i
Typical Student
English 102.09
Prof L Adam Mekler
May 11, 2009
Zora Neale Hurston, representative of the Harlem Renaissance
Thesis: Through Zora Neale Hurston’s literary techniques and writing style, she is considered one of the
best and most influential African American female writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
I.
Introduction
a. The Harlem Renaissance was a big turning point for African Americans, in which it was
the first time African American literature was taken seriously.
b. Writers of the Harlem renaissance gave diverse artistic expressions to the African
American experience, interests in the African American experience in Africa and the
American south and strong senses of racial pride.
c. Zora Neale Hurston had traveled around the world, which helped her developed her
metaphorical language, story-telling abilities, and portraying the Southern black culture
in the United States of America.
II.
Zora Neale Hurston, even as a fiction writer, she has ways of which the reader can look
through the eyes of a character, which shows her metaphorical language.
a. When describing the life of a character, Hurston would use metaphors and apply them
to her characters. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered,
ii
things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches”
(Bremer, 55).
b. In another one of her short-stories, The Gilded Six-Bits, Hurston describes the setting of
the main characters’ residence. “It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro
settlement that looked to the payroll of the G and G Fertilizer works for its support”
(Major, 67)
III.
Studying in anthropology, Hurston collected folklore in many Caribbean islands, which
helped developed her story-telling abilities.
a. In one of her stories, Tell My Horse, she described the folk customs of Haiti and Jamaica,
to such an extent, the reader can create a picture-perfect image.
b. One of her best-known folklore collections based on her field research in the American
South was Mules and Men, which tells about her return to her hometown, Eatonville,
Florida. “Dr. Boas asked me where I wanted to work and I said, "Florida," and gave, as
my big reason, that "Florida is a place that draws people, white people from all the
world and Negroes from every Southern state surely and some from the North and
West." (Critical essays, 45)
c. In her most famous book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she lets the reader experience
life as African American woman in the American South, and the struggles she endures to
find her identity. “I ran off to keep house with you in the wonderful way. But you wasn’t
satisfied with me the way I was… The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had
taken her place. ” (South in Black, 67)
IV.
In every novel, short-story, or piece that Zora Neale Hurston has written, she always
portrays the lifestyle of an African American in the American South, or the customs of the
African descendants, or Caribbean.
iii
a. In the short story, Sweat, the story follows the lifestyle of African American woman
living in the American South, as a washwoman. “But she was a washwoman, and
Monday mornings meant a great deal to her…. She squatted on the kitchen floor beside
the great pile of clothes, sorting them into small heaps according to color.” (critical
essays, 75)
b. Many critics say that Zora Neale Hurston made readers thirsty for what the next page
beholds because of detailing how the American South is down to the very confusing
language of how African American spoke in the 20th century. An example is from the
short story, Sweat, which was used in the book Modern Critical Interpretations. “Sykes,
you quit grindin’ dirt into these clothes! How can Ah git through by Sat’day if Ah don’t
start on Sunday?” (Interpretations, 234)
V.
Conclusion
a. The writers of the Harlem renaissance all portrayed expressions of the African American
lifestyle in the American South, either publishing magazines, newsletters, poetry, music,
or novels. Although, Zora Neale Hurston included her expressions, what made her stand
out of all the other male and female writers was how she was diverse from others when
imputing her literary style of expression in the novels that are still read by many of the
present.