The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston is known for being a prominent piece of feminist literature. It is full of recurring symbols and metaphors, which Hurston uses as an outlet to express her most important messages. She...

At it’s surface, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel about self-discovery. Although upon further analysis, the existence of larger themes such as womanhood, feminism and the race and gender relations that existed within...

Gender and sexuality have become so deeply rooted into society that we apply them to most anything without ever giving it a second thought. The portrayals of gender in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Bharati Mukherjee’s...

James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” depicts the psychosexual methodologies used by a white racist sheriff who both fears and fetishizes African Americans. Through the character of Jesse, Baldwin is stating that the sexual myth of black male...

The institution of marriage has changed over the last century from a patriarchal control construct to a more open organization. The books Their Eyes were Watching God and Stranger in a Strange Land both attack the institution of traditional...

The main characters in the novels Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe in 1958, and Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937 are Okonkwo and Janie Mae Crawford. The countries in which they reside (Nigeria and The...

"The Negro's universal mimicry is not so much a thing in itself as an evidence of something that permeates his entire self. And that thing is drama." (Hurston, 830) In her own words, Hurston captures the gritty picture she paints in the highly...

The “American Dream” connotes a vision of a house with a white picket fence, a place of warmth and family, a secure place to lay one's head at night, a place to just be. Much of African-American literature since the 1900's demonstrates that the...

W.E.B. DuBois and Zora Neal Hurston, undoubtedly, had two distinct ways of writing, one through an analytical form of storytelling with interwoven fragments of moralistic and ethical themes and one through short fiction that exemplified the...

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat,” published in 1926, focuses on Delia and Sykes Jones and their volatile marriage. The protagonist, Delia Jones, suffers at the hands of her abusive husband, the antagonist, Sykes. In her work, Hurston...

Zora Neale Hurston’s Filling Station is a short comic story written in the 1930s and also included as part of the African-American: Graphic Classics Volume 22 published in 2011 (Hughes, Bois and Hurston). Hurston has two stories in the book, ...

Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk” is defined by its heavy use of literary devices; therefore, this paper will analyze the text from a Russian formalist perspective. Russian formalism is based on the notion that a text should be analyzed on the basis of...

Much like her main characters, anthropologist and world-renowned author Zora Neale Hurston endeavored the pressures of being molded into a perception of a Black person she was not per se, but she chose not to consciously acknowledge. Hurston knew...

Hurston’s Sweat is a short story that represents not only the constraints of a racially divided society but also, and more notably the oppression of women in a patriarchal society. Delia is a microcosm for women of the time, physically inferior,...

In “Sweat” and the accounts of Zora Neale Hurston in, “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, there are many elements of the modernist period in play. The most important being the welfare state of African Americans in America at that point in time....

The short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston details the finer points of the abusive relationship and failing marriage of Delia and Sykes Jones. Hurston presents Delia as a hardworking woman and a faithful wife, but the same cannot be said of...

The role of nature in American literature operates on three levels. Firstly, nature in American literature provides a refuge for characters from the austere conformity required by American society, allowing them to be themselves without fear of...

Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat,” published in 1926, focuses on Delia and Sykes Jones and their volatile marriage. The protagonist, Delia Jones, suffers at the hands of her abusive husband, the antagonist, Sykes. In her work, Hurston...

Delia Jones is a weak protagonist who goes through unfortunate events with her husband to emerge as a strong protagonist in the end of the story “Sweat”. Delia starts off emotionally weak at the beginning of the story because she cannot stand up...

Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes are two of the most influential authors ever, and were central figures during the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was “the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black...

For hundreds of years, the dominant culture in America has categorically underestimated black southern culture and vernacular, mistaking these segments of American life as largely simple, vulgar, and uneducated; Zora Neale Hurston sought to change...

In Zora Neale Hurston’s work, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me,"the author pulls from personal experience, and writes about, not only her cultural experience within the negro community, but also her experience outside of her own culture. The work is...

In “Sweat” and the accounts of Zora Neale Hurston in, “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, there are many elements of the modernist period in play. The most important being the welfare state of African Americans in America at that point in time....