him to swim after he had consumed just a few of these drinks. This is an obvious conflict that would have hindered his journey but the author presents it as fact and not…
Works Cited
Cheever, J. 1954. The Five-Forty-Eight
Cheever, J. 1964. The Swimmer
Cheever, J. 1957. The Wapshot Chronicles. New York: Harper,
Cheever, J. The Angel of the Bridge
hile the poems are no doubt universal, we can see elements of Americana sprinkled throughout them. Cultural issues such as decision-making, the pressure of responsibility and duty, and the complexity of death emerge in many poems, allowing us to see society's influence on the poet. In "The Road Not Taken," we see how life is filled with choices. Because we are American, we are lucky enough to experience freedom but this does not always come without difficulty. ith this poem, the narrator explains how decision-making can be trying because we never actually know how things are going to turn out. Nevertheless, we must make choices and get on with our lives. In "Stopping by oods," the narrator encounters a similar type of conflict in that the pull of our fast-paced American lives makes him or her want to stay in the woods for just a little while to enjoy the…
Works Cited
Frost, Robert. "Design." The Harper American Literature, Single Volume. 3rd Ed. New York: Longman. 1998.
Stopping by Woods." The Harper American Literature, Single Volume. 3rd Ed. New York: Longman. 1998.
The Road Not Taken." The Harper American Literature, Single Volume. 3rd Ed. New York: Longman. 1998.
But since their sense of righteousness is flawed, their plans fall apart and the ending is quite disastrous as owe explains: "When they reach town, the putrescent corpse is buried, the daughter fails in her effort to get an abortion, one son is badly injured, another has gone mad, and at the very end, in a stroke of harsh comedy, the father suddenly remarries" (138).
Addie and Cora represent two different versions of right. For Cora faith is on lips all the time and she expresses righteousness through words, for Addie, actions are more important and thus she appears vain compared to Cora but has a deeper and more accurate sense of right and wrong. While Cora appears with utterances such as "I trust in my God and my reward" (70) and "Riches is nothing in the face of the Lord, for e can see into the heart." (7) Addie…
Howe, Irving. William Faulkner: A Critical Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975.
William, Faulkner. As I Lay Dying. New York: Random House, 1985.
John Gledson, the Deceptive Realism of Machado de Assis (Liverpool, UK: Francis Cairns, 1984).