Infinite Content, Infinitely Content

Their Eyes Were Watching God certainly showcases Zora Neale Hurston’s training as an anthropologist. She used the idea of cultural relativism, the knowledge that aspects of a culture can only truly be understood relative to that culture itself. The whole idea emerged as a reaction to very Eurocentric anthropological practices. Huston shows us this in the novel by letting the black characters speak from themselves, unlike Bigger in Native Son . She has the readers understand black American culture as it exists without having to constantly describe it in the context of white society, which is different than the social protest novels of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. In this way, I see cultural relativism seems as a good idea, particularly if the author/anthropologist is to some degree an insider of the community/culture. I think it’s possible to allow cultures to speak for themselves, but this novel can still end up being “minstrel-y”. Not because of the novel, but because of the rea

I was brainstorming for my essay last week and just sort of poking around in the book to find what I wanted to write about. And so I ended up back in the factory hospital episode and rereading it. And all of a sudden I noticed a whole bunch of things I hadn’t picked up on before. First, I decided to look up who Buckeye the Rabbit and Brer Rabbit were. Their names are mentioned when the doctor is asking the narrator various questions about his identity, and after asking about his name, identity, and mother, he asks about this seemingly random character from the narrator’s childhood. So who are they? Basically, they’re the same character, more commonly known as Brer Rabbit. Buckeye the Rabbit is another name, but it definitely has some significance if you read the narrator’s internal monologue in page 242 (I haven’t really tried to unpack what he means about Buckeye being what you call him when you’re younger, Brer when you’re older - if you have some thoughts/an explanation let me kno