)

MICHIGAN STATE u

l! II/I/ll/lI/ll

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ill Till

l
3 1293 00906] 9687W

llll II Ill

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

LEADERSHIP AND FREEDOM:
ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S
MOSES, MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN

presented by
Karen Alecia Appleton

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. English

degree in

 

 

Major professor

Date May 22, 1992

 

0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

 

LIBRARY
MIchIgen State
Unlverclty

 

 

 

~-

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU I. An Affirm-five Action/Equal Opportunity Institution
cm

L

 

 

 

 

 

”M1

LEADERSHIP AND FREEDOM:
ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S

BY

Karen Alecia Appleton

ATHESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1992

(85“ 8203

ABSTRACT

LEADERSHIP AND FREEDOM:
ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S
W

BY

Karen Alecia Appleton

Zora Neale Hurston's novel. Meeee. Men ef the Meuntein, retells the
story of the Exodus within the framework of African-American
folktale. As Robert Hemenway has noted in Zere Neele Hursten: A
Litereg Biegrephy, the book was 'received with caution' at the time
of its first publication. and has been ever since. Many recent

critics, as well, have overlooked many important elements within
the novel. This thesis argues that the novel is a powerful critique of
the roles that choice. chance circumstance, and the influence of
others play in shaping 'destiny.‘ The reader is invited to imagine the
life of Moses as a man, and his relationship with the Hebrews. .
Hurston also explores the extreme restriction of freedom that
occurs when all are not allowed to speak equally. In doing so, the
novel invites us to question whether or not self-responsibility can

be separated from freedom.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ..................................... 1 - 8
MOLDING A DESTINY .................................. 9-23

I CHOOSING A DESTINY ................................ 24-31
LIVING AS A CHOSEN PEOPLE ......................... 32-52

 

INTRODUCTION

Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Meeee, Men 91 the Meunteinl, is a
retelling of the Exodus which reposits 'the sacred myths of the
Judeo-Christian tradition in African-American terms and idioms,"2
with Moses as the greatest hoodoo priest that ever existed. In 133
Ldenmy, Darwin T. Turner calls Hurston's novel her "most
accomplished achievement in fiction'(109). Yet he dismissively

sums it up as follows:

The chief art of the book is abundant comedy. Humor emerges
even from the mere contrast of the bombastic speech of the
Egyptians, the realistic speech of the educated people, and the
credible dialect of the slaves. But a good joke, at best, is
merely a joke. Miss Hurston's joke entertains readers but does
not comment significantly on life or people.(111)

It is obvious from the essay as a whole that Turner is unusually
hostile toward Hurston. For instance, in less than three paragraphs
he describes her as 'myopic,‘ 'naive,“ 'immature,‘ 'insecure,‘ and
calls her a liar.3 It is no surprise, then, that he does not take Moees
seriously. In fact he begins his discussion of the novel by claiming
that Hurston makes Moses the 'illegitimate son of Pharaoh‘s
daughter'(110), when in actuality this is not the case.4 One wonders
after this if he even read the book.

What is surprising is that other, more recent critics have
overlooked and thus dismissed so many important elements of this
novel as well. In his comprehensive work W
Welly, Robert E. Hemenway writes that 'Hurston's

novel was 'received with confusion at the time" of its first
publication and has been viewed “with uncertainty ever since." Yet
Hemenway as well describes the novel as one which "does not
always achieve its own aspirations"(256). In W93,
another detailed critical analysis of Hurston's work, Lillie P.
Howard, although much more sympathetic to the novel, sees Moses's
primary importance for Hurston and the reader as 'the African hero,
Moses, the greatest hoodoo man in the world”. Howard acknowledges
that Moses fails lead the Hebrews to freedom because he realizes
that they must lead themselves. But she sees much of the novel
primarily as a description of "certain qualities necessary for the
ideal leader'(132).

Although Howard misses the point that an ideal leader of the
people should also be one 'of' the people, characterizing Moses's
choice of Joshua as successor as the passing of knowledge to yet
'another great leader'(130), she does much to initiate a serious
reconsideration of the novel. But in doing so she over-credits
Hurston's 'admission" to a friend that she had a ”feeling of
disappointment'(132) about the book. After all, in her autobiography
W, Hurston 'admits' that she regrets all of her
books.5 Deborah E. McDowell, as well, in her Introduction to the
HarperPerrenial edition of Moses, calls it a 'badly flawed
novel'(viii) that nevertheless succeeds at identifying 'concerns with
racial origins--and perhaps origins more generally--as the genesis
of the world's many evils'(xiii).

I argue that what these and other critics overlook is that M_Q_s_e_s

is a subtle yet powerful critique of the roles that choice, and the

 

 

perception of being chosen, play in the shaping of an individual's as
well as a people's lives and characters. The novel also explores the
ways in which chance circumstances, and the manipulations and
influence of others are responsible for a "destiny” that marks one
off as distinct from, and thus seemingly better than others. By
inviting us to imagine the complexity of the relationship between
Moses and the Hebrews. and the extent to which their freedom
depends on his leadership. Mesee invites us to question whether or
not self- responsibility can be separated from freedom.

As Hemenway observes, ”the novel turns the biblical Moses . . .
into a very special hoodoo man subject to at least some of the
defects of the human condition.‘6 Making Moses more "human'
allows a questioning of his relationship to the Hebrews which seems
much easier to develop from this novel than from the traditional
story. The novel uses this to explore the nature of the battle, which
is who and what the Hebrews should be. between Moses and the
Egyptians and the Pharaoh Ta-Phar, and then Moses and the Hebrews.
A question of the degree to which Moses's earlier influences
prepared him for this battle is combined with the question of his
destiny, and it invites us to consider how much the latter may be
determined by the former.

But though this destiny leads him to deliver a people and mold a
nation, he creates a resentful, and yet eventually worshipful
dependency on him, which goes against all his beliefs in freedom. In
the end Moses is deeply disappointed that the Hebrews don't seem to
understand all that he has worked for over the years. This is becuse

he never really helps them to comprehend why he sees their future in

 

the way that he does. Moses is finally unable to understand that a
people whose lives have been forcefully shaped for them for so long
cannot immediately take over the task of shaping themselves. No
matter how good his intentions, he comes from the same tradition
which sees people as material to be molded, and he never fully
attempts to change them from molded to molders. Rather than risk
the degree of freedom that he has already attained for them Moses
instead passes on leadership to Joshua, insuring that this change
will not occur. In the end his language constricts the Hebrews even
more surely than that of the Egyptians did.

The humor which Turner finds so abundant does show in the
constant friction between Moses and the Hebrews. They constantly
resist his efforts to make them work and suffer for freedom. When
he responds to their hunger in the desert with the argument that
they should be glad to go hungry for the sake of a little freedom.
they answer, “You brought us out there, didn't you? We want to know
if this powerful God you talk about is here amongst us or if He
ain't'(205). Having previously equated freedom with the Egyptians'
ability to hold slaves to perform their labor for them, the Hebrews
seem to expect that freedom for them means the same thing. But the
options for them have been limited from the beginning. The novel
opens with their submission to the cruel laws of the Egyptians, and
closes with their submission to the absolute law of Moses and his
god. Whatever the benefits of following Moses have been, they
nevertheless have had many fewer options to chose from than he had.
Because he has been so responsible for so much of the course of

their lives, the Hebrews never gain that degree of freedom that

 

comes with being wholly responsible for oneself, at least more
responsible for themselves than they have been under Pharaoh er
Moses.

Moses's control over the Hebrews, and their lack of self-
responsibility, are demonstrated in the extreme with his two "co-
leaders,“ Aaron and Miriam. Moses excludes them from sharing real
power with him on the basis that they are either too weak, like
Aaron, or on the basis that they have no right to seek a position of
power, like Miriam. Aaron, Miriam's brother, is everything that
Moses's greatest foe, Pharaoh, is without his place as head of state,
and, most importantly, without the power of his position and the
support it would provide his assumed arrogance. He shares with
Pharaoh his selfish inability to truly care for the needs of others,
even as he serves those others' desires for personal gain. As such
for Moses he does not even merit hatred, but only contempt. And
when Moses calls the first meeting of the Hebrew Elders in Egypt
and Miriam shows up, he asks, 'But what is she doing here? I have
called the Elders to me on sefleue business'(emphasis added, 135).
He clearly does not expect her to partake in the decision making,
new or ever.

Miriam is, however, much more in the story. It is she who
begins the legend of Moses and serves as the catalyst for his initial
journey, with her public claim of him as brother. She is in sharp
contrast to her mother Jochebed, whose resistant voice is the voice
of all mothers who refuse to participate in the annihilation of their
own people for either Pharaoh's law or their husbands' fears and

resignation, who refuse to give up their belief in 'maybe.‘ Yet she

 

also shares a place with her mother, and with Moses's Egyptian
mother and wife Zipporah as well. This place is one of silence and
powerlessness, assigned to them by men who define women both by
their usefulness and potential threat as distractions to the
achievement of men's desires and ambitions. For instance, Moses's
first teacher, Mentu, tells Moses that the “female man's' gift to men
is the ”soothing-balm of lies'(39). And his father-in-Iaw Jethro
cautions him that all women are ever 'ready to upset the whole
world to make an opportunity to dress [themselves] up in
ornaments'(109). Women, then, are clearly a mixed blessing at best.
Later in the story, Miriam bitterly envies Zipporah, who is
content with those artificial and seductive images of power, the
pursuit of which defines a man as unworthy of manhood and thus
potential greatness, but which women are expected to desire. At the
same time she is denied access to any real influence or power over
even herself. Moses, who is taught the definition of woman as
possessor of the "gift of the soothing-balm of "63' from his earliest
years, dismisses Miriam from serious consideration in a manner
distressingly similar to the way in which she has thus far been
dismissed from serious consideration by most critics of the novel.

