Sethe and Denver

            Denver and Sethe are in very different situations at the end of Beloved than they were at the beginning. From the beginning of the novel, Sethe is described as quietly strong and a fiercely loving mother. Paul D says that she has “iron eyes and a backbone to match”, and Denver describes her mother as “the one who never looked away” no matter what happened. However, despite her seemingly endless strength, Sethe is constantly haunted by her past, both in the form of sudden rememories that drag her back to Sweethome and the ghost of her dead daughter. To Sethe, “the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay.” (51)

            Denver, though 18 years old, seems like a much younger child. She is isolated by her family’s past, afraid to leave the yard, and incredibly lonely. It seems like she is very attached to Sethe, but we learn later that she is actually terrified of her mother. Since she was very young, the ghost of her sister has been Denver’s only friend.

            By the end of the novel, these two characters’ roles have dramatically changed. Denver is thriving, and much more independent. She works and supports Sethe, has friends outside of her family, and talks to both Paul D and Nelson Lord, two people whom she had previously disliked, and who had caused her trauma.

            Sethe, on the other hand, seems to have retreated into herself. When Paul D comes to see her,

To the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is ajar he hears humming . . . Of course, he thinks. That’s where she is—and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors. Her hair, like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spreads and curves on the pillow. Her eyes, fixed on the window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is . . . “You got to get up from here, girl.” He is nervous. This reminds him of something. “I’m tired, Paul D. So tired. I have to rest a while.” Now he knows what he is reminded of and he shouts at her, “Don’t you die on me! This is Baby Suggs’ bed! Is that what you planning?” (319-20)

So why did these changes occur? The obvious answer is Beloved: the harm she caused Sethe through her refusal or inability to understand Sethe is what causes Sethe’s decline, and her and Sethe’s all-consuming attention for each other forced Denver out into the world. However, I think there’s more to it than that. As noticed by Paul D, Sethe at the end of the novel is acting almost exactly how Baby Suggs did near the end of her life. Both Sethe and Baby Suggs were born and grew up slaves, and though they escaped or were bought into freedom, they both lost their children as a result of slavery. Both survive this, but are deeply hurt and for both of them, Beloved is in some way the straw that broke the camel’s back. Baby Suggs, though she doesn’t judge Sethe, retreats to her bed to reflect on “harmless” colors after Sethe kills her young daughter. Sethe at the time sees her killing of her daughter as an act of protection and love, but when Beloved leaves her at the end of the novel without understanding or accepting what had happened in the shed, Sethe too can no longer go on.

Denver is not affected in this way by Beloved at all. Unlike her mother and grandmother, she was born not into slavery, but as her mother crossed into freedom. If we interpret Beloved’s haunting as a physical representation of the idea that nothing ever dies and how Sethe is never able to leave her past behind her, it makes sense that Denver is not at all affected. She represents the later generations who are not haunted by Sweethome. After all, repeated three times in the last chapter are variations on the words, “it was not a story to pass on” (323). 

A Surprising Ending to The White Boy Shuffle

The White Boy Shuffle ends with Gunnar giving his daughter Naomi a bath and telling her the Kaufman history. I’m not sure how I expected The White Boy Shuffle to end, but this definitely wasn’t it. One of the things that surprised me is that Gunnar is telling Naomi the Kaufman history at all. He proudly tells his family history in his Santa Monica elementary school, but later seems ashamed and disdainful of his ancestors. At the beginning of chapter one, he describes himself as “Preordained by a set of weak-kneed DNA to shuffle in the footsteps of a long cowardly queue of coons, Uncle Toms, and faithful boogedy-boogedy retainers” (Beatty 5). Gunnar continues to distance himself from “Kaufmanism” as he grows up, developing his own identity in Hillside as a poet, basketball star, Gun Totin’ Hooligan, and member and eventual leader of the African American community. Until the end of the book, I thought that Gunnar’s last connection to his Kaufman history had been severed on the day of the Rodney King verdict when while looting with Scoby and Psycho Loco, he is caught by the police and beaten by his father, who tells him “You are not a Kaufman. I refuse to let you embarrass me” (137).

