What in the World Has Been Going on with You Tommy

Tommy Navickas

Paper Topic # 6

05/09/07

Stark(s) White: Black Struggle Intertwined By an Unavoidable European Standard

African Americans, during the Harlem Renaissance, hotly and routinely debated the issue whether Black literary voices should be most vested in political art or a purely artistic aesthetic: art for art’s sake. Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, and Richard Wright’s Almost a Man, in my opinion, follow the guidelines of Du Bois’ political art. Although Hurston may have been one of the few women authors recognized by Alain Locke: the advocate of a purely artistic Black aesthetic (and author of The New Negro of which argued this idea), I found multiple examples to the contrary. African Americans are deeply engaged in a struggle against the European White majority throughout Hurston’s, Wright’s, and Larsen’s texts. This struggle is brought to our attention through metaphor, the emulation of the White Master by Joe Starks, a little help from 20th century Poets, and the subverted attention to certain realties (one of which I will discuss as Eatonville’s isolation from the rest of the United States).

In Hurston’s novel, the very name of the African American’s town was derivative of a rich, white, European descendant name Eaton. The significance of this is; despite the cultural and racial background of the community, the identity of the town is still owned by a white man. Unless a person visited or heard varies stories of the area, one would not know the important fact that sets this corner of Florida apart from the rest. In a way, this partially negates the existence of the town. This brings to mind the unjust stealing of black men’s farmland in the years following the Civil War. Although former slaves were legally tendered land formerly owned by White Southerners, the letter of the law did not protect their rights seriously, forcing them to give-up the dream of owned property. In this way Eatonville was in a similarly precarious position. If the White Eaton family cared to, they could likely rip the land away from the black residents. Since the town retains the Eaton name, the fight for the White Eaton’s would be less of an uphill battle and more of a downhill slaughter.

This passive allowance of a white man to own their town via name is a threat to the acknowledgment of history for the black residents (and then-present struggle). African Americans’ cultures and traditions separate from Europeans that were readily squashed. At the same time, African Americans were not typically passive about this stamping-out of their heritage. One example of this is when, in the middle eighteen hundreds, an enslaved black man came up with a character called Bruer Rabbit. In William J Faulkner's’ The Days When Animals Talked, Brer Rabbit was the representation of black men and women’s fantasy to routinely and blatantly out-smart plantation-owning white men (collectively portrayed as a wolf) to reclaim dominance. This wasn’t strictly a fantasy. Often, a group of enslaved black men and women would put on acting displays (in a call and response form) criticizing White America, knocking them down a peg. A lookout was always employed to inform the others when a master or other white person was on their way. At this time, all those previously involved in “trickery” would transform to religious ceremony. When the wolf would come observe the enslaved African Americans he/she would marvel at how aptly respectful and religiously abiding their slaves were even outside the immediate eye of white masters.

This ties back into the novel because even though Lige and Sam practiced trickery and play-acting freely, it was of in critiquing their own community members. What is more, these community members hardly ever traveled farther than the outskirts of their town. Thus the trickery and play-acting was in partial ignorance of the outside world. Had the community members been more aware (and more importantly, more exposed) of the injustices just miles outside their town, they would have other targets in their jokes. The sheltered life lived within the town was afforded by the name of a white man. Therefore, though they were free to communicate with other members of the community, it was only because they were sheltered in the safety of a white man’s name (without the need for a lookout). It is almost as if the character of Brer Rabbit found an ambivalent slave-owner, one willing to allow him privileges. These privileges made the rabbit gain a sense of false security and complacency. In this way, the town was more of a black-person’s isolated Utopia, only successful in its lack of participation of the fight against racism. Joe Starks can only inform St. Thomas Moore of another failed attempt.

What is unique about Hurston’s text, as discussed in class, is the presence of indicting and exposing African Americans. It exposed their insecurities and their occasional ignorance. When we are first introduced to the all-Black town, not only did Amos Hicks believed Eatonville’s land to be static: incapable of expanding, but he believed the town did not have the ability to acquire a Post Office. Present also was the criticism of Matt Bonner throughout for his slow wit and inability to adequately nourish his lone mule. In the beginning of the novel, the superfluous and meager criticisms of Janie Starks by the women sitting on a porch reflected poorly upon African Americans way of judging other members of the Black community. Inarguably, Daisy and Tom’s judgment of the West Eggers at Gatsby’s party was even more vindictive and telling of their shallow personalities. Yet, since African Americans were still in the infancy of their publishing potential, exposing this perspective could be seen as detrimental to the ideal vision of the entirely supportive Black community. It is argued, however, novels such as Hurston’s (because of the truth instilled and unique folklorist style) afforded a plethora of additional literary avenues for African Americans.