McDowell, however, asserts in her essay that

'While Hurston does not restore the status of the mother(s) in
her telling of the tale, one could say that in putting her mouth
on the Mosaic myth, she exposes the structures of gender at its
base. In other words, in telling the story of a people's
deliverance into a new nation state--a Fatherland, if you will--
Hurston says much about the relations between nationalism and
masculinity and how, for both, the presence of the feminine is a
problem'(xiii).

 

By articulating the “presence of the feminine" as a problem in a
Fatherland, Hurston as well explores the extreme opposite of
freedom that occurs when all are not allowed to speak equally.
Mesee invites us to question whether or not, if a people continue to

oppress even a part of themselves, they can truly be free.

 

MOLDING A DESTINY

Karla F. C. Holloway has argued that “Moses begins as an oral
text, but since the word has developed just about all the strength it
can through oracy, it does not end this way."1 While I would agree
that the novel does not end this way, I disagree that it begjne as an
oral text. At most, the legend of Moses as the Hebrew 'Prince in the
palace"2 (which later gives so much shape to Moses's life-story)
begins orally. But the novel itself opens with the Hebrews firmly
entangled in the written, legal texts of their Egyptian oppressors.
The Pharaoh is presented as the leader of a new, cruel regime, and
the new laws he has passed at the start of the novel strip the
Hebrews of their citizenry and redefine them as slaves: "Hebrews
were disarmed and prevented from becoming citizens of Egypt, they
found out that they were aliens, and from one new decree to the next
they sank lower and lower'(2). But the most sinister of these
decrees is the one that declares that 'Positively no more boy babies
[are] allowed among Hebrews. Infants defying this law shall be
drowned in the Nile"(2). The absurdity of this language is made clear
in its stark contrast to the reality of the 'Hebrew women [who]
shuddered with terror at the indifference of their wombs to the
Egyptian law'(1).

It does not matter, of course, that Hebrew babies are no more
responsible for their conception, birth, or sex than are any other
babies. What matters is that the Egyptians' written decrees defy

and redefine the reality of Hebrew lives. Their ostensible reason for

 

doing so, as Pharaoh condescendingly explains to the them, is only to
protect themselves. Apparently the Hebrews, who "had come down
into Egypt as the allies and aides of those oppressors of the Egyptian
people, and as such had trampled on the proud breast of Egyptian
liberty for more than three hundred years"(19), had to be taught a
lesson. They should cease complaining and instead be glad to 'pay
back in a small way'(19), the debt they owed Egypt for the sparing of
their lives. This new regime's real goal, however, is to consolidate
power in the hands of a few, gain a perpetual labor force, and
facilitate the expansion of their empire. As Moses's uncle Ta-Phar
later observes when he becomes Pharaoh, “even his military strength
rested on these slaves. For, without them men would have to be
taken from other things to fill their places'(169).

Pharaoh, and through him Egypt, is able to change the course of
the Hebrews' lives because they have the power which enables them
to control the language that the Egyptians and the Hebrews share.
Only when this is challenged by one more powerful than they are is
this reality shaken. Even when Moses firsts challenges the new
Pharaoh, this confidence in their control is not disturbed. The first
few times that Moses demands of Pharaoh that he let the Hebrews
go, Ta-Phar treats his demands as if they were a contest to be
easily won. At this point, to him Moses is still nothing more than an
upstart who is "bent on being King of something, even if it is nothing
but the Hebrews'(141). His priests can also turn their rods into
snakes, and when Moses's rod/snake swallows theirs, he sees this as

a game of one-upmanship. He engages in similar thinking when

 

10

Moses turns Egypt's water to blood, finding that his priests can
perform the same "trick.“

What he has not realized thus far is that Moses is able to read
him quite well. Moses knows the extent of Ta-Phar's arrogance and
insecurity, and he welcomes the opportunity to crush that arrogance.
Ta-Phar's arrogance is shaken for the first time when his priests
seem to duplicate Moses's calling of the frogs. After he feels that
the trick has been sufficiently imitated, he commands that the frogs

be sent back:
“That's plenty--a gracious plenty. Now send them on off like
Moses did.“ The officiating priest stopped in his tracks and
looked right sheeplsh at Pharaoh. The frogs kept on coming. "I
said stop,‘ Pharaoh said coldly. The frogs kept on coming. 'You

heard me!“ Pharaoh roared. . . . The frogs kept right on
coming.(156-7)

Ta-Phar's anger grows in proportion to the degree of his
realization that he can no longer force reality to conform to his
words. He had relied up until that point on the words and laws of his
father to maintain his position. But he has neither the strength nor
the position vis-a-vis Moses that his father had, and he is therefore
destined to lose this battle. In contrasting these two Pharaohs,
Meses shows that their command over language, the power with
which they are able to invest it, and the authority with which it
invests them determines the degree of their mastery over the
Hebrews' lives. Ta-Phar is more concerned with “palace etiquette'
and "robes of state to be filled and worn properly' (46), than he is
with the state itself. It was his father who transformed the slaves

from rich prosperous citizens to slaves. Ta-Phar does not have this

 

11

transformational ability, he has only inherited its results, and he
cannot strive against one who exercises that ability.

Ta-Phar's powerlessness compliments. rather than contrasts,
with his earlier efforts to manipulate and destroy Moses. Unlike
Ta-Phar, his father can declare coldly, in response to Moses's
request for justice for the Hebrews, that 'Egypt has no home
problems that I can see. . . . What internal problems we had, got
settled before you were born'(62). What he says i_s_ Egypt's reality.
But Ta-Phar continually worries about possible uprisings, and he
sees the Prince Moses as stirring up trouble in order to compete for
his place as heir-apparent. He uses here(as he does in later
confrontations with Moses) the words of another to protect his
position and attack a potential enemy. So when Miriam comes to the
palace and demands to speak to Moses as her brother, Ta-Phar seizes
that chance to discredit him.

In her article “Feminism and Deconstruction“ Mary Poovey
argues that by “demonstrating that the idea of presence depends
upon language . . . [Jacques] Derrida argues that the presence is
always elusive and relational-mot the ground of truth but the
illusion produced by the endless substitution of signifiers with
which we(hopefully but futilely) try to capture it.'3 Moses's
position in life is a construction which is maintained by the mutual
agreement of those with whom he lives. Like Pharaoh, who
destroyed and reconstructed an identity for the Hebrews, Ta-Phar
seeks to destroy Moses's identity as Egyptian royalty, a favorite of
Pharaoh and most of Egypt, and thus a potential threat, and

reconstruct it as that of a lowly Hebrew, fit for nothing but slavery.

 

12

The illusion of the constant safety and privilege he has never before
questioned is shattered when he reacts in anger to Ta-Phar's charge
that he is a Hebrew. It is this attempt at control, and forced
transformation, which incites his anger and leads him to kill the
overseer:
The idea of calling him, Prince Moses, a Hebrew! If Ta-Phar
thought so, why had he been so hush-mouth about it all these
years? For it was no secret that Ta-Phar had never loved him. .
Had some Hebrew really made such a claim? He didn't
believe it. . . . So! The court was really angry with him for
asking justice for the Hebrews. “They have decided to destroy
me out of hand,“ Moses reflected. "They are ready to do
anything to confirm them in their position, and to do that, they

have to prostitute the language. They must blow out the sun
and switch on a spotlight.“(66)

Yet despite his recognition that Ta-Phar and his supporters
manipulate language to control and destroy their enemies. Moses
still allows their “prostitution“ to manipulate him. He has not yet
gained sufficient understanding or mastery of language to counter
the power of Pharaoh's court, to be able to resist their attempts to
redefine him. He thinks to himself, 'I have risked my life and
exposed myself to a thousand dangers for such as him'(66), when he
sees the overseer beating a fallen slave. In his anger and frustration
he kills him, unwittingly providing Ta-Phar with the real means to
destroy him; actions which seem to support Ta-Phar's words. His
later anger then, when he confronts Ta-Phar to free the Hebrews, is
really directed at the power of the Egyptians' law and language. Ta-
Phar is only an empty symbol, much like his robes of state.

As Robert Hemenway has observed, Moses's "role in Judeo-

Christian tradition was remote, shrouded in biblical dignity. Once he

 

13

was demystified, however, the analogy between biblical history and
the black American past became real and immediate. . . ."4 A large
part of this demystification occurs through Mesee's fictional
account of Moses's childhood. Moses is able to eventually overcome
the Egyptians in part because his experience in Pharaoh's court has
acquainted him with its weaknesses as well as strengths, and
provided him with the opportunity to see where real power lies. His
position as prince provided him with other advantages as well. He
“grows up an extraordinarily wise and imaginative youth, a child
given to mysticism who presses the Egyptian priests to teach him
their magic.“5 But it is from Mentu, the old stablehand who becomes
his friend and mentor, that Moses gains the boldness to question the
priests, and from whom he Ieams the most.

Unlike the nobility of Egypt, Mentu does not use language to
destroy or manipulate, but instead to share and to teach. For the
Egyptians, there are no questions, only answers. But for Mentu,
questions give him the opportunity to provide “answers in the form
of stories . . . because they just came to him to tell“(38). This
sharing and instruction is as important a lesson for Moses to learn
as are the various “answers“ that Mentu gives him to his many
quesfions.

Mentu's teachings impart to Moses his views of human nature.
He teaches Moses that the role of the “female man“ is as companion
to the “male man.“ She is to keep him from destroying himself in
despair of life's truths with her “gift of the soothing-balm of lies“
(39). He also learns the ways and language of animals. “In fact,“ for

Moses, “they were human by Mentu's interpretations.“ The monkey

14

was “a smart aleck person of no importance always trying to imitate
his betters and make a mess of things.“ Some people, he teaches
him, believe that old poeple turned into monkeys and that it was
“just as well“ if Moses refrained from hunting them. Mentu
interprets the Iizard's language so that Moses will learn that men
are foolish when they build too glamorous nests for their mates and
that when “one is too old for love, one finds great comfort in good
dinners“(39-42).

