Using the introduction to Zora Neale Hurston, discuss how her academic training and post-college expertise show up in "The Gilded Sixbits."
Right from the start of her career, Zola Neale Hurston did a lot of experimentation in her work. Her commitment towards traditions and culture is evident from her choice of themes, structure and language used in her writings. She endeavored to match the quality of her text to the verbal quality of the folklore. Before becoming a novelist, Hurston’s last short story was “The Gilded Six Bits” that was related to marriage, love, new beginnings, and value conflict based on the one year life span of the couple Joe Banks and Missie May. Hurston created this story by making use of the complex but subtle characterizations in the context of folk culture and history that diminishes the line between fiction and fact in various ways. The story also illustrates the writer’s own perspective that conformed to her education and training in liberal arts during her childhood days in Florida under the supervision of Franz Boas. She was, in fact, a historian, a folklorist and a fiction writer altogether along with being labeled as a novelist of ‘Harlem Renaissance’ as well as an anthropologist. The short story ‘The Glided Six Bits’ is the proof of Hurston’s artistic ability through which she combined the history, the fiction and the folk together. Her skills in all the three fields allowed her to enhance her writing abilities irrespective of her target audience, though she could perform these roles separately. The Gilded Six Bits is basically a pastoral that related to the African-American culture in the period of 1920s. It illustrates the both emotional and tangible benefits of rural life over urban values. Hurston contributed towards the history of African American people and culture through ‘The Gilded Six Bits’ as this short story was based on the life of a negro family. In this story, she focused on the uniqueness of the Niger community and applied emphasis by constantly repeating the word ‘Negro’ in it. She very effectively used the settlement of small all-black town of Eatonville, Florida in the story from her early days of life. She also incorporated the geographical details from her past related to the area surrounding the Eatonville town to make out a sense of authenticity through the factual material being used as the base of her fiction in order to maintain the intimacy in the story. Moreover, she also included the context of the great economic downturn during the early 1930s in her story.
References
Zora Neale Hurston, "The Gilded Six-Bits," in The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston, ed.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., & Sieglinde Lemke (New York: Harper & Row, 1995), pp. 86-99
Marion Kilson, "The Transformation of Eatonville's Ethnographer," Phylon: The Atlanta
How is "Midnight and I'm Not Famous Yet" a good example of a postmodernist approach to fiction?
Postmodernism is quite a complicated term to define. According to the renowned theorists Linda Hutcheon, postmodern fiction has now become a concept of the past as it has been completely institutionalized in the twenty first century, it possesses its own idolized texts, primers, readers, anthologies, histories as well as dictionaries (Hutcheon, 2002, 165). However, this concept of Hutcheon is not based on reality as postmodernism still look to develop in the modern world of new technology and media with clearly implementing the strategies and creating affects that define postmodernism. Thus, studying postmodernism is still one of the most important approaches towards making sense out of the contemporary style of writing. This essay does not attempt to provide an exhaustive research listing all the major writers ever who have been credited for their post modernistic approach to fiction in the exact chronological order. Nevertheless, it will use the story “Midnight and I am not famous yet” by Barry Hannay as good example of a postmodernist approach to fiction. In this story, the narrator attempts to unveil the true meaning of getting famous. He becomes friends with a photographer and reminisces on his imagination of being a famous celebrity. But when gets acclaimed then the fames comes in the form of punishment. That means that the punishment was in the disguise of a reward. The writer sometimes speaks on behalf of his audience and often directly of his experience in order to provide the option to the readers from the perspective of the narrator. This option of perspective develops a piece of irony by unifying the text. Hence, the post modernistic approach to fiction definitely illustrates a different sort of attitude towards the past in comparison to the history. The concept of post modernism seeks to recognize the past without destroying it. Hence, the past should be revisited innocently with irony because the destruction would cause silence. Therefore, this approach to fiction is the exact opposite of realism or history as it endeavors to hold it and learn through it by experience.
References
L. Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, 165–6. 5. Ibid., 181. 6. G. Lipovetsky, Hypermodern Times. New York/London: Routledge. (2002)