Even more surprising, however, was that he begins the story with his father, Rölf Kaufman. Even as a child proud of his family history, Gunnar never mentioned his father. In his own words, “The schoolyard chronicles never included my father’s misdeeds. I could distance myself from the fuckups of the previous generations, but his weakness shadowed my shame from sun to sun. His history was my history” (Beatty 21).

So what changed? I think that a large part of it is that Rölf joins the movement influenced by Gunnar and commits suicide, leaving a poem.  

I begin with the end—Rölf Kaufman, her grandfather, my dad, who died last week. The only officer in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department to commit suicide by eating his gun, choking on the firing pin and leaving the following poem in his locker.

Like the good Reverend King
I too “have a dream”
but when I wake up
I forget it and
remember I’m running late for work. (Beatty 226)

I definitely don’t think that Gunnar forgives his father, but maybe his death and poem show Gunnar a side of Rölf he didn’t know was there. As we see in the poem, Rölf too had dreams that he was never able to realize. However, unlike Gunnar who is “abandoning this sinking ship America” (Beatty 225), Rölf allowed society to turn him into just another cog in the machine.

These are also the final words in the book, giving them additional significance. I think Beatty chooses to end the novel with Rölf’s suicide because it drives home yet again how deeply engrained racism is although the novel takes place after the Civil Rights Movement. Even Rölf, the embodiment of Kaufmanism and a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, is driven to suicide just like the thousands who have either already mailed Gunnar their poems and committed suicide or are pouring into Hillside. 

A Different Kind of Protest Novel

One of Richard Wright’s complaints about Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was that “the sensory sweep of her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought” (Wright). Having read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I have to disagree. The novel is definitely thoughtful and deliberate, it just doesn’t convey the message that Wright wanted to hear. Unlike in Wright’s later novel, Native Son, race and racial tensions do not play a key role in Their Eyes Were Watching God, or really much of a role at all. Wright and other critics used this to claim that Hurston’s novel was not “serious fiction” and that it was “not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy” (Wright). However, though Hurston is not protesting the same things as Wright, I think it would be a mistake to say that she is just passively telling a story.  

An idea that many people had at the time that Hurston was writing was that African American literature had to protest racial inequality. As we saw in the documentary, Hurston disagreed, saying she was tired of writing about race and of having people tell her what to write about. After watching the documentary, however, I began to see that Their Eyes Were Watching God can in fact be read as protest fiction and that although Hurston does not directly make race an issue in Their Eyes Were Watching God, she is still protesting racial inequality. The difference between her protest and the protest novel people wanted her to write is that Hurston addresses racism as she encounters it in her own profession instead of the wider systematic oppression of African Americans throughout the country. Instead of asking society to grapple with the issues of systematic racism and inequality, Hurston is simply asking why she should be confined to a specific genre because of her race when she has so many additional things to say. 

Literary Choices in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston employs many tactics that make the story come to life around the reader and force them to more deeply engage with the novel. Though the list is extensive, two things that have stood out to me so far have been the figurative language used by Hurston and how she writes all of the dialogue between characters in a southern dialect.

One of the characteristics that forced me to more deeply engage in the novel was to have the characters speaking in a dialect of the deep south. One example of is when Pheoby and Janie are talking about the gossipers on the porch, Janie says, “‘Ah don’t mean to bother wid tellen’ ‘em nothin’ Pheoby. T’ain’t worth de trouble. You can tell ‘em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat’s just de same as me ‘cause mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf’” (6). Unlike a book written with “standard” spelling and grammar, I found it impossible to speed read or skim over any of the dialogue in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Because I was not used to reading the dialect the characters were speaking in, I had to really slow down and take the time to work out what was being said. The result of this was not only that I paid a lot of attention to what the characters were saying, but that I could almost hear their voices in my head as I went, and that reading the dialogue felt more like listening to a conversation than reading words on a page.