A Post Office, during this time, was the main way for a community to become in communication with the rest of the United States. This communication back and forth was a way to go beyond the label of a White Man’s town and be recognized as an African American community. Not only would it force the United States Government to provide equal treatment to Eatonville, but it would also make the town exist outside of its meager city limits. The epistolary prose would extend the idea and reality of a Black man’s town to anyone receiving a letter. Starks invites people to the streetlamp-lighting ceremony largely through this medium of communication. Because of the existence of the Post Office, the town’s manmade and hard-forged progress was recognized by others.

As before stated, Starks, was the mayor, entrepreneur, and essential voice of Eatonville. This occurrence could be seen as progressive if it was not for who Starks was and the way he went about changing the town. Starks embodies the role of White Plantation owner and sets him and Janie apart from the rest of the community. Being born and raised farther north in Georgia, Starks is a man with larger ideas than those to whom he speaks (or so he thinks). He treats the community as if they are lucky to have his guidance and that they should strictly obey him. Starks’ presence and demeanor moves Jones to say to Sam, “You can feel a switch in his hand when he’s talkin’ to yuh,” (49). When Lige and Sam play-act and entertain in front of the store, Starks laughs but never fully acknowledge the conversation, telling Janie to do likewise. Janie is forbidden to participate with even a laugh.

Starks’ intentions for Janie were much like her grandmother’s: to stay perched and pretty on the white rocking chair above underlying black poverty. Because of this restriction he puts on her, Janie becomes disconnected from the community, silently suffering over a lack of love and camaraderie. After Starks death, she is able to look at herself in the mirror in a new light. The letting down of her hair in the beginning of the last third of the book is essentially the acknowledgment of her former self. Starks’ death allows her to step off the porch and join in the discourse with her fellow community members. The “White Chair” no longer has a hold over her.

Starks’ dominance over Janie can be represented in Wallace Stevens’ poem, Bird Witted. Joe, by essentially putting her in a tree away from the rest of the community, kept her innocent, quiet, and reserved despite the fact that she was a grown, capable woman. The material possessions he fed her, like the meager victuals the mother bird gave to her offspring, was never enough. Unfortunately, very few of the Eatonville residents were able to see how suffocated and wonting she was. Those that did dare not intervene because Joe, like the mother bid, would protect what is his without exception. Starks, like Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, would kill or severely punish any sly cat that came between he and his underappreciated wife. Such was the cause of Gatsby’s death, and, had Tea Cake showed up before Starks passed away; he would have fallen to a similar fate.

Starks, in light of his thirst for money and power, evokes David from the Old Testament in Frost’s poem Provide, Provide. Rather than promote the culture of the black community, he used the workers as his pawns. To quote Jones again, he says, “(Joe) is too exact wid folks. All he done made it offa de rest of us. He didn’t have all dat when he came here just makes his money off of us,” (49). In fact, Starks has an overall distrust of his friends and customers. When Mrs. Robins came to “feed her chilluns” he gave into the stereotype that she was simply ungrateful for what her husband provides for her. Though this would be forgivable, he also charges the salted pork to Tony Robin’s account. Starks is adamant about making sure every penny he spends ends up in profit. Besides his hesitance to hand out favors, he shows incessant disdain for Janie’s occasional carelessness in recording transactions. As professor Strickland mentioned on April 25th, the satirized character in Provide, Provide is much like Citizen Kane. Rosebud, for Kane, was simply a sled and recognition of youth and spoiled years. Jody, by contrast, never admitted to failing at life in any way. In fact, his Rosebud was forced upon him on his deathbed by Janie. She told him that he never fulfilled anyone’s wishes except his own. Despite all he offered Janie, he never provided for her what she most desperately wanted and needed. He was always too caught up in the register. In this way, Stark’s Rosebud was his inability to love anyone but himself. Starks’ offering may have seemingly satisfied a woman like Helga Crane for awhile, but even she fell victim to the shallowness money and materiality can provide. Starks’ greed and selfishness was rivaled only by a character such as Citizen Kane, an omnipotent white man providing a caged Kingdom for all himself while the threat of others outside influences be damned. The words “Keep Out” on Kane’s fence were also the gatekeepers around Starks’ own MO: power, money, money and power.

