Does the description of John Redding’s body floating in the water reflect Jesus’ death? (arms outstretched, torn clothing, struck by wood, mixing blood and water) Is John Redding a Christ figure? What point could Hurston be making about Christianity here?
Does the cakewalk in Color Struck change the way you view the cakewalk in In Dahomey? How do the plays differ in the way they preserve the cakewalk?
In John Redding Goes to Sea, John is repeatedly described as “queer.” Is this meant to be taken as meaning odd, gay, or both?
Would John have been able to leave if he hadn’t gotten married? Why don’t the women want them to leave? Are there forces greater than the women that are keeping these men tied down? How does this compare to Irish men trying to leave their homes?
I also found the point about “the new refusing to acknowledge the old” in Color Struck to be very interesting. What does this do to the act of cakewalking? Does it help the blacks to make it more their own?
In “John Redding,” happiness is portrayed through weeping (p. 6) and, at the end, Alf claims to be “happy” for his son because he is going to the sea (p. 16). Additionally, Hurston describes the many things that black laughter can mean in Mules and Men (p. 62). Why is emotion portrayed this way and does that change the way we relate this work to keening, another emotive action?
What is the significance of the sea as a hopeful thing in “John Redding” against the depiction of the sea as dangerous (to people and cultures) in Synge and the history of the slave trade?
One question I had, especially after the Mules and Men reading, was about how eager the African Americans in Eatonville and Polk County were to share their stories. In both places, there were reservations at first about wanting to put the stories down for others to read. In Eatonville, George Thomas said, “Who do you reckon want to read all them old-time tales about Brer Rabbit and Brer Bear?” In Polk County, people are in disbelief about people wanting to read the stories as well. But in both places, as soon as they got used to the idea, the people were eager to share tales to be written down. There were even people wanting credit for their stories, and those who went up to Zora to tell her stories they weren’t able to tell in a public setting. My question is, what caused such a big shift in attitude?
I was curious about the reading of Hurston and comparing her to Synge. Is she an insider or an outsider in the communities she’s writing about? And how does she characterize herself within these interactions, particularly in regards to how her speech differs from the tone of her writing ?
Do either of these categories make her distinctly different than Synge?
My other question was about the significance of the word lie to storytelling. When Hurston seems to be performing similar preservative work to Synge, finding and capturing folk culture, something predicated on authenticity, what is suggested by those telling the tales calling them lies?
How does the significance of the folklore stories in Mules and Men change without surrounding context? Is the time and place of each story indispensable?
Are the tales in Mules and Men a form of mimicry? Throughout the story these tales are referred to as “lies”. What kind of feeling does this create around the stories?
How does the question of originality in “Characteristics of Negro Expression” reflect the idea of the inability to create art for the sake of art, as discussed with “In Dahomey”?
Adding on to Julian’s questions, there were a few questions I had that I was hoping we would get to discuss as well.
To start, does Hurston fit into the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance? Mules and Men was published near the end of the Renaissance timeline. Do you see it as a part of it or something that marks the beginning of a new literary era?
Why do the people refer to the stories as “lies”? What does this say about how they view the stories? How does it affect how the audience comes to interpret the stories?
On page 20 of Mules and Men, a man makes a remark about preachers and how they have no greater authority to preach as they aren’t any different from anyone else. This moment stuck out to me. Why did Hurston include this? What did this moment mean to you? Did you take it to be something larger than a man complaining about preachers?
I was also hoping to talk about whether anyone saw differences in the stories she was told in Eatonville, where she was welcomed and considered a local, and the stories she heard elsewhere, where she was considered to be an outsider. How does one’s position in the community affect the stories that they are told?