Another aspect of Their Eyes Were Watching God that I felt made the story come to life was the use of figurative language in the descriptions of characters. One example of this is when Nanny is telling Janie the story of her life and describes the wife of her former master. Instead of simply describing her as cold-hearted and bitter, Nanny says that she “Look lak she been livin’ through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring . . . Ah tried not to feel de breeze off her face, but it got so cold in dere dat Ah was freezin’ to death under the kivvers” (17). I found this to be an incredibly powerful metaphor because the reader can see the woman much more clearly, both physically and in terms of her personality and its effects on Nanny. The other metaphors and uses of figurative language have had the same results on me. They make it much easier to visualize the characters and the setting, and make the novel a lot of fun to read!

I’m curious to observe how these two literary devices develop throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God, and how they continue to affect my reading of the novel.  

Connecting With His Roots

Shortly before giving the speech that attracts the attention of the Brotherhood, the narrator stops and buys three yams from a street vendor. In this moment, we see the narrator briefly reconnect with his roots and realize that he’s been kept running his entire life before he joins the Brotherhood and has the veil lowered over his eyes once more.

When he sees the man selling yams, the narrator is overcome with nostalgia. This is an unusual emotion for the narrator; normally, he seems to be ashamed of his past and avoids talking or even thinking about it. Especially in Harlem, we have repeatedly seen the narrator try and cast off his past self, all connections to his former life, and move forward as a new person. For example, when the narrator first arrives in the north, he describes in depth how he plans to redo his wardrobe to create a new persona for himself. Later when he is having breakfast in a diner, he refuses to order the special consisting of foods he associates with the south, and instead chooses toast, something plain and generic.  

I also saw it as quite ironic that the moment where the narrator realizes “I yam what I am” directly precedes his being recruited by the Brotherhood where his identity is erased and sense of individuality is suppressed. Immediately upon his acceptance into the Brotherhood, the narrator is given a new name and persona, erasing the past he had just begun to connect to, and told that there is no “I” and that no one’s individual beliefs or history are significant in the bigger picture.

I also think that the narrator briefly realizes here that he has been kept running for his entire life. He says, “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? . . . I had never formed a personal attitude towards so much. I had accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem simple…” However, though he has made this realization, he is still far from discovering invisibility. Instead of trying to appear as though he still believes in the accepted attitudes while secretly having his own opinions, he decides to just flat out believe and do whatever he wants. We can see, even by the end of this scene, that this isn’t going to work out for the narrator; “Yet the freedom to eat yams was far less than I had expected upon coming to the city. An unpleasant taste bloomed in my mouth now as I bit the end of the yam and threw it into the street; it had been frost-bitten”. 

The Narrator's Briefcase

The narrator’s briefcase has made three appearances so far in Invisible Man. Although it is given to the narrator at the height of his humiliation at the battle royal, he sees it not in that light but instead as a symbol of prestige and his self-worth. “I was so moved that I could hardly express my thanks. A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped it quickly away. I felt an importance that I had never dreamed” (32). Even as the narrator is literally swallowing and drooling blood, he is not ashamed, or even aware that the ceremony is not truly being done to honor and reward him. This theme of humiliation that the narrator cannot or will not see remains associated with the briefcase, and though it we can see how the narrator develops as a character.

When the briefcase is first presented to the narrator, it contains a scholarship to the “state college for Negroes” (32) that the narrator goes on to attend. The narrator sees this too, as a reward for his accomplishments, and given his naivety, this makes sense. But when he dreams of his grandfather that night, the reader, if not the narrator, realizes that the scholarship might not be all that it seems. The grandfather instructs the narrator to take the envelope out of his briefcase and open it. The narrator does, but inside every envelope he finds just another envelope until he reaches the last one with an enclosed message that instructs whoever it may concern to keep the narrator running. In place of what the narrator perceived as a prestigious reward and a momentous opportunity, there are in reality only empty envelopes (empty promises?) and instructions to the rest of the world to never let him stop chasing what Bledsoe later refers to as “that promise which, like the horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful traveler” (187).