Snakes are sacred to the Egyptians, and when Moses is a little
older, Mentu tells him that when wise men “have attained a certain
age of wisdom they enter the serpents“(52). It is all of these
lessons which encourage Moses's curiosity to grow, and they “stirred
Moses to stealing into the enclosures of the priests“(43), in order to
learn their secrets as well. Significantly, he learns from this not to
view gods as mysterious and unknowable entities, recognizing the
priests' ceremonies as nothing “but the dressing for what goes on
behind the scenes“(59). These lessons and experiences combine to
make Moses feel both able and eager to battle the “deathless snake
that guards the book of Thoth'(53). They help to mold a Moses who
feels capable of finding and mastering this book written by a god,
that would make him the “greatest priest the world will ever
know“(54). So much detail on Moses's background is provided not
only to “demystify“ him. It also demonstrates that a myriad of
factors combined in providing him with the opportunity to be a great
priest, as well as shaping the “blind chance in his being 53191911 to

make the Hebrew fiction become a Jewish reality(emphasis added).'6

 

15

Before Mentu dies, he begs Moses to have him buried as a priest,
for Moses, he knows, has “the power to insist.“ He bequeaths to
Moses his own lifelong dream of becoming a great priest,
acknowledging that “I couldn't make it from where l started“(58).
Mentu recognizes what we should recognize as well, that Moses's
upbringing as a prince, something over which he had no control, was
at least as responsible for making him a great leader as is any
natural ability he may have had. There was no guarantee that he
would have had the opportunites and encouragement that he had in
this novel, but this speculation on opportunities he may have had
again serves to raise the question of how much “blind chance“ plays
in “choosing“ individuals for specific missions in life.

There are other forces explored in the novel as well, which
shape Moses as the Hebrews' deliverer as well. The first of these is
Zipporah, his wife. When Moses first sees Mount Sinai, he is drawn
to reach and explore it. Zipporah and her sisters come to water their
cattle at the spring where he is resting. When he sees her struggle
to protect her sisters from thieves who have come to steal their
cattle, he forgets “the resolve he had made in Egypt to mind his own
business and leave other folks' affairs alone“(86). In thankfulness
for his efforts, their father, Jethro, invites Moses first to dinner,
and then to stay indefinitely. Jethro is indeed a major “force“ in
determining the path which Moses's life is to take. Presented here
as a shrewd yet caring old chieftan, unlucky enough to have only
female children, he quickly takes advantage of Moses's attraction to
Zipporah. So she becomes only an indirect influence, utilized by

Jethro until no longer needed as such.

 

16

When Moses first meets Jethro, he sees a man who

looked as if he was supposed to be listened to, but there was no
insistence on his face. He looked capable of guiding people, but
he didn't look as if he were determined to do it. Wisdom and a
kind of strength were gathered together in the man, but his
self-confidence had not driven off simplicity. He knew little
sorrow[s] and joys as well as big ones. He looked as if he could
understand and talk with shepherds as well as kings. So Moses
was not surpised when he spoke to hear him dropping into the
idiom of the simple people. It took nothing from his majestic
hearing, and somehow it fitted him. Moses was constrained to
meet him on his level as he talked.(88)

In this first glimpse of Jethro we see along with Moses the
most important lessons that he will learn. As with Mentu, Jethro's
character was a lesson in itself. At the end of the novel, when
Moses speaks to Jethro the last time before he dies, we see this
majesty, wisdom, and authority echoed in Moses. He quiets Jethro's
worry that his desire for Moses to deliver the Hebrews kept him
from being as happy as he could have been, telling him that “perhaps
it was my destiny anyway. . . . Your friendship was would have been
worth ten times more“(267).

But when he first meets Jethro he is indeed “constrained to
meet him on his level,“ in what he does as well as how he talks. In
fact, “in every case [Jethro] had knowledge and methods far beyond
anything that Moses had seen in Egypt“(98). And he begins to use
that knowledge immediately. While Jethro is discussing the problem
of the cattle thieves with him Zipporah comes in, and for Moses,
“something about her made every cell in his body thrust out its
head“(90). He doesn't return his attention to Jethro again until she

leaves the room, and comments on the damage he intends to do to

 

17

those cattle thieves, should they return. Jethro replies, “Oh, you
mustn't let my talk drag you into something that may get you hurt.
By the way, that oldest girl of mine is named Zipporah. You must
excuse me for running my mouth so much that I haven't introduced
you to my family.“ When Moses answers that he must have read his
mind, and that he wants to learn the skill himself, Jethro responds
that “It is a gift and not a learning“(90).

And yet Moses does learn something of this, after years of long
experience. Moses makes a similar comment to Aaron when they
first challenge Ta-Phar and Aaron suggests that they petition
Pharaoh “now that we got him worried--“ Moses cuts him off, saying
'I see you don't know people, Aaron. He's not taking this serious yet,
but he will when he has to“(147). Moses not only grew up knowing
Ta—Phar, but he also has had the benefit of years of living with and
observing Jethro's knowledge of people, and of Jethro's use of that
knowledge. He is, however, hard pressed to meet Jethro's level of
skill. This is one are in which Moses does not surpass his teacher.
Jethro's keen observation of Moses's obvious reaction to his eldest
daughter provides him with an insight into Moses's character which
he is to use at a later date to his advantage, and Moses does not
duplicate this to the same degree. '

One day while they are out walking and talking Moses thinks to
himself of Jethro, “If he only knew what a mess I have made of my
life so far, he wouldn't think I am so great“(103). This is in
response to Jethro's reminder to Moses of his dream to find the book
of Thoth, and his plea not to “over-pull your belly on this love

business“ because he is an “over-average man“ who should not

 

l8

“waste“ himself on a woman (103-4). Moses expresses the desire to
“search out all [the] wonders“ of Zipporah, but it is not this desire to
explore the mysterious that Jethro wants to discourage. His words

are chosen carefully to encourage that desire even as he attempts to
redirect it:

What you're feeling now has got its place in life. Desire is the
germ of the mind. There is no creation without it. Desire is a
woman who is little understood and much slandered when her
back is turned. She is a woman with a beautiful face and an
ugly back. She drives a strong-legged crowd before her, gilded
with the light from her face, and pushing the world before it.
Behind her is a limping horde with the cawing black bird of age
on its shoulders, screaming imprecations at her back. They are
renegades who do not deserve their past. Those who say desire
is ugly have poor memories.(104)

Jethro is a man who does deserve his memories. He
understands desire and the driving force that it is. His desire, after
all, has kept his dreams of delivering the Hebrews from Egypt, and of
bringing other people to worship his god, alive for 40 years, until he
met a man with enough power to make them come true. Despite his
very real love and respect for Moses and his powers, then, it is clear
that Jethro uses his skill with language, in combination with his
ability to “read“ people's thoughts and characters, to influence Moses
to adopt the path that Jethro wants him to take. He knows that
Moses has not given up his dream of finding the river Koptos and the
book of Thoth, but that something is making him settle for the
mysteries of a wife, rather than those of all of Nature.

So when Moses finally unburdens himself to Jethro about his
past in Egypt, it is not surprising that he is also able to tell him

“Some day, you shall go with me to Koptos“(110). Moses's “new

 

19

happiness had washed him out"(107), and he no longer feels
constrained with Jethro, who is in large part responsible for this
happiness. This lack of constraint enables Jethro's advice to take
effect. When Zipporah attempts to persuade him that he should
return to Egypt and try to become a king, so that she can be a queen,
Jethro snaps that she is “just like all the rest of the women--ready
to upset the whole world to make an opportunity to dress yourself up
in ornaments'(109). This remark echoes what Moses has heard and
seen regarding women all his life. The constraint that he felt
because of his secret past is gone, he no longer regards Zipporah as
the greatest mystery in his life, or her secrets as the most
desireable to discover. He is now free to pursue his real love,
knowledge and the power it brings.

Jethro's insights into Moses's character enable him to influence
Moses in many of the choices he makes, as much as Moses's love for
him is responsible for his being open to the full extent of that
influence. The detailing of this relationship asks the reader to
question the extent to which even a welcomed influence can play in
shaping one's life beyond what one can see for oneself. Jethro's
ability to “understand and talk with shepherds as well as kings“
plays an important role in affecting the Moses of this novel.
Significantly, it is after Moses has “found out how to make the
excrescence that he called Manna appear on a certain plant'(117),
thus surpassing all knowledge that Jethro can teach him, that Jethro
judges him ready to climb Mount Sinai. And this occurs before he
finds the book of Thoth.

 

20

If he had not met Jethro and opened himself up to his influence,
the novel asks us to question whether Moses would have been able to
find the book and use its power. He could have climbed Mount Sinai,
but would he have had that right hand and been “worshipped as a
god“(xxiv)? By asking us this question within context of presenting
this other concept of Moses “abroad in the world“(xxiii). Mm: also
questions the idea that Moses, or anyone, was and is especially
chosen by anything other than fortuitous circumstances and natural
ability. We are asked to question his status as the divinely “chosen“
leader of the Hebrews as well.

After he sees Mount Sinai for the first time and than meets
Jethro, Moses feels that the mountain “called him as a mother
would“ and that he should “go up and embrace his mother“(91). But
he sees this mountain in relation to, but greater than, the tombs that
he remembers from Egypt, viewing it as “the tomb of a god a
thousand greater than the pyramids. . . . This was not a mere pile of
stone. . . . This sublime earth form was the living place of a god,
certainly“(84). When Jethro can no longer forbid Moses to climb this
mountain, however, it is not the embrace of a mother that he finds.
Instead he finds the “Voice“ which commands him to go down to
Egypt, deliver the Hebrews from slavery, and bring them to Mount
Sinai to worship Jethro's god. It would seem that Moses is indeed
divinely chosen.

