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.