Zora Neale Hurston: Short Stories Literary Elements

Short stories which often have a tragic or dramatic undertone.

The action described in "Poker’’ takes place in present-time, New York.

The stories are all told from the perspective of a third-person objective narrator and point of view.

The tone in the story "The Gilded Six-Bits’’ is playful and light hearted.

In the story ‘’Sweat’’, the narrator is Delia, the hardworking wife, while the antagonist is her husband, Sykes, who even tries to kill her so he could be with the woman he truly loved.

The major conflict in the story ‘’The Gilded Six-Bits’’ is between Joe’s desire to please his wife and his inability to stop himself from tempting her with money which eventually seduce Missie May.

The story ‘’Spunk’’ reaches its climax when the main character, a man named Spunk, dies in a horrific accident at the sawmill.

Otis’s lack of wealth is foreshadowed in the beginning of the story ‘’The Gilded Six-Bits’’ when Missie May suggests that maybe the wealth Otis claims to have is not real or inflated.

When Missie May claims nothing attracts her when it comes to Otis is an understatement as she is later found in bed with him a short while later.

In the story ‘’Spunk’’ Joe claims at one point he will go and ‘’fetch’’ his wife, talking about her as if she were an object or maybe an animal. This is an allusion made towards the way in which women would be treated by the men of the times.

An important image is presented in the beginning of the story ‘’Conscience of the Court’’ when the major character, a woman named Beasly is charged of assaulting a white man. The reason why Beasly assaulted the white man was because he was trying to steal from the home she was living in. Even though she tried to protect her master and their possessions, Beasly was still accused and brought to court. This image is extremely important because it shows just how few legal rights the black community had and how, even when they did nothing wrong, they could still get in trouble for their actions.

A paradoxical ideas at the end of the story ‘’Spunk’’, when, the characters blames Lena for the death of Spunk and Joe even though she had nothing to do with their deaths.

A parallel can be drawn between Otis’ true character and the false money he left behind in the story ‘’The Gilded Six-Bits’’. Just like the money were not real, the promises he made to Missie May and his general persona were just a façade meant to impress those around him.

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We find personification in the line "the asphalt curved deeply’’ in "Mules and Men’’.