Through the first 9 chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God, by far my favorite part of the story was the part the story about the mule story. Sam, Lige, and Walter are really funny in that scene. They play the situation just right, drawing Matt into the conversation before he knows it's about the mule and then cracking their jokes. The image of women scrubbing clothes on the ribs of a mule is funny, and Matt's obvious discomfort makes it even funnier. I also liked the line "all of a sudden de wind changed and blowed de mule way off his course, him vein' so poor and everything, and before the ornery varmint could tack, de youngun had done got over de fence" (53).
This was the first part of the book I could really relate to. It reminded me of whenever my extended family gets together. We'll pick something that happened to a person and then make jokes about it the rest of the night. Like when my uncle pulled his hamstring when he was trying to water ski. We had lots of fun with that one. This is the kind of thing I think is going on with the mule. Same and Walter and Lige aren't trying to hurt Matt, they're just having fun at his expense. They know that someday each of them will be the butt of everyone's jokes, and they're ok with that.
Matt, though, doesn't seem to understand how the game works. He takes everything way too personally. "Matt realizes that they have tricked him again and the laughter makes him mad, and when he gets mad he stammers" (52). He's not supposed to get mad at this, but he does. He should be able to join in the fun even when others are teasing him, but instead he gets mad. I get the impression from this that Matt is not the most fun-loving or well liked person in town. "There was always a little seriousness behind the teasing of Matt, so when he got huffed and walked on off nobody much minded" (56).
After Joe frees him and the mule can wander anywhere he likes, he becomes the talk of the town once more. Joe has a fun-loving spirit. People make stories about him to poke fun at their neighbors, like Rev. Pearson and Mrs. Tully and Becky Anderson. He was well-liked too. "They took a great pride in him" (58).
My favorite part of the story was the "dragging out." It's funny they made such a big deal about it, and the parody of the funeral was also funny, with Joe giving a "eulogy." Sam's imitation of a sermon about mule-heaven also sounded funny, and I was disappointed Hurston summarized it instead of writing it out.
It's scenes like the mule talking and the dragging out that make me want to live in a place like Eatonville. Other scenes though...
I agree with you Jonny, I also found this scene enjoyable. I think that by including this story about a specific event in the community, she is making the reader feel more attached to the town of Eatonville. We understand the sense of community and friendship of the people living there on a daily basis. Another author, like Wright, makes no effort to give us this appreciation or warm, "fuzzy" feeling about the black community in his novel. Bigger's neighborhood is portrayed to be dangerous, poor, unfriendly, and unwelcoming. Eatonville's neighborhood, in contrast, seems to be full of lively, nice, funny people. I'd rather live in Eatonville....
ReplyDeleteThese are all examples where the *form* the jokes and the comedic sketches take is more important than the content. It's not that the jokes are inherently funny (and it could even seem cruel, making fun of this poor dude over his pathetic mule)--it's the drawn-out verbal ingenuity of these jokes, the pure inventiveness of the metaphors and imagery, and the comedic timing, as they lead Matt Bonner credulously on to wonder about where his mule went . . . only to drop the punchline to a thunderclap of laughter from the "audience." It's a great example, for me, of where Hurston invests her portrait of daily life with a remarkable kind of creativity and verbal ingenuity. They are doing improv comedy in real-time.
ReplyDelete(Of course, it is these same scenes that will be cited by Wright and others as examples of "minstrelsy" in the novel--and to that extent I see what he means. They certainly are "theatrical.")