Yellow Mule

This
book is particularly preoccupied with the slavery that existed. This is
still an important issue in our society right now because there is some
slavery still going on but in most cases we don’t find out about it
until it’s too late to help. On page 75, there is one of these passages
where Janie reacts and talks about how horrible they were treating a
mule. She thought it was cruel what they was doing with the mule.
“She
snatched her head away from the spectacle and began muttering to
herself. ‘They oughta be shamed uh theyselves! Teasin’ dat poor brute
beast lak they is! Done been worked tuh death; done had his disposition
ruint wid mistreatment, and now they got tuh finish devilin ‘im tuh
death. Wisht Ah had mah way wid ‘em all.”

What
Hurston is giving us here is that people didn’t treat others the right
way. It was like they were bringing slavery back to them. It was wrong
to treat an animal in such horrible way.

One
thing this means to the reader is that the story deals with things from
the past that affected black people. The literary device used here is
symbolism. The mule represents a slave that is being mistreated.

I
just finished reading chapter 6 from the book, “Their Eyes Were
Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. It was kind of boring because I did
not find sense of what some of the scenes had to do with Janie. I was
not so into it but I went through it anyways. I think that there was a
lot of confusion to figure out who was talking and what each of them
really meant.
There
was this scene on pages 87-88 about a girl named Daisy and two guys
fighting over her. Daisy seems to love the attention, we can see this on
page 87 where it says, “If you know anybody dat’s ‘bout tuh die ‘bout
me, yuh know more’n Ah do,” Daisy brindle. “Wish Ah knowed who it is.”
Daisy likes to know that there is guys fighting over her. There is a
confrontation between Jim and Dave over Daisy in front of the porch.
Everyone was watching and listening to the two guys dispute how much
they love Daisy. Dave tried to challenge Jim by asking him about how
much is he willing to do for Daisy and when Jim answered, Dave tried to
give a better answer. Jim and Dave kept on fighting back and forth over
who loves Daisy more, and who would do more for her. To the people
watching it was funny. I think that back then this was something normal
in a small town but now in days this would seem a little weird. In my
community, you would not see this often. Many men, now in days don’t
fight for girls verbally, they do more physical fighting. I have not met
two guys in my community that would fight over a girl in such way, to
make a fool out of themselves in front of everyone.
I
think that at the Joe and Janie’s marriage will not last so long. Joe
has been treating Janie very wrong by hitting her and having her
basically as his slave. Joe orders her to do things, makes her do things
she don’t want to and makes her feel like she does not belong. Janie
will probably get tired of this and she will end the marriage.