Question

In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Spunk,” themes of courage, marriage, and guilt are often cited. We know from class notes that a true theme, one that has any meaning, has to be defined beyond a single word. A theme strong enough to support an essay would have some kind of deeper message or meaning behind it. Take any one of these one word theme “seeds,” or another “seed” of your own, and develop it into a full blown theme/thesis

Answer 1

Answer.

Zora Neale Herston’s short story “ ‘Spunk” tells a tale of a love triangle between a confident man, a weak husband, and his cheating wife in  a rural, all-black town in the South much like Hurston’s hometown.

The main theme of the story is courage which like the title, indicates feistiness or liveliness. The protagonist of the story is portrayed with this as his main personality quirk, and he is described as unafraid and spirited man who was able to use his masculine feistiness to win over the wife of another man. However, his courage is tested in the end. For all his courage, he can’t overcome the superstitious fear that Joe whom he had killed in self defense has returned from the dead to haunt him. Courage is thus embracated within the discourse of its opposite: cowardice. Throughout the story, the main narrators, the townsmen describe Joe as a cowardly person instead of Spunk. But in the end of the story, the roles are reversed and Spunk lives under fear of an unseen force while the spirit of a joe is now presented as the confident and assured presence with the same desirable quality .