Denver's Character Development

I think that Beloved can be interpreted as a drawn out coming-of-age novel for Denver. In the beginning of the book, Denver had never gone outside alone and once Beloved arrived, she basically just followed her around like a child. Denver is dependant on Sethe and spends much of her life cooped up in 124. Denver also becomes obsessed with Beloved, and starts to rely on her much more than normal. She becomes obsessed with Beloved’s attention so much that it is all she thinks about:

Denver is a strategist now and has to keep Beloved by her side from the minute Sethe leaves for work until the hour of her return when Beloved begins to hover at the window, then work her way out the door, down the steps and near the road. … Otherwise Beloved gets private and dreamy, or quiet and sullen, and Denver’s chances of being looked at by her go down to nothing. (142-143).

Denver remains a static character for most of the novel until she is forced out of her shell when Beloved and Sethe start to clash. Denver is unable to continue her childlike habits because both of the figures she used to follow basically ignore her. When she decides to go out to get help, she literally leaves 124 for the first time alone, which is a very symbolic scene that shows Denver becoming an independent woman. At this point in the novel, her submissive role swaps with Sethe as she becomes Sethe’s caretaker. When Paul D comes back, he sees Denver as a woman who is in charge, which further proves her development. I think that this change in Denver’s character can easily be categorized as a coming of age. She starts out as a very submissive, childlike character and ends up being the one saving and taking care of her mother.

Denver’s coming of age may not be the most important theme in Beloved, but I think that it is an important sub-plot that becomes especially important at the end when Denver becomes the character to save Sethe and produce the “happy ending” that we talked about in class.

Suicide and Seclusion

The ending of The White Boy Shuffle is really extreme. Even though I found out what was going to happen at the end in the prologue, the light hearted writing style almost made me forget that the book would end in such a negative way.

I honestly don't really like the ending of this book because it is so pessimistic. Gunnar said that he couldn’t make a difference, but I think that he would have had the capability to do so, and had already made a big difference already. By the end of the book, he was famous and had a huge amount of influence in the black community. He could have used that influence to make a change, even if it wasn't as big as he wanted it to be.

The ending is actually similar to other books we have read. For example, the narrator in Invisible Man ends the book having completely given up on and separated himself from society. Effectively, Gunnar is doing the same thing, just in a more extreme and public way. Gunnar says that he is committing suicide because he is “tired of thrashing around in the muck and not getting anywhere. (Beatty, 226)” The narrator in Invisible Man had a similar realization, and said:

Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up above there’s an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern. (Ellison, 576)

One of the differences between the endings in The White Boy Shuffle and Invisible Man is that Gunnar is more concerned with not being able to make a difference, while the IM narrator is fine with not making a difference, he is just unhappy with the way society is and decides to seclude himself. Even with this difference, they both decide that they can't stay complacent in society and go to an extreme measure (whether it is suicide or seclusion) to leave.

Is Hurston a Feminist?

Many people debate if Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a feminist novel. We discussed this briefly in class, and people had good points for both sides of the argument. I don't think that Hurston specifically wrote this book with the thought of writing a feminist novel, but I do think that the book has important feminist ideas. Especially for the time that Their Eyes Were Watching God was written, it is significant on its own just to have a female character as the lead in the book. The lead character, Janie, makes her own decisions even when being forced into an arranged marriage. She leaves Logan, whom she did not love and moved on to Joe Starks and eventually Tea Cake.

One of the arguments against this book being a feminist novel is that Janie’s life still revolves around finding the right man to marry and settle down with. I agree that this is not a very forward plot, but Janie does eventually come to a time, after Joe dies, where she is content living alone.

After Joe’s death, Janie talks to Pheoby about her grief:

“Tain’t dat Ah worries over Joe’s death, Pheoby. Ah jus’ loves dis freedom.”

“Sh-sh-sh! Don't let nobody hear you say dat, Janie. Folks will say you ain’t sorry he’s gone.”

“Let ‘em say whut dey wants tuh, Pheoby. To my thinkin’ mourning oughtn’t tuh last no longer’n grief.”

