22 pages • 44 minutes read
Zora Neale HurstonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Spunk Banks is a large, confident man who drives the story’s central conflict by pursuing Joe’s wife, Lena. His very movement exudes confidence, and the narrator describes his motion as a “saunter” on multiple occasions. When he appears at the store following Joe’s death, he wears his hat at a “rakish angle,” exhibiting his ease and lack of concern over the death of his rival. Spunk changes, however, as he becomes convinced that Joe continues to haunt him, first as a bobcat, then as a presence that pushes him onto the saw, leading to his death. Spunk’s transformation makes it clear that his earlier confidence was empty bravado: When the bobcat appears, it gets “Spunk so nervoused up he couldn’t shoot” (60). Though Spunk continues to talk with confidence up until the moment of his death, his angry outbursts at the sawmill reveal his insecurity. By subverting Spunk’s initial depiction as a model of iconic masculinity, Hurston critiques those that value the appearance of courage over the thing itself.
By Zora Neale Hurston
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Zora Neale Hurston
Drenched in Light
Drenched in Light
Zora Neale Hurston
Dust Tracks on a Road
Dust Tracks on a Road
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Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
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How It Feels To Be Colored Me
How It Feels To Be Colored Me
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Jonah's Gourd Vine
Jonah's Gourd Vine
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Moses, Man of the Mountain
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Zora Neale Hurston
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men
Mules and Men
Zora Neale Hurston
Seraph on the Suwanee
Seraph on the Suwanee
Zora Neale Hurston
Sweat
Sweat
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Tell My Horse
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
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The Eatonville Anthology
The Eatonville Anthology
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The Gilded Six-Bits
The Gilded Six-Bits
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
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