The second time the briefcase makes an appearance, the narrator is once again on the brink of a new phase in his life as he prepares to leave the college for Harlem. The contents of the briefcase are also similar. Bledsoe gives the narrator seven envelopes addressed to trustees of the college, important men who will be able to help him find work. But yet again, the envelops cause the narrator humiliation while masquerading as something that he hopes will allow him to return to the college. The similarity of the narrator’s goals and circumstances, and the contents of the briefcase show just how little the narrator has developed since he received the briefcase. However, this time, instead of his grandfather in a dream, the disillusionment is brought about by Mr. Emerson and the narrator can no longer ignore the game that is being played without his knowledge. Interestingly, the narrator connects this incident to the dream about his grandfather, even using the phrase “keep him running” when composing a satirical version of the letter.

In the final appearance of the briefcase that we have seen so far, the narrator is once again entering a new phase of his life as he leaves Mary’s to take a job with the Brotherhood. Otherwise, however the circumstances are totally different. Instead of papers, the briefcase now contains the remains of the bank that the narrator smashed at Mary’s house. Instead of having something that the narrator sees as prestigious but is truly humiliating in the briefcase, the narrator is now using the briefcase to hide the object of his humiliation. This difference shows how the narrator is beginning to develop as a character. He now is no longer the blind and naive student that he used to be; he now sees the game and is learning to play along.

The Fine Line Between Sanity and Insanity

            Chapter two of Invisible Man begins with the Narrator remembering his college days and taking us on what almost seems to be a scenic tour of the campus. One seemingly small detail in his description is the insane asylum. Though this could appear extraneous – the reason I noticed it in the first place was because of how matter-of-fact and nonchalantly the Narrator mentioned it – I think that the insane asylum is actually an important detail in understanding the narrator and his circumstances.   

How the grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone down on the buildings, how the bell in the chapel tower rang out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at night, I’ve closed my eyes and walked along the forbidden road that winds past the girls’ dormitories, past the hall with the clock in the tower, its windows warmly aglow . . . on up the road, past the buildings, with the southern verandas half-a-city-block long, to the sudden forking, barren of buildings, birds, or grass, where the road turned off to the insane asylum.

There is a certain irony to the insane asylum being placed directly next to the college campus. Our Narrator has come to the college in order to learn, expand his horizons and prepare to get a prestigious job one day, so it seems a little foreboding that just a wrong turn away is a building for the housing and care of people who once shared many of the same aspirations as the narrator, but for one reason or another have been deemed insane.

            We get a little more insight into the meaning of the insane asylum in chapter three, when the Narrator and Mr. Norton encounter some of its patients at the Golden Day. Though the men are all patients, that’s not the way they see themselves; they consider themselves primarily doctors, composers, chemists, students, psychiatrists etc., and we see the Narrator get more and more uncomfortable as the fine line between crazy and sane, perhaps symbolized by the asylum’s proximity to the college, begins to blur. One conversation that represents this especially well is that between the Narrator, Mr. Norton and the doctor in which after diagnosing Mr. Norton and explaining how he gained his medical knowledge, the doctor describes invisibility and blindness similarly to how the Narrator does in the prologue.

“You see,” he said turning to Mr. Norton, “he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It’s worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn’t digest it. Already he is - well, bless my soul! Behold! A walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams sir! The mechanical man!”

The Narrator says he doesn’t understand, and worried, confused and dismissing the doctor as insane, tries to hurry Mr. Norton back out to the car. The conversation continues for a little longer, but when the doctor realizes neither the Narrator nor Mr. Norton understand what he is saying, he ends the discussion, threatening to bash their heads in if they don’t leave and “leaning against the wall making a sound that was a blending of laughter and tears.” This seemed to echo the scene in the prologue where the Narrator describes his invisibility to the reader, and then beats up a man in the street and runs away laughing.

The similarities between the doctor and the Narrator, the sense of foreboding created by the image of the insane asylum and its proximity to the college, and the gradual blurring of the line between sanity and insanity throughout the first few chapters are causing me to begin to wonder how sane the narrator actually is by the time he is able to recognize his invisibility.