History paper #1
Zora Neale Hurston is sent to the south to collect and gather various stories, lies, and voodoo formulas made up and practiced by the southern black populations in America. Hurston was sent to record these events and stories not because they are interesting, but because they were becoming increasingly rare throughout the south. The stories were becoming rare because many of the southern blacks were losing touch with their heritage, as they traded a rural existence for cities and factory work. All of this growth was forcing blacks who were able to leave to do so, not only for their own sake but in order to ensure a better life for future generations. The blacks who told the stories that Zora collects were the last of a dying breed. They are the ones who were not able to leave, the ones who chopped trees down in the swamps, not because they wanted to but because they had to. They had bad backgrounds and had often been in and out of prisons throughout the south. These stories which Hurston collects all come from oral traditions passed down by these southern blacks because they often resemble their lives. There may be some modifications made to certain stories each time they are told so that they may be able to fit the story into the particular event taking place. This can be assumed because of the way they are told at this point in time, in the oral tradition. The interesting thing about all of the stories Zora collects is that no one really knows how they were told exactly before, because no one has written them down before. Many of the stories are from a deep tradition of oral story telling; in which families relate certain events to stories they know for entertainment, or to inform someone of things going on within the community. They may also use them to uplift the spirits of people who are in bad economic or physical conditions. Someone who is more familiar with the culture may be able to distinguish underlying meanings found in stories, meanings which someone from a different culture my not understand. Hurston is sent south to collect information on a population which is not growing, but actually decreasing. What I mean by decreasing is the people who are telling these stories are in a distinct minority. They are the last generation of people who are going to hold onto this culture. Within the south many blacks are moving away from the country side and moving into big cities. With blacks moving into big cities, they are coming into closer contact with whites. This constant contact with whites causes an eroding effect on their stories. Their stories are now starting to contain more of a white slant, instead of a black slant. Anthropologists began to notice that this type of communication was becoming increasingly rare, so Dr. Franz Boas sent Hurston to gather all the information she could on this particular culture. This southern black culture doesn’t just have one type of story which they follow. They have many different stories which seem to fall into general categories. These categories seem to describe their daily lives. Many of these categories seem to contain humor. This humor is a psychic self-protection mechanism for the blacks to defend themselves from the whites. The whites did just about anything imaginable to the blacks to ruin their self-esteem. Blacks soon discovered that the whites could break them physically, but not mentally. If they were able to maintain their humor their mental state would remain strong; this is quite evident in many stories which they use humor and mix it with a serious message. The various categories found in many of the stories are: religion, master-slave relations, the war between the sexes, and the natural-supernatural forces which include voodoo. The first aspect of religion is really interesting. These are hardworking people from the deep south. They are not very well off in life, and in fact most are really living in what they would consider to be a hell on earth. Many of the stories which are told make a lot of inferences towards religion, but many of the story tellers don’t strike me as religious. Instead the people are using religion as a sort of crutch to get by on. Only they aren’t even getting by in some cases. They don’t use religion as most people do. They use their religion as a way to explain why things happen on earth, not as a way to get into Heaven. This view of religion is backward in a sense to many people, but the blacks don’t see it that way. They figure that if they pray for something it should happen. Many times however, after they have prayed they don’t see any results. This then causes them to become upset with God, and they rationalize occurrences on earth. Many stories are great examples of how they perceive God to move on whims and treat them unfairly. One such story deals with a religious aspect and humor tied together as one. The story starts off in a split-level church were the preacher asks a fellow preacher to come preach for two weeks. Well this guest preacher does his preaching for two weeks , and not one person has said Amen to one of his sermons at the end of his two weeks. Well, the preacher takes offense to it and decides that he is going to pull out his .44 special and force the congregation to say amen. The really humorous part in this is that there is a man in the back of the church with a wooden leg, who doesn’t know if he should bow down and say amen or not. The guest preacher makes sure he gets down to say amen too. The preacher then hops out a window after he forces them to do this. The people then all run to one side of the church and keep running, carrying the church for 20 to 30 miles before they decide to get out. This is viewed by the blacks as a sign that they aren’t following God, and he will punish them for it. But they might also see this story as relating to their lives because they feel like they don’t have anything to be thankful for. The preacher symbolizes God wanting them to do what he says is right. And after they do what he says is right, he just simply runs away, leaving them by themselves again. It can also give them reasons to explain the in explicable. How else could they possibly make a story up to explain how a preacher may have actually pulled a gun in them in the past? Another great example of how the southern blacks intertwined humor and religion together in stories comes from the story about how blacks got their color. This story describes how God literally called people to come forward and receive whatever color he told them to be. Well when it came time for the blacks to get their color they were late. They were all supposed to be by God at seven to get their color. Not a single person showed up until nine. Once they realized what happened they all tried to come running to God all at once to get their color. When God had all of these people running at him at once he said get back. They must have all misunderstood him because ever since they have all been black. There is also the story about the woodpecker and how the red head came about. The version of the story goes that Noah put two of everything on the ark. This allowed him to save each species of animal, even the woodpecker. While on the ark the woodpecker became hungry for some wood. Well since the whole ark was constructed of wood, it decided to feast on some of the ark. Noah saw this and would stand for it. The woodpecker persisted on gnawing on the ark. Noah was growing increasingly upset with the woodpecker and hit it on the head with a hammer. The woodpecker then got its red head from being knocked on the head by this hammer. It is very interesting how the blacks in the South are aware of Noah. Many of these stories are from an oral tradition