However, it is somewhat ambiguous as to who, or what, is doing
the chosing here. It would not seem to be too much of a coincidence
that Jethro's dream of delivering the Hebrews would come from the

same Voice. In fact he earlier tells Moses that he can “feel the

 

21

command to bring other people . . . to know this god and worship
him“(105). And he Is very straightforward with his ambitions,
musing with Moses that “That would really be something--a big
crowd like that coming through religion all at one time“(122). But,
as Howard has noted, “God as a character does not figure largely in
this reproduction of the biblical saga.“7 When Moses refuses for the
last time to deliver the Hebrews, Jethro gets angry. His wish has
been with him for a long time, and he does not intend to give it up.
He hints at his thoughts to Zipporah:

Well WW

I ain't been to Koptos, it is
true, and had no fight with no never-dying snake, but maybe
there is still something about snakes that he can learn. The

backside of that mountain may get too hot to hold him
yet.(emphasis added, 124)

What is it that Moses still has to Ieam of snakes? Jethro could
be referring to the snake that turns into a rod, but how does he know
of this then? Or he could be commenting on the danger of Moses
thinking that he's Ieamed all the mysteries there are to know in the
world. Or he could be referring to himself. And the “hot“ could refer
to the burning bush, or it could refer to the command that Moses will
receive, making it impossible for him to refuse to go to Egypt. But
again, how does Jethro know of this then? If Jethro cannot convince
Moses directly, could he manipulate him somehow? Because, as
Howard comments, “God“ is not a major character in the book, it is
up to the reader to notice and decipher the clues which indicate

other possibilities than the accepted story allows.

 

22

Immediately after Moses leaves the mountain and tells Jethro
of his experience, the story informs us that he “seemed to Moses to
glow and swell with pleasure“ at the news(129). His likeness to the
burning bush is unmistakeable, just as his determinition to convince
Moses to go to Egypt is paralleled by the "Voice's' insistence that he
do the same. Because this is a Moses who in part is based on one
who “had the power to command God to go to a peak of a
mountain“(xxiii), there is a hint of a question as to whether or not
Moses was really “called,“ or chosen, by a divine authority to save
the Hebrews. God does speak later in the novel, and at those times
no doubt is left as to whether or not it is that God speaking. Only
when Jethro meets with Moses's final resistance does the
commanding “Voice,“ not identified as the Lord God, by anyone but
Moses, speak.

As was mentioned, when God speaks to Moses later, His name is
explicitly used. That Moses receives the Ten Commandments, and
the laws with which to govern the Hebrews, from God is not left to
question. But in presenting this crucial incident so ambiguously,
Mesee leads us to question, not whether or not Moses did a good
thing in freeing the Hebrews, but whether or not he was chosen by
God to do so. As Hemenway has stated, Moses is “a human being
[that] has been called to a god-like task.“8 And it is clear, after his
finding the book of Thoth, that he has god-like powers. But it is
important to remember that he gained the “secret words that's the
keys to God“(117) well before he gained these powers. And he does
indeed Ieam something new about snakes. By inviting us to question

these elements which lead to Moses being “chosen“ by God, Moses

 

23

also allows us to question whether or not he is indeed chosen, if so

by whom, or what, and if, in the end, it really matters.

 

CHOOSING A DESTINY

In her autobiography Duet Traeke en a Bead, Hurston presents an
image of herself as “chosen“ bu a mysterious “voice,“ much like
Moses. Indeed a sample from the chapter titles in the table of
contents reads much like a synopsis of the questions and problems
that shape Moses's life: “My Birthplace,“ “I Get Born,“ “The Inside
Search,“ “Wandering,“ “Research," Books and Things,“ “My People! My
People!“ “Love,“ “Religion,“ and “Looking Things Over.“1 When she is a
child, two white women give Hurston, among other things, a box of
books as a reward for demonstrating her reading ability and assuring
them that she loves school. She presents these books as opening up
a whole new world for her, allowing her things that others in her
community could not understand. The books include “Gum
ILaxolo. QnmanEalnLlalos. Winston Greek and Roman
Myths, and best of all, Norse Tales“(39). Of the Greek myths, she
writes, “Hercules moved me the most. I followed him eagerly on his
tasks. The story of the choice of Hercules as a boy when he met
Pleasure and Duty, and put his hand in that of Duty and followed her
steep way to the blue hills of fame and glory, which she pointed out
at the end, moved me profoundly. I resolved to be just like him'(39).

Hurston also reads the Bible, but only because, after her
mother punishes her by locking her in her room, it “was the only
thing there for me to read“(40). She particularly likes the story of
David, because “Not one time did David stop and preach about sins

and things. All David wanted to know from God was who to kill and

24

 

25

when. He took care of the other details himself. Never a quiet
moment“(40). These two stories, of making choice and being chosen,
greatly influence her own narrative. But for what has Hurston been
chosen, and what will be her “Duty“ that leads her by the hand?

Hurston writes later of learning other great things and stories.
When she leaves her job as a maid to an actress, she eventually goes
to night school and there meets Dwight O.W. Holmes, an English
teacher who “was to give me the key to certain things“(107). And
later, when she is accepted by the “spirit of Howard“(114), and yet
discouraged by her lack of money, Holmes encourages her not to give
up. At her job in Washington as a manicurist, she meets many
influential men and “learned things by holding the hands of men like
that. The talk was of world affairs, national happenings,
personalities, the latest quips from the cloakrooms of Congress and
such things“(115). And after Howard she studies under the
anthropologist Dr Franz Boas, of Columbia University, eventually
feeling she has earned the right to call him “Papa.“

It is her mother originally, however, who first exhorts Zora “at
every opportunity to 'jump at de sun'“(13). And it is her dying
mother, and her mother's voice, whom she writes of as falling when
she is “called upon to set my will against my father, the village
dames and village custom. . .“(63). Later in life, Zora chooses to use
the tools she has acquired away from the village to give larger voice
to the African-American community from which she writes of as
being isolated for so long. Her mother had served as a bridge to that
community, and when that link is severed so, seemingly, is her

connection. In helping that “voice“ to speak to the larger world, she

 

26

reaffirms that connection. At the end of the chapter entitled “My
People! My People!“ Hurson writes that “I maintain that I have been a
Negro three times--a Negro baby, a Negro girl, and a Negro
woman“(172). Her role as a "chosen“ and thus isolated individual is
thus shown to be a false one, and exposing it reestablishes her link
to “her“ people.

Moses, however, is chosen. He serves as the bridge between
God's “voice“ and the Hebrew community, but he is separate from
them in a way that Hurston was not from her community. Yet
regardless of the influences of other people and events on Moses, it
is nevertheless clear that he makes many choices of his own, just as
Hurston did. While living in the palace, he continues to seek out
Mentu of his own accord, and encourages his stories by bringing him
good food from the Pharaoh's own kitchen. His own curiosity and
delight in his military prowess lead him to follow Mentu's
encouragement that he Ieam to ride and sit well enough to lead an
army, despite his certainty that his uncle will never allow him to do
so. And when he is rewarded for his efforts by being made
Commander-in-Chief, he decides to someday abandon that post
despite having “worked hard for more than three years to earn
it'(55-6).

But when he flees Egypt, Moses makes his most momentous
decision. He realizes that “Mentu had aroused his thought, and that
once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep
again“(76). He knows that someday he will seek the book of Thoth,
but for now he must get far beyond the borders from Egypt. It is

here that Moses both literally and figuratively “crosses over“ into a

27

new life. Though he regrets the circumstances that provided him
this chance, he relishes the idea that now he has time to come
“around to the hundreds of questions he wanted to ask of Nature.“ To
him, “The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor. I
am going to live and talk with Nature and know her secrets. Then I
will be powerful no matter where I may be“(75). In order to do that,
he must complete his escape, and he gets the help of an old
fisherman, who informs him that at a certain place in the sea during
low tide, he can cross without the help of a boat.

When Moses reaches the other side, he realizes that

He had crossed over. The short sword at his thigh had a jeweled
hilt but he had crossed over and so it was no longer the sign of
high birth and power. He had crossed over, so he sat down on a
rock near the seashore to rest himself. He had crossed over so
he was not of the house of Pharaoh. He did not own a palace
because he crossed over. He did not have an Ethiopian Princess
for a wife. He had crossed over. He did not have friends to
sustain him. He had crossed over. He did not have enemies to
strain against his strength and power. He had crossed over. He
was subject to no law except the laws of tooth and talon. He
had crossed over. The sun who was his friend and ancestor in
Egypt was arrogant and bitter in Asia. He had corssed over. He
felt as empty as a post hole for which he was none of the things
he had once been. He was a man sitting on a rock. He had
crossed over.(78)

This passage does not, as Howard has argued, show that Moses
“is electing the condition of the oppressed, including the fat back,
greens and corn meal.“2 In fact he trades possible inheritance to one
kingdom for another, the one of Jethro's vision. The glamor and
riches of Egypt are only outward signs of power, as Moses well
knows. What he wants is the power itself. What this passage does

do, in addition to punning on the notion of “crossing“ the color line of

 

28

black to white, is comment on all that Moses has lost as well as
what he is to gain by his decision to cross over the Red Sea. In
essence, he has lost himself. He is nothing more at this moment
than a “man sitting on a rock.“

Herein lies his future potential. As an “empty post hole,“ he is
now ready to be filled by something much more powerful. As
Hemenway has noted, “Moses' life will be transformed into
something entirely new . . . ,“ but it will not be because he “comes to
identify with the oppressed.“3 Instead Moses will be transformed
into a man who can singularly create a nation, precisely because his
drive to do so is not diluted by too much personal identification with
the people. As he later explains to Aaron, “You are much too
sensitive to the wishes of the people but you are too unconscious of
their needs“(245). In a sense his criticism is unfair, because as a
Hebrew, Aaron is much closer to sharing these wishes. Moses has
choices that Aaron, and the Hebrews, do not. His exercising of those
choices, and the results, have made him able to resist succumbing to
his and their wishes. His crossing of the Red Sea, rather than
submitting to Pharaoh's anger, is the first of those important
choices. ,

This crossing, which Moses is eager and impatient to complete,
contrasts sharply with his later crossing of the Red Sea with the
Hebrews. Though it is to save their lives and destroy their enemies,
Moses does force the Hebrews to cross the sea as if there were no
other choice for their salvation. A man who can command God,
however, clearly has other means at his disposal. But he chooses to

save the Hebrews in this fashion and when they see their enemies

 

29

drowned at their feet, they dance and sing in joy: “And they clapped
time on that [song] with their hands and danced and double clapped it
off . . . because everybody was happy and felt like clapping and
dancing“(194). This is in stark contrast to the manner in which they
initially greet the news that they are free to leave Egypt, with
silence, the “majority just [sitting] in the doors of their dwellings
staring out at Iife“(180).

