Hurston's "Spunk" and Hamlet - Zora Neale Hurston

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1993 by David G. Hale

Zora Neale Hurston's "Spunk" (1925) is a story of lust, killing, and supernatural revenge set in rural Florida. Critics have praised its "mythic quality" achieved by her use of material from folklore and voodoo (Perry 123, Ikonne 184-85). Another aspect of Hurston's artistry appears through recognition of a complex allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet, a work of high art with its own roots in myth and folklore.

In the story's last paragraph, at Spunk Banks's wake, "The women ate heartily of the funeral baked meats and wondered who would be Lena's next' (Hurston 8). The sentence clearly recalls Hamlet's "Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funeral bak'd-meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables' (1.2.180-81). The repeated phrase and the mention of a bereaved woman's soon taking a new man establish a definite link. A more oblique parallel emerges in the story's last sentence as the men guzzling whiskey suggest Hamlet's comments about Danish drinking in the same passage (175) and again in 1.4.8-22.

The basic situation of the story is something of a prequel to Hamlet: a man (Spunk/Claudius) desires the wife (Lena Kanty/Gertrude) of another (Joe Kanty/King Hamlet), kills him, and arranges to marry her. Lena clearly accepts Spunk as a lover before her husband's death; Gertrude's prior relationship to Claudius is not specified, although the Ghost calls him an "adulterate beast" (1.5.42). In Belleforest, one of Shakespeare's sources, Geruth is an "unfortunate and wicked woman" who has committed adultery with Fegnon before the murder (88-89). In both stories the spirit of the dead returns. Joe comes as a "h'ant," "a big black bob-cat' who Spunk thinks has "sneaked back from hell'"(5-6). Walter, a minor character, speculates that Joe will "be back time and again' (6), suggesting the repeated appearances of the Ghost of King Hamlet, who may bring 'blasts from hell' (1.4.41).

Five other elements of the story have precedents in Hamlet. Lena twice expresses grief, briefly after the death of Joe. After the death of Spunk, "Lena's lamentations were deep and loud" (8), which may be connected to the various grieving women of the play, Gertrude, Ophelia, and, most substantially, the Player's Hecuba and "The instant burst of clamor that she made" (2.2.515). Joe Kanty's devious means of revenge-'a dirty coward" (5) attacking Spunk from the back with a razor-suggests Laertes's treacherous use of an unbated, poisoned foil in his fencing match with Hamlet. When Elijah discusses Spunk's death he says, "Spunk died too wicket -- died cussin' he did" (7). This is the kind of death Hamlet wants for Claudius -- "a-swearing, or about some act / That has no relish of salvation in't" (3.3.91-92) -- when he does not kill him at prayer. Joe's decision to attack Spunk is regarded by Elijah as "Talkin' like a man . . . Tain't even decent for a man to take and take like he do" (3). Hamlet similarly discusses his manhood and possibly cowardly failure to act in the "all occasions" and "rogue and peasant slave' soliloquies (4.4.32-66, 2.2.550-605) as well as the contemplation of suffering "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in "To be or not to be" (3.1.55-87; cf. Bone 147). Finally, the circle-saw at the mill, which kills both Tes' Miller and Spunk, carries associations of the ancient tragic image of "strumpet Fortune" and "her wheel" (2.2.493-95) invoked by the First Player.

Works Cited

Belleforest, Francois de. The Hystorie of Hamblet. 1608. Major Tragedies; Hamlet, Othello, King Lear. Ed. Geoffrey Bullough. London: Routledge; New York; Columbia UP, 1973. Vol. 7 of Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare.8 vols. 1957-75. Bone, Robert. Dawn Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story. New York: Columbia UP, 1988. Hurston, Zora Neale. "Spunk." "Spunk": The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1985. 1-8. Ikonne, Chidi. From Du Bois to Van Vechten: The Early New Negro Literature, 1903-1926, Contributions in African-American and African Studies 60. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981. Perry, Margaret. Silence to the Drums: A Survey of the Literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies 18. Westport. CT., Greenwood, 1976. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. The Riverside Shakespear Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1974. 1141-86.