Biblical trees, biblical deliverance: literary landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Glenda B. Weathers

Continually looking for ways to strut his superiority, Starks capitalizes on a mule's death by using its distended belly for a platform, as he postures god-like to make his speech. Nanny's fear had been that Janie, like most black women before her, would become a "mule of the world." Because Starks treats Janie as irreverently as he does the mule, the vivid depiction of the mule's death is an important one, with trees once more serving as markers of knowledge gained or lost--in this case the knowledge of death. Although the mule dies beneath "the big tree," his carcass is dragged significantly to a grove of scrub oaks where impatient buzzards gather, awaiting their opportunity to grow fat on his remains. In an ironic foreshadowing of a pivotal courtroom scene that will put Janie at the mercy of human vultures, the hungry buzzards focus on the "yaller" mule. But they must wait for their ruler, the narrator reports, the leader bird also called "the Parson," who situates himself in a "dead pine tree." Finally, the Parson descends to the carcass, grants the other birds permission to eat, then "[picks] out the eyes in the ceremonial way and the feast went on" until the "yaller mule was gone from the town except for the porch talk." Hurston thus parallels Janie's attempts to disappear as an object of porch talk among residents in the town (55-58).

Despite his use of the yaller mule--and of other people--as so many ruins to stand upon to bolster his ego, Starks is finally unable to transcend impotence and death. Not long after their arrival in Maitland, Janie stopped being "petal-open" to him; he destroyed her sexual eagerness on the day he slapped her in their kitchen. Meantime, she whiles away the time "under a shady tree," lying to herself about what she has to live for (72-73). One insult too many, however, marks the occasion when Janie projects her voice, centers herself in the room, and puts into perspective the braggadocio of Starks. Since Janie cannot thrive alongside her mate, she must conquer and survive on the spoils. In a scene frequently evaluated by critics, the couple exchange heated remarks that effect Janie's transformation--this time at Joe's expense. (9) When Janie fails to cut a plug of tobacco perfectly in their community store, Joe verbally attacks her: "I god almighty! A woman stay around uh store till she get old as Methuselam and still can't cut a little thing like a plug of tobacco! Don't stand dere rollin' yo' pop eyes at me wid yo' rump hanging' nearly to yo' knees!" Embarrassed by Joe Starks's insult and the laughter it arouses on the porch, Janie uncharacteristically asserts herself and retorts with a vernacular self-affirmation: "Ah'm uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat's uh whole lot more'n you kin say. You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but 'tain't nothin' to it, but yo' big voice. Humph! Talking bout me lookin' old! When you pull down yo britches, you look lak de change uh life" (75).

The signifying scene receives commentary from a town citizen who glosses the exchange, saying, "Great God from Zion.... Y'all really playin' de dozens tuhnight" (75). Hurston follows this exclamation with the third person narrator's assessment that "Janie had robbed [Joe] of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish, which was terrible. The thing that Saul's daughter had done to David" (75). These two biblical references remind us once again of the Judeo-Christian mythology informing Hurston's novel. In the first, the biblical city of Zion, conquered by David and later longed for by Israelites eager to return to their homeland, is a symbolic site appropriated centuries later by black Americans as a promised land, where "dere is a better day acomin'." (10) In the second instance, we are told that Joe Starks, who, like David, has had the requisite organizational skills to rule a "kingdom," will no longer enjoy sexual privilege with his mate; indeed, to trace the parallel, we read in 2 Samuel 6:12-23 that David, having brought the ark of God into the "city of David," gloried in his accomplishment with "leaping and dancing." Witnessing this display of male pride, Saul's daughter hardened her heart against her husband. Therefore, we learn, "Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death." (11) Perhaps unconsciously following the biblical precedent, after this climax Starks no longer sleeps with Janie; instead, he "moved his things and slept in a room downstairs" (77). Juxtaposed, these two biblical references reinforce the notion that Joe Starks has now suffered like an Old Testament king while Hurston sympathetically positions her protagonist as one bound for a better land.