In this crossing Moses has inched the Hebrews much closer to
believing themselves to be truly free than he could while they were
still on the other side of the Red Sea. But in choosing this path for
them, he commits himself to being responsible for choosing all such
paths. Though he laments for many years that they do not understand
or appreciate his efforts, he does come to understand in some
measure that “no man may make another free“(282). He cannot
expect them to understand where he is leading them, as long as they
are led. But he does not, unfortunately, fully appreciate his own
insight. Moses is caught between leaving the Hebrews to chose their
own path, and risk failing to reach the full, true freedom that he
envisions for them, or insuring that they enjoy the relative freedom
that he has fought so hard to lead them to by keeping his laws. His
decision is to leave the Hebrews in the hands of Joshua, a leader
whom he has molded after himself. And his last task, as a result of
that decision, is to insure that the Hebrews will continue to follow
those laws. But they will follow them not by choice, but by fear:

[O]ne day he must die as other men died. And they looked upon

him as different from other men and followed him only through
fear and awe. When he was sickened and crumbled like ordinary

 

30

men, what would become of his laws and statutes? No, Moses
must not die among the Hebrews. They must not see him
die.(286)

The power that Moses has, which will insure that the Hebrews
continue to fear him and follow his god, has not only inspired fear.
It has also given the Hebrews the gift of laws and might, and made
them into a nation that can vie with other nations for survival and

prosperity. Marjorie Pryse has observed that the

“Puritans believed that the Bible was quite literally God's text.
. . . Deriving the source of their own literary power(in sermons
and journals as well as religious poetry) from the patriarchal
genealogy by which the Bible transmits authority . . . the
Puritans bequeathed to suebsequent generations . . . the
association between formal authority and written texts. . . .“4

It is this same type of genealogy that is explored in Meeee.
Moses's god-like power, and ability to talk with God, derives from
his mastery of the book of Thoth. The authority of this written word
is the strength which breaks the power of the Egyptians' words, of
their written laws defining the reality of the Hebrews' lives. It is
this book which enables Moses to bring down laws written in stone
from God and create the nation of Israel. It is those laws which
begin to break the Hebrews' belief in themselves as slaves, as still
tied to Egyptian custom and religion. And it is the authority of the
written word which will continue to define the Hebrews as God's
“chosen.“

But though the Hebrews could have chosen to stay in Egypt, not
surprisingly, they chose instead to follow Moses to freedom. And
their options for freedom were limited to one choice, Moses. It is

true that he gave them the “gift of language, the voice to express

31

God and spirit.“5 But is this gift worth the risk of never being free
to make their own choices, based not on fear, or limited options, but
something better? And if this authority and its laws are obeyed out
of fear, even if their creation was well intended, and even if they
contain and have achieved much good, is obedience out of fear and
ignorance really freedom?

Hurston does not supply easy, pat answers, or quick solutions.
Instead, by exploring possibilities of Moses as a real and knowable
man, the novel raises the question of whether or not the privileging
of the written word, and the doctrine of the Hebrews, spread across
the world, was divinely chosen to be the one truth for everyone.
Moses's character is a man whose life is shaped as much by
individual choice as by the choices and influences and others. How
the number of options he has to chose from in life is partly
determined by previous influences is compared to the limited
number of options the Hebrews have to chose from based on previous
influences as well. This exploration allows us to question the degree
to which any one individual's, or people's, path in life and through
history, is “naturally“ or “divinely“ privileged over another's. We
also must question in the end whether lack of responsibility for
one's own choices, and indeed perceived lack of choice, is preferable
to the freedom that Moses wishes for Israel, and that Meeee implies

should be the wish of us all.

LIVING AS A CHOSEN PEOPLE

In his discussion of Moses, Hemenway writes that

To understand fully what Hurston attempted in this novel, one

must remember the identification made by captive black slaves

in America with the children of Israel in Egypt, and the

resulting role that Moses played in Afro-American folklore. . . .

It is the slaves' identity as a chosen people that Hurston

utilizes to tell Moses“ story, an identity rich with complexity. . .
The chosen people image demonstrates how the slaves created

their own imaginative mental world, secure from a degraded

status.(258-9)

Mesee explores the dangers of this illusion as the premise upon
which to base a pursuit of freedom and equality.

In W, Hurston also criticizes the idea that African-
Americans are a “chosen“ people. She writes that she recognizes the
slurs that they cast against themselves as “the Negro poking a little
fun at himself. At the same time, just like other peOple, hoping and
wishing he was what the orators said he was“(168). But he is not,
she argues, “the noblest and greatest man on earth“(161). “No,“ she
tells the reader, “we will go where the internal drive carries us like
everybody else. It is up to the individual. It you haven't got it, you
can't show it. If you have got it, you can't hide it"(172). That is her
only “chosen“ mission; to show that they have “got it“ as much as
anyone else.

But it is in the unpublished chapter, “Seeing the World as It Is,“
that she makes the most open attacks against the idea of a chosen

people. Hemenway notes that after reading this chapter, “One is

32

33

forced to ask what sort of reputation Zora Hurson might have today.
had she not felt compelled to respond to a Lippincott editor's
note“(288) which suggested she eliminate some of her more
controversial opinions. Harsh criticism of the Hebrews of the Old
Testament would not have sold well in the aftermath of Pearl
Harbor, to say the least. We are fortunate today, however, to have
access to this chapter and thus some of her more controversial
ideas. A particularly fitting example concerns what she had to say

on the subject of believing the Hebrews to be a chosen people :

The Old Testament is devoted to what was right and just from
the viewpoint of the Ancient Hebrews. All of their enemies
were twenty-two carat evil. They, the Hebrews, were never
aggressors. The Lord wanted His children to have a country full
of big grapes and tall corn. Incidentally, while they were
getting it, they might as well get rid of some trashy tribes that
He never did think much of, anyway. With all of its figs and
things, Canaan was their destiny. God sent somebody especially
to tell them about it.(244-5)

In the published version she criticizes Christianity instead:

When I studied the history of the great religions of the world, I
saw that even in his religion man carried himself along. His
worship of strength was there. God was made to look that way
too. We see the Emperor Constantine, as pagan as he could lay in
his hide, having his famous vision of the cross with the
injunction: “In Hoc Signo Vinces,“ and arising the next day not
only to win a great battle, but to start out on his missionary
journey with his sword. . . . he had his good points--one of them
being a sword--and a seasoned army. And the way he brought
sinners to repentance was nothing short of miraculous. Whole
tribes and nations fell under conviction just as soon as they
heard he was on the way.(200)

34

This same tone is present in her final comments to her
privileged(and probably white) readers, and any non-privileged

readers as well:

You, who play the zig-zag lightening of power over the world,
with the grumbling thunder in your wake, think kindly of those
who walk in the dust. And you who walk in humble places, think
kindly too, of others. There has been no proof in the world so

far that you would be less arrogant if you held the lever of
power in your hands. Let us all be kissing friends. Consider that
with tolerance and patience, we godly demons may breed a noble
world in a few hundred generations or so.(209)

I read these passages as Hurston's sarcastic commentary on the
privileges of power to manipulate others and bring them under one's
own control, on the ability of those who write history to give
themselves a favored place in it as special, or “chosen,“ and on the
desire of those with no power to want to replace, and not be equal
with, those with power. This same sarcasm gives shape to much of
Meeee. Werner Sollors has argued that “[p]erhaps a culture can best
be understood by critics who lay bare what may be covered up and
who question what is taken for granted, even by their own initial
hypothesis“(167). It is from this critical position that Hurston
utilizes that sarcasm.

In his discussion of WW, Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. asserts that Hurston's rhetorical strategy mediates
between “a profoundly lyrical, densely metaphorical, quasi-musical,
privileged black oral tradition on the one hand, and a received but
not yet fully appropriated standard English literary tradition on the
other hand. The quandary for the writer was to find a third term, a

bold and novel signifier, informed by these two related yet distinct

35

lterary languages."1 This description is useful in characterizing the
relationship between Moses and the Hebrews as well. Moses,
however, is not entirely successful in finding a “third term.“ He
never completely bridges the gap between him and the Hebrews;
instead he seeks to build the illusion that he can leap over it at any
time, both with the might of his power and his command of language.
But as with human beings, command does not always equal complete
control, and his several unconscious slips into his “own“ language
mirrors both the uneasy relationship between him and a chosen yet
controlled people, as well as that between the traditional view of
Moses, and the view that Hurston utilizes here.

