Hurston's Gilded Six-Bits

Zora Neale Hurston
"The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933)

Things to Consider:

** Homework Questions **
General:

Which characteristics of Negro expression are employed by the characters in this story? Provide specific examples.

135:

Explain the 1st two sentences. What is a "Negro yard"? Why does the narrator say "But there was something happy about the place" (135--emphasis added)?

136:

137:

Explain: "Ah might not look lak one, but if you burn me, you won't git a thing but wife ashes" (137).

138:

142:

143:

Explain: "The yellow coin in his trouser was like a monster hiding in the cave of his pockets to destroy her" (143).

146:

Does Joe forgive Missie May at the end? Does she "redeem" herself somehow? Explain.

Is this a happy ending? Explain.

Other Discussion Questions:

Why does Joe throw nine dollars at the door at the beginning?
Why does he throw fifteen at the end?
Is Slemmons's money more special because white women supposedly gave it to him? Explain.

137:

Explain: "Ah could eat up camp meetin', back off 'ssociation, and drink Jurdan dry" (137).
Why doesn't Joe want Missie May to have a second helping of tater pone?

138:

Define: "puzzlegut," "chuckle-headed."

140:

Explain: "A lean moon rode the lake in a silver boat" (140). What is being described? What literary technique is being used?

141:

143:

144:

146:

Explain the candy man's comments about "darkies." What racist stereotypes does he employ? Do the blacks in the story help perpetuate these stereotypes at all? Explain.

General:

Images of Money (and Sex):

135: "payroll," "dollar clock"
135: "singing metal"
136: Woman has "no business in a man's clothes," "Ah knowed you had somethin' for me in yo' clothes."
137: "Don't you mess wid mah business."
139: "forty shake"
143: Yellow coin "was like monster hiding in the cave of his pockets to destroy her."

Other Imagery/Comparisons:

135: "her stiff young breasts thrust forward aggressively like broad-based cones with the tips lacquered in black."
137: "If you burn me, you won't git a thing but wife ashes."
137: "Y'all pritty lil frail eels"
140: "A lean moon rode the lake in a silver boat"
141: "The great wheel of Time slipped and eternity stood still."
141: "The shapeless enemies of humanity that live in the hours of Time."
141: Joe's fist "like a battering ram."
143: "The sun, the hero of the day, the impersonal old man"

Other/Folk Language:

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