A Very Lit Blog

 The hurricane arc in Their Eyes Were Watching God is a wholly unique part of the book. All of a sudden, our mostly down-to-earth story about self-fulfillment turns into a feet-to-the-pavement battle with nature reminiscent of the chaotic disasters in  Invisible Man. While I at first found the hurricane to kind of come out of nowhere, after looking into it further, it is actually Janie's final test towards total self-acceptance. First of all, there's Tea Cake's unwise response to the hurricane. When people in the muck start leaving for fear of being swept away, Tea Cake decides he and Janie will stay, as he doesn't see the hurricane as a threat. This boldfaced opinion is a representation of Tea Cake's fatal flaw; sly confidence and a delusion of power in the face of things he absolutely cannot control. The same trait that caused him to hit Janie is what keeps her and Tea Cake in the town, even as the water rises. Eventually, they too realize that they won't be a

 Throughout the novel, Hurston makes it clear that speech is a very integral part of the environment. Rumours get twisted, gossip is spread, and the dialect of the novel is very clearly articulated. Every line of dialogue is carefully crafted to be correct to the time period and accurate to the novel. While Hurston could have very easily just written the dialogue in an unaffected manner and allowed the reader to make their own connections, she instead chooses to put in the extra work to enhance the experience herself.   This is done not only to make a sort of time capsule out of the novel, but also to bring the concept of speech to the forefront of the novel, as a recurring theme throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God  is the concept of words being stifled or brought to light. Every relationship Janie has in the book is based around this central theme of vocal expression. Throughout the beginning of Janie's life, she is constantly being stifled by those around her: her grandmother

       There was a quick moment during one of our discussions where Mr. Mitchell mentioned the parallels between Invisible Man  and some modern horror works that are metaphors for the racism in society. One of the most prolific examples of this kind of work, in my opinion, is Jordan Peele and his films Get Out and Us, both excellent examples of Twilight Zone -esque narratives that are still intrinsically tied to metaphors about race.  (SPOILERS FOR GET OUT AND US, IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THEM YET FOR SOME REASON. I will put a marker before a sentence where there's a major spoiler :))      The style of all three works are very similar: While Invisible Man is tangential to horror, occasionally dipping into it during particularly intense scenes, Peele's films are outright horror movies. However, all three contain extremely surreal, metaphorical, and almost Lovecraftian imagery: The battle royale scene and the scene at Liberty Paints are prime examples of this kind of feverish

 Tod Clifton is an enigma of a character in Invisible Man, but it's hard to figure out why at first glance. You can tell there's something important about him, but you're not quite sure what. His entrance into the story feels like it's filled some sort of void (or perhaps I'm projecting my grief onto you), and his exit is bittersweet and leaves multiple characters angry and confused. Before we can answer the Tod Clifton question, we must talk about the narrator. Throughout the entire book, there is one specific thing that the narrator never really gets: a friend. He's had a temporary caregiver in Mary, but he was bothered by her preaching and looked down on her for having racist memorabilia in her house. He had a kind of paternal figure in Brother Tarp, who gave him a gift he didn't really know what to make of yet felt compelled to keep. But other than that, there isn't really anyone who's come close; and everyone who approaches him with friendliness

     The narrator travels across plenty of ground in Invisible Man: from college to Liberty Paints to the streets of Harlem. He is one of thousands (at least) in each of those respective environments, and yet, every time something catastrophic happens, he is at the center of it. Now, from a reader's standpoint, this is a very good thing: so many incidents happening! Very fun!     But from a logical standpoint, this makes no sense. How is it possible that this guy is the catalyst for so many events? And these aren't just small accidents, either-- from the illness of a major investor to the literal explosion at the paint factory, everything that he kickstarts just happens to be an extremely damning occurrence. So why? Why is this dude the Leviathan all of a sudden?      Before we can properly answer that question, we need to look at some of the problems he's caused. First, the disastrous road trip with Mr. Norton: He comes to the college hoping to see the fruits of his financ

     In the first part of Native Son, Bigger goes to see a movie with Jack called The Gay Woman . In it, a white woman cavorts behind her rich husband's back. She goes to a jazz club with her lover, and while they are there, a Communist runs in with a bomb. Her lover throws the bomb out of the window, and it turns out that he was trying to kill her husband but got the wrong guy. This makes her run back to her husband, and the movie ends.      This scene is small, more of a transition than anything else, but still, there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, it's never explicitly stated that the woman's lover is black, however, with some context clues (the club and Bigger and Jack's response, most notably) and the overall themes of the book in mind, it's reasonable to assume that he is. So I'm going to go through the rest of this post with this assumption.     Firstly, in the movie, the lover is treated as a commodity for the woman, a pastime as opposed to an