In this quote, Janie acknowledges that she likes the freedom of not having a man. At this point, when Tea Cake comes around, Janie is not actively searching for a partner, but she falls for Tea Cake because she truly likes him. Based on Janie’s mindset before meeting Tea Cake, it seems like Janie would have been perfectly fine being alone had she not met Tea Cake.

I do see this as a feminist book, even if it still revolves around Janie’s life in relation to other men. Janie gets married off at a very young age into a relationship that she isn't happy in, and she has the agency to leave and find a better life for herself. After going through a big part of her life married to Joe Starks, Janie finally realized that she likes being alone and doesn't want or need to get married again. Even if Hurston didn't write this book with the specific intent of writing a feminist novel, it is definitely an important aspect to the book, especially considering that female leads in books were almost non-existent at the time it was written.

Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake

So far in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has had a significant relationship with three men. The first man is Logan Killicks, who Janie was forced to marry because her grandmother thought that he would provide her a solid future. She was not happy in this marriage because Logan was much older and expected her to work on his farm. Soon after, Janie met Joe Starks who charmed her into running off with him.

The initial attraction to Joe was something that Janie hadn’t really felt before, and I think that is one of the reasons that she so willingly moved away with him. Before Joe, the only man that she had a relationship with was Logan, which was not a relationship based on love. When Joe drove up, and started talking to her about a better life, Josie was all on board:

“De day you puts yo’ hand in mine, Ah wouldn’t let de sun go down on us single. Ah’m uh man wid principles. You ain’t never knowed what it was to be treated lak a lady and Ah wants to be de one tuh show yuh…” (29)

He says that he will treat her like a lady, which sounds a lot better to Janie than her life with Killicks, where he makes her work on the farm. Soon after marrying Joe, however, she realizes that he isn't always as charming as he was when they met. He still makes her work, but in a different way than Logan. Their marriage eventually turns into a facade for the town, because they really don't feel the sparks that they initially had anymore:

“The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands wheneber company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again.” (71)

After Joe dies, Janie finds that she really likes the freedom of being single. But soon, another man comes into her life who is very different from both Logan and Joe. Janie fell for Tea Cake because of his super charming and cute personality. We haven’t read much about what happens with Tea Cake yet, but it is almost like things are too good with him. I think that it is possible for the reader to be skeptical of Tea Cake because he is so charming and so interested in Janie, who is much older than him.

The Invisible Man

In most of the novel, the narrator of Invisible Man has not actually experienced what he calls “invisibility” in the prologue. He continues to develop towards it, meeting people that betray him and becoming more defensive. In the prologue, the narrator describes his invisibility as never being quite on the beat. When the narrator discovers invisibility, he not only discovers that he can use a disguise and not be himself, but he can be secluded; he can live in a disguise and start to notice more things without worrying about the relationships he already has. The narrator’s first experience with being invisible to people that would normally recognize him is in Chapter 23, when he must put on a disguise so that Ras’ men don’t recognize him. He then starts to run into a bunch of people who mistake him for a man named Rinehart, who presumably leads many different lives with different people. The narrator realizes that he really enjoys being invisible because he is the only one who knows who he is. This is a big step and the narrator is almost at the mindset of the “prologue narrator”, there is just one more event that changes him. In the last chapter, the rebellion in Harlem gets out of control and the narrator ends up getting sucked into it and falls into a manhole. In the manhole, he decides to burn everything in his briefcase because it is all he has to get light. This is a very significant action, because up to this point in the book, the narrator has kept all of the significant items that he has come across in that briefcase. At this point, he is completely detached from his life. He says,

No, I couldn’t return to Mary’s, or to the campus, or to the Brotherhood, or home. I could only move ahead or stay here, underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out. Here, at least, I could try to think things out in peace, or, if not in peace, in quiet. I would take up residence underground. The end was in the beginning. (Ellison 571)

These are the last words in the book before it goes back to the narrator in the room with the lights. By now, he has completely realized that he wants to live an “invisible life.” He says in the quote above, “the end was in the beginning,” meaning that his new life starts here.