One thing the Hebrews understand is Moses's commanding tone.
“Looks like we done swapped one bossman for another,“ one person
observes. 'But it was Moses that got us free,“ Joshua protests. “Oh I
don't know about that. This God that done chose us would have got us
.free somehow. I never did much care for this Moses like some of you
all“(181), another answers. What they don't yet understand is just
how much Moses was not just instrumental in but also orchestrated
their release. They do sense, however, that their obligation is to
whomever or whatever secured that release, and they have indeed
“swapped one bossman for another.“ Having always equated freedom
with the ruling power and leisure of the Egyptians, they don't realize
that true freedom is a very tenuous thing which they have not yet
gotten a hold of, and neither do they have the security of the
Egyptians' power which would enable them to enjoy leisure. This is
what they must Ieam from Moses. But what Moses never fully

grasps, because he has Ieamed to be so wary of misdirected desire,

36

is that the ability to obtain one's desires is not the same as the
power which secures that ability. He over-emphasizes that power,
because he hasn't Ieamed from his own life's example that his power
merely insured that he could do what he wanted to. He Ieamed from
Jethro(whose desire is for the power which can subordinate) to
subordinate his own desires to another's, and it is this subordination
that he imposes upon the Hebrews.

The Hebrews are not just material to be molded, however. To
some extent they participate in that they chose to follow Moses,
although they do so because he is endorsed by one of their own(a fact
which Jethro knows and takes advantage of). They demonstrate this
by their anger with him when they feel he is not holding up his end
of the bargain. For instance, just after crossing the Red Sea and
watching the Pharaoh's forces be destroyed in the process, the
Hebrews storm Moses's tent complaining bitterly of hunger. “If this
God you done got us mixed with just had to kill us,“ they lament, “we
sure wish He had of killed us down in Egypt on a full stomach.“
Moses argues “Now you committeemen that's standing before me,
where do you all figure I was going to find enough groceries to feed
all of you all?“ “That we don't know and we figure it ain't none of
our business,“ they answer. “You brought us out here, didn't you? We
want to know if this powerful God you talk about is here amongst us
or if He ain't“(204-5). Moses wants them to understand that “being a
little hungry for the sake“ of freedom(205) is nothing to be
distraught about. But the Hebrews equate freedom with the
Egyptians' ability to have someone else take care of them. Further,

they feel that they have just moved from one master to another,

37

although one who cares for them as well as controls them. Their
demands match their expectations of Moses holding up his end of a
deal-—the deal that he follow, and they lead.

They show as well an awareness that he manipulates their
feelings, and their tnrst, and can do so because of his mastery over
them, reflected in the fact that he can, if he wishes, speak their
language, although it is an effort to do so. His efforts do not go
unnoticed by the Hebrews. Moses, they note in the desert, “is getting i
so he talks our language just like we talk it ourselves.“ Aaron, in
his pretentious imitation of Moses, does the opposite, but forgets
his high-toned speech in moments of excitement. Moses does the
opposite when trying to express a deep and true thought, and “goes
back to talking his proper talk when he gets excited, too“(204). This
humor demonstrates that Moses never quite gains their full trust. It
is not that they understand him better when he speaks either way in
particular, for they understand Pharaoh's decrees all too well, and
they argue with him vociferously when he speaks as they do. It is
rather that they know that their language is unnatural to him, that
he has to make an effort to speak as they do, and that that effort is
forgotten when he says those things he judges to be of the greatest
importance. Thus they cannot really believe in those statements for
a long time, always uttered in the high “court“ language of the hated
Pharaoh.

The more he overcomes this barrier, the more they believe in
him. But it takes forty long years of wandering before this will
happen. In the end, they offer him a crown in deepest gratitude of

his efforts for them. “It ain't much,“ they tell him, “but it will give

38

you some idea of how we feel“(268). At this Moses feels a great
sadness, believeing that they “had missed the point of his forty-odd
years of work“(268). But really they have not. They understand that
the crown “ain't much,“ and they also know from previous requests
that he abhors the very idea of a title and palace and the empty
vanity they symbolize. What he does not realize, however, is that
they understand him and what he wants of them better than he
thinks they do. He had at least, he thinks, “produced the physical
base for greatness“ in the nation of lsrael(269). That greatness is
the same power that Jethro had earlier sensed in Moses, and he has
bequeathed it to Israel through Joshua, his chosen successor. And in
offering Moses the crown, acknowledging their awareness that to
him it “ain't much,“ they show an understanding and appreciation of
the vision he has for them as free people ruling themselves.

But they also demonstrate that they recognize(even if he won't
admit it) that he has always been king, absolute ruler, in all but
title. It is true that they are now a nation capable of holding their
own against other nations. But having been chosen by another more
powerful than they, and having chosen to follow that others“ dreams,
they have given up the opportunity to follow their own before they
knew what it might be. McDowell notes that Hurston was “building
on a mountain of tradition when she placed her story in “African-
American terms and idioms,“ and “anticipating its perpetuation“
(viii). This tradition includes more than literature, as Howard
explains: It consists of “oratory, sermons, and literature,“ including
“[Paul] Dunbar's 'Ante-bellum Serrnon,‘ [James] Baldwin's Go Tell It

on the Mountain, W.E. Turpin's O Canaan! “ and “[Richard] Wright's 'Fire

 

 

39

and Cloud'“,2 to name a few. Accepting this tradition has meant that
the African-American community has also accepted its privileging
of the male voice. As Howard has noted in a somewhat different
context, Hursotn is describing a Moses who “is the ultimate man, the
absolute man“(130). In megs Hurston observes that “even in
his religion man carried himself along“(200). Through this
privileged male voice of Moses, then, the Hebrews will be priviliged
as well. Israel is an example to the world. and so, by implication, is
the African-American community. They both symbolize the tragedy _‘__,,
of a people who will always be enslaved until they recognize the I
incompatibility of privilege with freedom.

The limit that lack of self-determination imposes on freedom is
crystallized in two characters in particular, Aaron and Miriam.
Moses plans to pass the mantle of leadership on to Joshua, whom he
feel is sufficiently strong and faithful enough to insure that the
Hebrews follow Moses's laws reverently. Yet Aaron also has
aspirations toward leading the Hebrews. But his desire is to enjoy
the perceived personal benefits of leadership, not to aid his people
in any subsantial way. Yet just as the Hebrews recognize Aaron as
“substitute“ leadership(250), Moses recognizes his enslavement to
the catering of his people's desires only to fulfill his own vain(in
every sense of the word) ambitions.

Jethro reveals, after Moses has received his command from the
“voice,“ that he has already established Aaron as a connection with
the Hebrews, and he can speak for Moses as translator and
spokesperson. But Moses conflicts with him from the beginning:

“This Aaron was a short, squatty man who wanted ornaments. Then

40

he wanted titles. Then Moses must recognize him as a brother“(131).
As Hurston observed in W, self-interest outweighs any
commitment to “Race Solidarity“ every time(119-20). He shares
with Pharaoh a craving for the robes, the symbols of power. Unlike
Pharaoh, however, Aaron does not have the inherited sanction of
authority, nor will he ever rule over anything. Thus while Moses
feels enmity toward Pharaoh and a desire to triumph over him, he
reserves only contempt for Aaron.

Aaron is in fact the only one to question Moses's judgement and
actions. When they first meet, for example, Aaron implies that one
show of power should be enough to change things. He comments to
him that “I guess you know your business Moses, but it seems like if
we was to present a petition to Pharaoh, now that we got him
worried--“ But Moses immediately cuts him off: “I see you don't
know people, Aaron“(147). It turns out, however, that it isn't so
much that Aaron doesn't know people, just that he uses his
knowledge of them to advance his own ambitions. This is most
evident in his conniving with his sister Miriam. When Moses first
comes to Goshen, he calls a meeting of the Hebrew Elders, and
Miriam comes with Aaron. “Who is that woman, Aaron?“ Moses asks,
genuinely surprised that a woman would be there. “I have called the
Elders to me on serieue business'(emphasis added, 134-35). Aaron
counters by arguing that “Miriam is a great prophetess, Moses.
Talking about influence, she's got plenty. We couldn't make out
without her, that's all. Everybody comes to her to get things

straightened out. She's a two-headed woman with power“(135).

41

Of course Miriam has no real power once Moses arrives on the
scene, and we are left in the dark as to how much influence she
really had before Moses arrived. In any case Moses is not interested
in individualized cures, he has a strong dose of unifying nationalism
with which to treat the whole people. Aaron's support of Miriam is
the support of the weak for the weak, and he hopes to find strength
solely in numbers. But he is no more a match for Moses than Miriam

is.

._ _. we“; . “d
. I.

Later Aaron challenges Moses in his and Miriam's name as well,
this time with Miriam explicitly encouraging him. Knowing that he
cannot openly challenge Moses, Aaron has preferred the tactic of
biding his time. But Miriam urges him to speak for her, knowing she
cannot speak for herself and have Moses take her seriously. Aaron
contends that “we ain't being treated right, Miriam and me. Ain't no
its and ands about it. We just done had the hog run over us, that's
all“(212-13). He again asks that Miriam be given the public
recognition as a “big prophet“ by Moses that she deserves: “Looks
like you could stand her up before the people and tell “em that you
back her up as a prophet and look on her as a great one on--er--
equality with the best. It would mean a whole lot to her“(214).

Moses, however, knows that just as Miriam needs Aaron to speak
her ambitions, Aaron's main concern is not his sister, but himself.
What Miriam wants is real power, not robes of state, and Moses
continually denies even the acknowledgement of those desires. So in
his reply, he only answers what he knows are Aaron's demands: “You
will get all I promised you back in Egypt. I recognize that you need

rich regalia to dress in to keep you from feeling like slaves again,

 

42

and I will see to it in a lavish way. But don't look for too much else.
The Lord usually gives a man what he is worth“(214). (And, one
could add, this god gives a woman what she's “worth“ as well; at
best, illusion, at worst, nothing.)