Besides Starks’ education and brooding personality, the likely reason he was able to take over the town with such was on account of a necessarily lazy demeanor by the Blacks in Eatonville but because of their fear of change. This fear of is echoed in Nella Larson’s Quicksand. Although the main character, Helga is only temporarily hesitant to venture outside the walls of Naxos, many of those regard her decision as career-suicide. Likewise, the boy in Almost a Man is seemingly venturing the vast unknown by hitching a ride on a freight train after all his troubles. Tea Cake, after being swept out of he and Janie’s home by the hurricane, was forced to bury bones for racism men. The scene is evoking of a Holocaust concentration camp. Afterwards, Tea Cake wants nothing more than to go back to LakeOkechobee where Black men and women have established an Eatonville-like harmony with the rest of the world. Only few African Americans, in these stories, are willing to chance the world existing outside the proximity of their close quarters. Starks, having already fed off the communities’ lack of initiative and stunted belief of what White men will allow them, gives the community a belief that their town is the only one worth staying. He plants this seed near the beginning of his rule of the town. By building up the hopes of the town so magnificently, he awes them into thinking what has been done here cannot be done anywhere else. He is the only “vision” of the town’s future.

The two African American women in Quicksand and Their Eyes Were Watching God willingly accept the tender of White America’s favor. Both women receive the partial acceptance of White American which is afforded them by their beauty, light-skin, and the extreme racism against Black males. Mrs. Turner, Janie’s friend, criticized Tea Cake for his blackness open and often, and tried to set up Janie with her White brother. In the trial against her, she won over the White jury because of the simple fact that they saw the situation as the Black Rapist (they believed as a true myth) versus the poor, innocent, light-skinned woman. Helga, initially rejected on her visit to Chicago by her White uncle, nestled herself within the abode of ritzy white New York. By resisting any criticisms of her unoriginal employer (who speaks on the race question) Mrs. Hayes-Rore, Helga allowed herself to be included in the community. Similarly, the main character in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, uses his excessively light skin to get ahead in White America. Like Janie and Helga, he was born from the womb of a Black woman by way of a White man (quite dispelling of the Black Racist Myth). Because of this, Weldon’s fictional character is able to observe many conversations and behaviors of Whites in relation to ‘The Race Question’ African Americans are typically not privy. At the end of the novel, he tells his future White wife of his Black decadency. She goes into despair before lovingly accepting him and becomes the last person, besides the audience of the novel, who knows his past. While Johnson presents an extreme with regards to how a Black man can get ahead in a White America, Helga and Janie are enabled, to a lesser extent, these same privileges.

In both Almost a Man and Their Eyes Were Watching God, a mule is evoked as a metaphor for slavery. The Jim Crow Laws, especially the institution of the two-thirds of a vote law, made African Americans less than human. “The Gaze” as European and White American Ethnocentrism is often referred, allows for this sort of marginalization across history. It was present in Joseph Conrad’s British perspective of Africans in The Heart of Darkness,and, reaching further back in history, Christopher Columbus’ letter back to Spain in which he saw native Indians as different and therefore sub-human creatures as well. Under the reasoning of “The Gaze,” a mule becomes a useful metaphorical concept because it was a thing of which even a racist plantation owner would agree is “lower” than a slave. African Americans then employed the use of “The Gaze” to simultaneously establish a mule as a lower animal (the slave of the Black man) but also to signify the injustice that, socially, only mindless creatures were placed below them. In the text, Wright’s portrayal of the mule was tragic while Hurston’s view of the mule was somewhat uplifting. Wright saw the mule as trapped and victimized, falling victim to the boy’s gunshot wound that he subsequently tried to cover-up. This cover-up is much like the often times successful attempt for White men to remain unpunished for killing Black slaves. The boy, however, did not have such power over the situation and was punished harshly for the deed. Therefore, the tragic end for the mule was then emulated by the boy; his childhood innocence was squashed by the racist community. Because of this accident, he would be deprived of years of pay and the chance to go to school. In Hurston’s novel, the mule was given “freedom” by Starks and able to roam, eat heartily, and cause general mischief like any free-spirited animal wishes to do. This freedom afforded the mule by Starks was also afforded to Janie by way of Starks’ death. Although she lived a life with of few choices and constant loneliness, her struggle, along with the mule’s mistreatment, ended in the ability to choose her own destiny and happiness.