Alice Walker’s Resurrection of Zora Neale Hurston, The Woman

Alice Walker wrote that Hurston “immersed herself in her own culture” (Walker 63). Hurston was born in Eatonville, a little town in Florida. Three of her works, “Sweat,” “The Gilded Six Bits,” and Their Eyes Were Watching God, are set in the village of Eatonville where the houses were built on isolated roads. The characte

preys on his wife’s obsessive fear of snakes. As their story begins, he tries to scare her with a whip that looks like a snake. A few days later he puts a rattlesnake near the back door. When he notices that Delia is not intimidated, he places the snake in the clothes hamper where she is sorting out the laundry. He hopes that the snake will kill her. His plan backfires and Delia escapes. While hiding in the front yard Delia watches as Sykes comes home and gets bitten by the snake. “She saw him on his hands and knees as soon as she reached the door. He crept an inch or two toward her --- all that he was able, and she saw his horribly swollen neck and his one open eye shining with hope” (Hurston, “Sweat” 415). Delia could have warned him or saved him, but she just let him die. She was bitter because he had made her life so miserable. He had beaten her, cheated on her, and refused to provide for her. For these reasons she turned against him.

Janie survives these marriages by retreating into herself. She discovers that she had “an inside and an outside and how to mix them” (Hurston 186).

Some topics in this essay:
Watching God, Standard English, Bertha Sykes, Florida Everglades, Jackson College, Slemmons Slemmons, Alice Walker, Robert Hemenway’s, Alice Walker’s, Bertha Delia, eyes watching, gilded six, eyes watching god, alice walker, watching god, “the gilded six, walker 63, hurston “sweat”, missie joe, janie crawford, black feminist, gilded six bits”, black feminist writer, “the gilded,