These robes that Aaron receives, however, are also taken away.
For a brief time, Aaron actually leads the people, in worship of the
Egyptian idol. But Moses's return exposes Aaron as “naked and
capering around like an old goat“(237). Aaron begins to hate Moses I
then, and begins to anticipate the day when he will replace him:
“And from that moment on till the hour he died Aaron kept his eyes
on Moses in secret and waited his chance. All he needed was the
strength to seize his hour for vengeance. His hate was strong but
his heart was weak. From then on for forty years the underhand
struggle went on. . . . And always the strength of Moses trampled
down the weak cunning of Aaron“(239-40). Even when the fighting
men clamor to battle Moses rather than face an unknown adversary
in Canaan, Aaron stays in the background. As Moses thinks
contemptuously to himself, Aaron is “a snarling hyena, waiting for
_ some lion to make your kill for you“(257). When Moses has led Aaron
to the brink of Canaan, he divests that “hyena' of even the symbol of
power, exposing Aaron as an weak, useless old man whose only real
ambition was to be admired and indeed envied. Moses no longer
needs Aaron to speak for him. In fact he hasn't needed him for a long
while. Moses finally makes him face the truth that he has been
denying all along: “God didn't put no robes on you, Aaron. I put “em on

you and I'm taking them off, because they don't fit you. . . . I thought
I needed you for the big job I had to do beeaumouleremne

43

jjebLeme. I did need you too, but you didn't do the job I picked out for
you“(emphasis added, 273).

Moses now takes the opportunity to rid Israel of one of its
greatest weaknesses, its first politician. He wields the knife
himself even as he mocks Aaron with the promise that “God will
remember your sacrifice and guard your memories“(275). Aaron was
never chosen, merely used. Therefore his memories will mean
nothing, which is little less than Moses accounts as the worth of his
life. Aaron had not even the power to chose his own successor, for
several of his sons are killed at Mount Sinai. It is Moses who passes
his robes on to Aaron's son Eleazar, and when they descend the
mountain, Eleazar “straighten[s] his figure to set his garments well
and fell in beside Moses and they started down the mountain side by
side“(276). Hereafter Aaron's descendants will follow and obey
Moses's doctrine as Aaron never did.

McDowell writes that “[w]hile the opening of Meses is promising
in its attempt to establish a triadic parallel between ancient
Hebrew slavery, Negro slavery, and female oppression, that parallel
is not sustained throughout the novel.“ The “persecution of the
Hebrew male babies is connected to the suffering of their mothers. .
. .“ and the “one cannot be considered apart from the other. . . “(xi).
She also argues that a further flaw of the novel is that Jochebed's
disobedience to husband and state are also not sustained throughout
the story(xi). First, I disagree that the parallel she cites is not
sustained. McDowell seems to argue this in the context of the
suffering of woman-as-mother as the suffering of all women, and

the inability to “disobey“ the male voice's plans for male children as

44

the factor of main importance in Hurston's “dramatization of the
complex relationship between religion and gender“(xi). Second, I
disagree with what seems to be McDowell's implication; that

Jochebed's inability to continue to resist her husband's and state's

 

demands to kill her child is a flaw in the novel. Amram and Jochebed
hold their breath every day of the child's life in fear that the secret
police will descend upon them at any moment. When Amram returns 91,:
home to tell her that Pharaoh knows that the Hebrews are allowing I
male babies to live, she resigns herself to giving the child the .._
pitifully slim hope of surviving, by hiding it on the river, “like some
others I know“(23). Both Jochebed and Amram surrender to the
knowledge that they can no longer “fool the crocodiles“(15) of
Pharoah, and thus she builds a last deceptive cover with which to try
and fool the crocodiles of the Nile.

Finally, I think that McDowell ignores the possibility that
female oppression denies women more than the ability to alleviate
the suffering of their children, and more than the ability to say “no“
to men. It also denies them the opportunity to say “yes.“ Miriam is
this silenced “yes.“

It the men of a “people“ are free and yet colonize their own
women, than women do not even have the satisfaction of giving birth
to potential future leaders; their oppressors instead pick their
successors from the material “produced“ by their women to mold to
their satisfaction without female influence(Moses is not, after all,
Jethro's biological son, and Moses choses Joshua, rather than one of
his own sons, as leader.) Mesee shows that a transferral of power

occurs when the potential successors demonstrate their ability(by

45

being male) and willingness to follow in the footsteps of their
forefathers. In this context, Miriam's frustrated desire is the desire
for real power and influence. She, who is also “of“ the people, will
never be considered as a potential leader.

In discussing Jessie Redmon Fauset's story Elumjyn, P. Gabriel
Foreman argues that the novel's plot

is a skeleton which Fauset flashes out through her exploration
of hegemony. Angela realizes that to be an African-American
woman in this society is to be powerless. . . . What Angela
voices is an American semiotics of power; whiteness, she says
herself, is only a sign, a “badge.“ Because Angela understands
that it is power, not whiteness per so, which she ultimately
desires, she also recognizes that there are other signs, other
badges which stand in its stead.3

Miriam recognizes this as well. As the child who failed her
mother in a most fundamental way, Miriam flees from the admission
of that fear and failure into admiration of the Egyptian princess's

robes, jewelry, and servants, her “badge“:

The child and his basket were gone, that was all. And she had
not the least idea of where she had gone, nor how. What should
she tell her parents? She began to cry.

But her tears did not flow long. Down-stream at some
distance she saw a glorious site. A large party of young women
dressed in rich clothing was clustered on the bank. The morning
sun struck against shining metal ornaments and drew Miriam
away from her search for her brother and from her tired and
frightened self.(26-7)

Miriam uses these same badges to comfort her mother for the
loss of her baby, and to save herself from sure and swift harsh
punishment. After she spits out the initial story which calms her
mothers anger, she focuses on the details of the princess's dress,

the well-groomed appearance of her body and the way she moves,

46

which indicates never having had to stoop, squat, or haul for a living:
The princess “walked like this and smiled at me“; she “had on red
sandals and her toenails was red“; she had servants that “danced fer
her because she was so glad because she had found the child“; and
she “had a headdress of blue feathers that fell down over her
shoulders in a real pretty way like this“(emphasis added, 30-1). At
this point Miriam “grabbed a shawl and draped it over her head and
strutted about“(31). But although these details sooth the mother's
anger, they don't alleviate her concern. Jochebed wants details of
her reaction to the baby, not a litany on her wardrobe. Miriam,
however, has failed at her task, and creates this illusion to both
hide and protect her in her helpless state. Her mother must be
satisfied with Miriam's new concerns, the illusion of control,
safety, and power.

It is this same illusion which so captures Miriam's attention
when Zipporah comes to the Hebrew camp for the first time. She
compares herself to Zipporah and knows that she will never achieve

that illusion. Miriam

looked again and saw the well-cared-for hands and feet of
Zipporah, and looked at her own gnarled fists and her square feet
all twisted and coarsened by slavery, and almost snarled out
loud. She Miriam, had had so little in her life and now this place
she had won by hard work and chance was being taken from her
by the looks of a Prince's daughter who hadn't done anything but
deck herself to come here and bewitch the eyes of foolish
women! Miriam boiled with anger and a sense of injustice.(219)

Whatever small position Miriam may have had among the women

has just been taken away. She

47

saw the admiration of Zipporah in thousands of faces and she
felt utterly helpless in the presence of it. . . . She could see
women already trying to set down their broad bare feet in the
same way that Zipporah set down her dainty sandals. Her walk
and her gestures were catching. They were more than willing to
take the wife of Moses for a pattern.(219)

What Miriam seas of course is a reflection of her earlier blind
adoration of the princess. These women are only as willing to
pattern themselves after the “queen“ of their present leader as
Miriam was under the Egyptian one. The difference is that up until
now, she hadn't felt quite as utterly helpless. Zipporah's arrival
shows up the lie, and Miriam responds with rage. This response,
however, comes after the Hebrews' disobedience, and Aaron's
humiliation. Despite the fact that it is Miriam's initial suggestion
that the Hebrews give up on Moses and return to their old gods, she
is not punished. It appears that she choses that time because she
feels safe after this incident. And it is perhaps Moses's inability to
hold a woman accountable for so heinous and yet tremendous and
serious crime that keeps her safe at this point. But she is not to be
safe for long.

Miriam's initial desire to wait on the princess is a desire to be
associated with power. But this association is an illusion. Joshua
can emulate Moses, because he is truly able to potentially “chosen“
in a way that Miriam will never be: the princess, as a woman in no
possession of power herself, could not chose even a maid. She would
probably never consider one of the hated Hebrew slaves at any rate,
but this is beside the point. The point is that her “badge“ is invested
with more worth than she is; her body exists to “lend . . . support to

the female robes of state“(37). Women cannot make cross-cultural

48

connections because they can't make connections to each other at
all, they are defined by their relation to men. It is this awareness
that fuels Miriam's rage, which she directs initially Zipporah.

But she makes a further discovery upon her confrontation with
Moses: It is not that Zipporah has a “badge“ similar to that of the
princess, instead it is Zipporah who is the badge. She is a symbol
both of Moses's power and of his role as leader, sanctioned by
Jethro's power and authority. If she had been able to acknowledge
Zipporah's powerlessness as equal to her own, she might have I
avoided a battle that she could not win. Instead she reacts to
Zipporah as a sign of Moses's power, and Zipporah becomes their
battleground. Again she confronts Moses through Aaron, and they
both insist that it is the people, not they, who dislike her wife for

her color. But another debate goes on in between the accusations:

“It's her color, Moses. She's too dark to be around here.“

“Why?“

Well, you see the people, that is, the ladyfolks, don't want her
ruling over them, dark as she is.“

“In the first place she ain't ruling over nobody and in the second
place she's my wife and nobody ain't got nothing to do with how
dark or white she is but me.“

“Oh, yes, we have. That's the very thing we don't like. You act
like you're the boss of everything. God didn't call you, and you
only, you know.“

“Who else did He call, then?“

“He called me and Miriam too. All three of us is supposed to be
on a equal balance.“

Of course this is not the case, and Moses tells them so. But he
also shows that he knows that this time, Aaron is speaking for both
him and Miriam: “I know exactly what's the matter with N.