in which they are passed down. The unusual thing is if many of these blacks ancestors were slaves they usually got their religious sermons from their masters. However, some slaves became tired of only hearing certain parts of the Bible, and decided to read more of it on their own. Many slaves would hear of Noah from the masters, because Noah was very obedient to God’s wishes to have him build an ark. Many masters would only relate stories to slaves that dealt with obedience. There are also stories which deal with the relationship between master and slave and how they interact together. There are many instances given in which the slave simply tricks the master. This trickery isn’t meant to be harmful, it is meant to show that the master and slave were possibly equal mentally. Some stories consist of humor and fun, which are used to deal with authority. This authority is usually the master. Some stories show outright resistance to the masters, not by saying no but reverting to their ways of tricking the master. Some stories may also have a deep underlying meaning to the person telling them as well as the person listening to them. One of the first stories I ran across in this book which seemed to have humor in it may have also had underlying meaning in it. The story is that of Ole Massa and John. Ole Massa woke up in the middle of the night and wanted a drink of water. So he sent his favorite slave, John, to go down to the pond and get it for him. John left to go down to the pond to fetch Ole Massa his water, but John returned without any. When Ole Massa saw this he was upset and asked John why he didn’t bring the water, John responded by saying he saw a monster; he described it as a green monster which bumped its butt when it moved, but it didn’t have any tail. The master believed John that it must have been horrible since John had never disobeyed him before. One story describes how the master was hungry for some deer meat and sent a slave out to shoot a deer. The slave saw a deer; in fact it ran right towards him. But he didn’t shoot it. He was going to have to shoot the deer aiming uphill and he didn’t want to sprain the master’s new gun by shooting at a deer uphill. There is also the story of a man who is supposed to be doing some work for a white man. The white man shows him what he wants done and then leaves to go work on something else. The black man hurries up and makes some chopping noises on the wood when he hears the white man approaching. When the white man walks away, he goes to sleep. After a days worth of what the man thought was work, he goes up to the white man’s house to be paid. The white man acts like he is going to pay the man, but he doesn’t. He simply makes the noise of the coins hitting together and laughs at the man. The next array of stories we find comes from the voodoo section. These stories are gathered from a different region than the lies were. The voodoo stories come from Louisiana. Throughout her travels in Louisiana Hurston practices voodoo with some of the best voodoo doctors. Many of them are reluctant at first because of the extreme power they believe their magic to have, but many allow her to observe and study their ways. From all of the voodoo taking place, we can assume that people are beginning to grow very unhappy with their conditions and want to change every thing which they can gain control over. This section contains stories which deal with the conflict between the sexes and with the supernatural. It is interesting to see that the voodoo doctors seem to be all male. However, the majority of their clients seem to be female. These female clients basically all ask for the same type of things. They all want to either have a lover returned, or keep one from leaving them. It seems as if the voodoo is a way for the black population to deal with their emotions. A great deal of the emotions expressed in the stories seem to come from jealousy between men and women. There is one story described in the book, in which a women pays one hundred dollars to have her lover killed because he left her. There is another story described where a women pays to have her lover forced to stay in the town she is in. This one is very peculiar because of the methods involved. Zora who is an apprentice to this voodoo Doctor, has to gather up nine chickens. They then have to wait until the precise hour to go out and place these chickens one mile apart on the road. The chickens are supposed to have some sort of power in which the person can’t get past them; each chicken’s power gets stronger and stronger as the person approaches the edge of town. This same method is used to keep a person out of town except they cut the heads off of the chickens, and it is supposed to have the opposite effect on the person who the curse is placed upon. All of these various voodoo procedures are very popular with the people in this area of the country. Many people seem to be angry and want to seek revenge on their neighbors, friends, and even relatives. There are some stories listed in which people are supposed to go to trial. Some people, however, want to gain a leg up on their rivals in court. So they go to a voodoo doctor who gives them very precise instructions to follow on how to sabotage their court case. One method involves slicing a cow tongue and placing the names of the people you want to mess up in the tongue. You then sew the tongue up, and burn candles around it to ensure the spell works. There is one story where the husband won’t work to support the wife. All he does is sit around gamble her money away. So she decides to visit a voodoo doctor to find out her options. The doctor tells her she must take the right foot track of her husband and fry it in a skillet, get some cayenne pepper, and a scrap of paper with her husband’s name on it and place the mixture in a sock. She must then throw the sock into the river when she is about forty feet away from the edge. A lot of blacks in the south are growing more and more discontent with their surroundings; this is quite evident from the selected stories mentioned above. Many long to be able to better themselves but are simply unable to do so because of events that have happened in their pasts. Events which leave them with mental scars that will not go away for a long time. Fortunately this culture will soon fade away. The stories which have made this southern black culture unique, are the very things which this culture can’t take with them into this new era. Many blacks were indeed moving from the rural life they have know for so long into the new culture of city life. The blacks who have made this transition, know that their stories of hardships in the past would only complicate their new lives they are seeking in the cities. Many blacks were moving to cities because the cities offered them a chance to start over and better their lives. This type of success wouldn’t be available in the rural areas of the south. These stories which they were used to telling each other seemed to be used to comfort and relieve tension and problems. Not that they won’t have problems in the cities, but they need to forget their pasts in order to move on in the future. Hurston and Dr. Franz both realize that this culture will be moving into a new period of time. Look at Hurston, she is a black woman who has gotten out of the rural life in the south to better her life by working and living in the city. These stories will no longer be an important part of this cultures success, they will develop new stories to fit their lives in the city. The stories of the past will only fade away, this fading away can only benefit society. Their only existence will be noted by the essays which Zora Neale Hurston collected.