Month: September 2019

This text is significant to me because it shows how little Gurov knew himself. He considered himself a lady killer, but in the end, he proved to be a lovesick man who had not met the right woman. His wife, the person who perhaps knew him best, even if they were not meant to be with one another, is the one that ends up pointing this out to him. She knew that Gurov was no lady-killer. In fact, this might be how Gurov may have gotten away with his affairs, as his wife intuited that he was the type of man to value love and commitment even when he did not realize it. By contrast, Gurov believed himself to be above love, and to only see women as objects. While I am on this topic, I would also like to address the question of how one can reconcile Gurov’s apparent misogyny with his newfound love for Anna. Gurov was definitely behaving in a misogynistic way and that is not to be overlooked. However, it seems to me that Gurov’s misogyny partly stems from his society. He devalues women because his society devalues women to the point that when he actually falls in love, there is nobody to say this to. His society values marriage, faith, and appearances more than actual love and women’s qualities as equal companions. He behaves in a misogynistic way because that is what he knows, until he meets the woman that he actually loves and sees that women can be companions and provide emotional happiness.

Money in this story serves the function of symbolizing how people think certain things will help them rise above their situation, but in the end, it can be an illusion. Money seems to be a solution to both Joe and Missie May, to the point that Missie May was willing to cheat on her husband to get some, but she soon discovers that money is no solution to her problems at all, and that it is a false promise of hope. In the end, Missie May and Joe lacked money, but they possessed something more important, the love of a true companion, and did not realize it. Perhaps as a broader metaphor, money may be meant to stand for the aspirations of White American society, which values wealth above all else, and how it is counterproductive for African Americans to pursue those same values, because there are more important things they may want to pursue. As a metaphor for the greater situation of African Americans in the South, Hurston may be stating that seeking equal treatment, being wary of charlatans with false promises, and valuing community, are more important than seeking to compete in White America’s pursuit of wealth.

I think that Hurston chose her setting for her story because it shows how much hardship Missie May and Joe had to overcome to be happy. They are living in the South, a region fraught with racial tensions. In fact, this sentence very aptly sets the scene by figuratively hitting the reader over the head with how typically despondent the situation for African Americans is in the South, and how much the subjects of the story have to contend with in their everyday lives. They even live close to a fertilizer works, which I imagine is introduced in the sentence to illustrate how much the place might smell. Nevertheless, as the opening states, they are happy in their situation despite it seeming bad from the outside. Almost certainly, that is because they found each other. Love, Hurston asserts, can help people overcome even the worst of circumstances. Even when their marriage is tested, the pair is able to rise above their problems because they are truly in love.

During the beginning of the story, Joyce clearly depicts a difference between Gabriel and the other characters in the story. Gabriel Conroy is established a character who is very patriarchal and self-absorbed. However, he is also a person who tries to avoid confrontations. For example after his conversation with Lily, Gabriel was “discomposed by the girl’s bitter and sudden retort”(4). He thinks that he is superior to Lily therefore, he felt as if Lily didn’t respond to him in a polite manner. Other characters such as Gretta has a very different mindset. Instead of being stuck in the past, she thinks in the present. One way the the characters similar is the idea of “death” in the story. While Michael is physically dead, Gabriel was basically dead in the inside when the found out the news from Gretta. In a way, death connects some of the characters in the story.

In The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston, betrayal and infidelity play a crucial role in the story. Joe and Missie May “had been married more than a year now” (Hurston 4). All of a sudden, Missie May betrays Joe and committed infidelity with a man named Slemmons. Missie May’s betrayal of Joe destroyed his dreams of having kids, a family, and happiness. This shows the role betrayal and infidelity play in The Gilded Six-Bits.

In The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston, wealth and money are viewed as the most important aspect of the characters’ ciple lives. When Joe catches his cheating on him he ends up with money, which he treasures, from Slemmons. While his wife convinces herself that he will abandon her, she prepares for the worst but is ultimately asked to go about her regular routine by making breakfast. Towards the end of story, Joe uses the money from Slemmons to buy candy for his wife and new child which represents his focus on money and lack of concern about his wife’s misdeed. In a community that lacks wealth, Joe views money the supremely important aspect of life.

 In setting the short story “The Gilded Six-Bits” in the South, Zora Neale Hurston is able to clearly communicate the unjust social and economic systems in place to marginalize and oppress the African American community, specifically its women. In selecting Missie May to commit the act of adultery, Hurston empowers the African-American women and rejects the traditional mindset of male dominance in the household. Additionally, Hurston addresses the dangerous temptation of greed and the deceptive quality of appearances. In the opening of her short story,  Hurston meticulously describes the intimate and welcoming African-American community as “happy…[with] a mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily” to reinforce that the characters were able to live contently, despite being limited in the comforts of materialism. Once Joe and Missie May started to yearn for something beyond their already happy and comfortable lives, their relationship started to fracture. Yet, their love and dependency upon one another ultimately saved Joe and Missie May from falling victim to the notion that money was their gateway to a better life. 

In the short story “The Dead,”  James Joyce attempts to redefine the notion of living by representing death as not simply the physical removal of a being from the world, but as a metaphorical death. The character Gabriel is portrayed as living in denial of the past and following a ritualistic lifestyle. In the speech that Gabriel delivers to the guests of the dinner party, he chooses to “not linger on the past…[so as to not] let any gloomy moralising intrude upon [them when]… gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of…everyday routine.” By focusing solely on life during the present and refusing to acknowledge the connection between the past and present, Gabriel is essentially dead. When Gretta reveals her unbroken attachment to her dead lover Michael Furey, Gabriel finally came to the realization that it is impossible to deny the past. Through Gretta’s confession of her undying love for Michael, Joyce communicates to the reader that the purpose of living is to prioritize our relationships and create memories through our experiences. Since Michael was able to continue to impact the living beyond his physical death, he was essentially more alive than Gabriel.

In the story “The Dead” by James Joyce, the main character, Gabriel is obsessed with being in control or else he doesn’t know how to act. Even though Gabriel is highly educated, he can’t hold proper conversations with the people around him. An instance is when Gabriel dances with Miss Ivors who accuses him of not loving his own country enough. Gabriel gets riled up and exclaims, “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it” (13)! From this scene, readers can recognize that while Miss Ivors is calm, collected, and composed, Gabriel is uncomfortable and worried about what others may think of him. Another character in the story is Gabriel’s wife, Gretta who brings up her past lover, Michael. Although Gretta is physically with Gabriel, she is so fixated with the past that her spiritual soul is actually still attached to Michael. Through the contrast of the past and present, Joyce depicts the differences between Gabriel and the other characters in the story. While Gabriel wants to focus on the present, other characters are engrossed in past memories and people. However, these characters all share one thing in common- they can not run away from the snow that covers all of Ireland, the living and the dead.

In the story, the dead are often mentioned as living around the living. Such as Gabriel’s mother and Gretta’s dead lover Michael Furey. They become vivid because of the constant memories of the living people, and affect the life and thoughts of the living. On the other side,  the living people are numb like the walking dead, such as the monks who have no essential difference in life from the dead.

To some extent, Gabriel’s speech reflects his self-contradictory and evasive psychology, and sets off his contradiction in the embarrassing situation. The speech is hypocritical and full of insincere words. He praises the tradition of Irish hospitality, but he is tired of such life. also, we can feel that his speech is in stark contrast to his wife’s story. Therefore, after listening to Gretta’s story, Gabriel began to truly reflect and evaluate himself and recognize his role. After his inner superiority has disappeared, it suddenly dawned on him.