Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Input on this passage from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"?
"Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more ******* than herself in direct ratio to their negroness. Like the pecking order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."
What's your take on this passage?
1 Answer
- Anonymous8 years agoFavorite Answer
I believe it's one of the key passages that identifies the type of character Mrs. Turner is in *Their Eyes Were Watching God*. She has internalized the racism she has been subjected to and practices it like a religion. When I read this novel, my favorite from Zora Neale Hurston, I felt Mrs. Turner was the female version of an Uncle Tom. He was a character in *Uncle Tom's Cabin*. For more information on Uncle Tom check here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom.
Don't take my word as the only source, read this paper:http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~viola/pdf/hurston.pdf
There is even a collection of essays on this novel that analyzes it more in depth by Michael Awkward, perhaps you can check with your local library and see if they have it: http://www.worldcat.org/title/new-essays-on-their-...
Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~viola/pdf/hurston.pdf