You want to stand in my shoes which they are much too big for your

 

49

feet“(emphasis added). Yet he dismisses Miriam at the same time:
“The women all are making admiration over my wife and now Miriam
is jealous and spiteful.“ At this point Miriam speaks, rashly it turns
out, for herself: “Miriam jumped in. “The Lord did call us just as
much as He did Moses and it's about time we took our stand in front
of the people. I was a prophetess in Israel while he was herding
sheep in Midian. AnthatJomanmsonosmssmlloLeJoJonLitm
us, that black Mrs. Pharaoh got to leave here right now“(emphasis
added). What Moses is “Iording' over them, is his position as the real
and only leader of the Hebrews, and the “it,“ the “badge“ of his power
in lieu of a crown, is his wife.

Moses attempts to silence Miriam by mocking and humiliating

her with her difference from other women:

Miss Miriam, your case is pitiful. The trouble with you is that
nobody ever married you. And when a woman ain't got no man to
look after, she takes on the world in place of the man she
missed. You are one of those people who learn nothing in the
long tumings and twistings of experience. But you better keep
my wife's name out of your mouth. That's all I got to say.(245)

lnfuriated beyond all caution, Miriam ignores Moses's dire
warning to return to her proper role of silence. Mary Helen
Washington has argued in her discussion of W that “[a]s
many feminist critics have pointed out, women do get silenced, even
in texts by women, and there are critical places . . . where Janie's
voice needs to be heard and is not, places where we would expect her
as the subject of the story to speak“(243). But Janie lives in a
world which expects silence, or at least compliance, from women.

When she voices her own desires and frustrations in contradiction to

50

authority, she is punished, for example when she tells her
grandmother that she doesn't want to marry Logan Killicks. The
same is true of Miriam. Not only has she spoken on her own behalf,
she has taken God's name into her mouth and claimed that He speaks
through her, and Aaron, just as he does through Moses.

This transgression cannot go unpunished and Moses responds
with a fury equal to hers. The difference, however, is that he
possesses all power; she possesses none, and though her leprosy
leaves her after seven days, she is scarred forever. Never will she
speak as during those last defiant moments. But, “[n]ow and then she
would whisper to whoever happened to be close around. “He lifted
his right hand. I saw him do it. He lifted his right hand and the thing
come upon me. I felt it when it come. His right hand was clothed in
Iight'“(246). The next time that she speaks, it is, ironically, in
words that sound like prophecy. Moses has sent scouts to Canaan,
some of whom have come back with fearful reports of unbeatable
armies of giants. Only Joshua and Caleb echo Moses's confidence.
But the Hebrews confront Moses in anger and fear of an unknown
enemy and he just makes it to the Tabernacle, inviting the Princes
and Elders inside. Then he falls suddenly on his face in the door. At
this point eriam “broke a silence of several months. “Something
awful will happen from this. . . . It is a bad sign. He will lift that
right hand and Israel will suffer terribly. It is better to do as he
says'“(258). Ironically though, her words come too late. Though the
Hebrews don't need them(they have her presence as an example to
those who would challenge Moses), they ignore her words as well as

the warning she embodies.

51

Some time after her words have proven true and Israel has been
wandering the desert, Miriam approaches Moses with a request; she
wants to be allowed to die. Openly she recognizes the absolute
power he had over her:

When I found out I couldn't do no more in Israel than you let me,

I made up my mind to go on off and die, but I found out I couldn't

even do that unless you let me. I saw all them people dead in

the wilderness from snake-bites and disease and one thing and
another and I looked at their bones and wished it was me. Aaron
was waiting for the crown in Canaan, but I just been waiting to
die. Now, I ask you please to leave me go. I done tried to be as

stiff as you was stout, but I found out I got to come ask you to

die. You knew all along and you been waiting for me to
come.(264)

Moses says nothing, just finishes looking her over and summing
her up. When he is done, the tone of the story echoes that of Moses's
pity, and the release it provides is the answer which Miriam has
awaited, and she goes to die.

After she dies, Moses halts the Hebrews in their wandering and
holds a mourning for thirty days for Miriam. He tells the young and
reminds the old of that which the reader has just been made aware,
of a time “when the house of the prophetess Miriam was the meeting
place of all those who were willing to work for freedom. How she
had gathered folks together by two and threes and changed weakness
into resolution“(265). Then Moses has a great tomb of rocks piled
over her tomb, her final silent resting place.

It is at this point that we reach one of the novel's “thin line[s]
between the description and analysis“4 that Holloway argues Hurston
utilizes to demonstrate a character's growing self-awareness.

Moses admits silently to himself the extent to which Miriam shaped

52

his life. For she was, in a sense, always a prophetess, she literally
“foretold“ his role as the princely brother of the Hebrews. He admits

that though she was a woman,

he had never been able to quite think of her as such. What with
her lack of female beauty and female attractions, and her
loveless life with one end sunk in slavery and the other twisted
and snarled in freedom. He wondered what had hurt her most.

He thought how the threads of his life had gotten tangled with
the threads of this homely slave woman. He wondered if she had
not been born if he would have been standing there in the desert
of Zin. In fact, he wondered if the Exodus would have taken
place at all. . . . He doubted it.(265)

It is here that Moses's self-analysis fails. He continues to see
Miriam's actions, and her visiting the palace and demanding to see
her “brother“ Moses, as the “stumblings of a woman who couldn't see
where she was going. She needed a big tomb so the generations that
come after would know her and remember“(266). This big tomb
would indeed be a monument. In the and Miriam is as silent as the
great mountain that calls to Moses “as a mother would“(91). His
inability to see, or admit, the extent to which his absolute control
was the force that “twisted and snarled“ her life and her body
reflects his inability to see that this same power, while “freeing“
the Hebrews, is precisely what kept them free. Having made his
choices and shaped his and the Hebrews' lives accordingly, Moses
sets out to find the lizard “keeper of memories.“ These memories,
however, are not written in stone. The lizard who “tells“ Moses
about this keeper informs him in fact that there was recently “some
dispute on this mountain about the month of the flood. So I traveled

[to the keeper] to ask“(286). Moses too becomes interested in

 

S3

finding this ancient lizard. And so the story reaches its “expected“
conclusion; Moses ascends Mount Nebo and leaves the Hebrews to
mourn him as lost, ever pursuing the answers from the mouth of
authority.

Moses's insight has failed him in that he does not see Miriam as
normal. After all, he doesn't even think of her as a woman. For the
description and his self-analysis to be unified, Moses would have to
recognize, as the reader should, that Miriam is the bitter
embodiment of the limited options that all the Hebrews actually
have to chose from. Her relationship to Moses, her relationship, or
more accurately, isolation, from the other Hebrews reflects the
prison that the Hebrews risk being caught in, in being defined by
another's words and laws. Through Miriam, and through all the
Hebrews, Mesee finally forces us to ask if freedom without self-
deterrnination and responsibility for everyone can ever really be

called freedom.

 

I‘DTES

Introduction

1Zora Neale Hurston, W, (New York: T

HarperPerrenial, 1991). All references are to this edition of the ,
text. .

2Deborah E. McDowell, Forward, “Lines of Descent/Dissenting

LineS.“ MosoLMan_of_tho_Mssntain. (New York: HarperPerrenial.
1991) viii.

3Darwin T Turner. MW

,:(Carbondale Southern Illinois
University Press, 1971) 110.

4Moses's Egyptian mother is a widow, formerly married to a
foreign prince(37).

5Zora Neale Hurston, W, (New York:
HarperPerrenial, 1991) 155. All references are to this edition of the

text.

6Flobert E Hemenway. WWW.
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977) 2601.

Molding a Destiny

“Karla F- 0- Holloway. MW
Won, (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987) 40.

2Hurston, Moses 35.
3Mary Poovey, “Feminism and Deconstruction,“ W

14.1 (1988): 52.
54

55

4Hemenway 260.
5Hemenway 261.

6Hemenway 265.

7Lillie P. Howard, ZeLa_Neele_ljuszen, (Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1980) 116.

Choosing a Destiny
1Hurston, W, Table of Contents.
2Howard 122.
3Hemenway 270.

4Marjon’e Pryse, “Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and the
“Ancient Power“ of Black Women," WM

Eonsoosflmonflaoloflomonflntors. ed Barbara Christian. (New
York: Pergamon Press, 1985) 9.

5Holloway 61.

Living as a Chosen People

1Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,

InofiismMosMonlsolJlneonmf
W. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988) 174.

2Howard 115.

3P. Gabrielle Foreman, “Looking Back from Zora, or Talking Out
Both Sides My Mouth for Those Who Have Two Ears,“ Bleelmmeriean

W, 24.4 Winter 1990: 653.

4Holloway 56.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “Looking Back from Zora, or Talking Out Both
Sides My Mouth for Those Who Have Two Ears.“ _aek_Ameu‘_ce_

mm 24.4 Winter 1990: 649- 666.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.

WWII).
W New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.

Hemenway, Robert E.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

Holloway. Karla F. C. W
W. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Howard, Lillie P. W. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
980.

Hurston, Zora Neale. W. New York:

HarperPerrenial,1991.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Meses,_Men_ef_me_Meun1ain. New York:
HarperPerrenial, 1991.

McDowell, Deborah E. Forward, “Lines of Descent/Dissenting Lines.“

Mesee,_Men_QLme_M9_umejn, Zora Neale Hurston. New York:
HarperPerrenial, 1991.

Poovey, Mary. “Feminism and Deconstruction.“ Eeminjejjtgeiee 14.1
(1988): 51-65.

Pryce, Marjorie. Introduction, “Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and
the 'Ancient Power' of Black Women." Bleek Eeminiet Critieiem ;

EarssootixessnflaoLflomanMitoLs. ed Barbara Christian
New York: Pergamon Press.1985,9-24.

56

 

57

Turner. Darwin T In_a_Minor_Chors:__‘[nLe.e_AtLo;AmoLioan_antors_

W. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1971.

 

 

 

 

 

MICHIGAN STRTE UNIV. LIBRR'
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIllllllIII IIIIIIIII
3129300906968