Rebellious Thoughts

The prologue of Invisible Man shows the reader a glimpse of what the narrator will be like by the end of the book. He is almost the complete opposite of the narrator in the first chapter: he lives an “invisible,” or secluded life and knows that he can’t rely on other people. Throughout the book, the narrator slowly evolves from a young and naive character that is very trusting in others, to the narrator from the prologue, that has discovered his own identity.

The first scene where the narrator has a thought that is completely his own is in the fight club in the very first chapter. Throughout the chapter, he goes along with what the white men tell him, very excited to give his speech, and believing that all of the men really care about him and want to hear him talk. Before he gets to the speech, however, the narrator is forced to fight with the other men like animals, and has this thought:

Each time he grabbed me I slipped out of his hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug more than I did the drunk, so I held on, surprising myself for a moment by trying to topple him upon the rug. It was such an enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. (28)

This moment, though it is very short, is very significant to the narrator’s development into the narrator in the prologue because his thought goes against what the white men want him to do. As the narrator has this thought, he even surprises himself, so much that he actually goes through with it.

As the chapters go on, the narrator has more and more of these “rebellious” thoughts as he grows into the narrator from the prologue.

Another scene that I saw as an important turning point for the narrator was when he realized that Bledsoe had not been on his side all along after reading the letter he had written for the narrator. The narrator was enraged and even wanted to kill Bledsoe:

When I stopped, gasping for breath, I decided that I would go back and kill Bledsoe. Yes, I thought, I owe it to the race and to myself. I’ll kill him. And the boldness of the idea and the anger behind it made me move with decision. (194)

This example shows the narrator getting mad at the man he used to only admire and look up to, which is a big change for him. I think that this scene is particularly important in the narrator’s development because he says that he not only owes killing Bledsoe to himself, but to his race. This is a development for the narrator because he was not only thinking about himself, but he identified with his whole race, which is a big part of the identity that he struggles with throughout the book.

The Rat Scene

The first time I read the beginning of Native Son, I didn't think very much about the scene in the beginning where Bigger Thomas kills the vicious rat in his home. Now that I have finished the book, it is obvious to me that this scene was foreshadowing for what would happen to Bigger in the rest of the novel.

The rat in the beginning of the book struck out at Bigger because it was afraid, and if you think of Bigger as the rat from the opening scene, the analogy makes sense because Bigger killed Mary Dalton out of fear that he would get caught and accused of rape.

The rat’s belly pulsed with fear. Bigger advanced a step and the rat emitted a long thin song of defiance, its black beady eyes glittering, its tiny forefeet pawing the air restlessly. (6)

This quote shows how obvious Wright wanted to make it that the rat was scared. Even though it was a quick scene that only lasted a few pages, it is very obvious that the rat has more significance in the book than just introducing the environment that Bigger lives in.

The other part of the analogy that stands out to me is that the rat really had no chance to survive. It was up against a human who was a lot stronger and had the power to corner it and kill it. In Bigger’s situation, this was true as well. Once Bigger was wanted for the murder of Mary Dalton, he really had no chance to escape. Just like Bigger cornered the rat in the beginning, the white mobs looking for Bigger literally cornered him on a roof even after searching for weeks.

They were suspicious and would comb every inch of space on top of these houses. On all fours, he scrambled to the next ledge and then turned and looked back; the man was still standing, throwing the spot of yellow about over the snow. Bigger grabbed the icy ledge, hoisted himself flat upon it, and slid over. (264)

This quote is right before Bigger got caught, and shows how the white men literally cornered him just like Bigger with the rat in the beginning. Bigger was literally on all fours trying to crawl away, just like the rat in the beginning.

Overall, I think that this was a really interesting scene for Wright to add to the beginning of the book. Even though it seemed like nothing when I first read it, after finishing the book and looking back, I could see the scene’s importance.

Thanks for reading and comment if you had any other observations or noticed any more parallels in this scene!