Poetic Justice in Zora Neale Hurston's Short Story, "Spunk"

Lena gets Gertrude.

When Kanty realizes that Banks's amoral romantic relationship with Lena has gone outside of the
peripheries of civilized habits, he decides to show to the group that he is not a coward right after all.
To that finish, just as Claudius and his co-conspirators die in Hamlet, Spunk Banking institutions
also dies in "Spunk" to swell the developing numbers of the dead.
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Zora Neale Hurston's brief story "Spunk" is a single that is mired in thriller. A single working day,
Kanty is educated of the whereabouts of Banking companies and Lena armed with just a razor blade,
Kanty decides to stop the affair amongst his wife and her lover. The sawdust would make him not
comfortable although Jordan, a euphemism for Hades, is in the Middle East to provide a seamless
catabasis for Banks's descent.

In fact, Joe Kanty is tardy in his confrontation

with Spunk Banks, a delay that sets the
tongues of the group wagging that Kanty was a
coward. In the conclude, Kanty's razor blade
proves to be a futile weapon towards Banking
companies .45 armed forces hand gun.
Right after Kanty's death, similar to Janie Mae
Crawford in Their Eyes Were Seeing God,
Banking institutions goes on terse trial, and he
is exonerated on the basis of self -defense.
Hamlet's tardiness brings about the fatalities
of his mother, Queen Gertrude Rosencratz,
Polonius, and Ophelia.
In addition, in "Spunk," Hurston appears to be substantiating James Baldwin's assertion that modern
day writers of his day required to inject their people with dignity, compassion, and sensibility-virtues of human splendor-- and refrain from just reportage and judgment. One of the people, 'Lige
points out in the story that before Banking institutions died, he screamed: "He [Joe Kanty] pushed
me, 'Lige--the dirty hound pushed me in the again!....Ah'll get the son-of-a-wooden louse soon's Ah
get there and make hell way too scorching for him," (Hurston 173).
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The cultural underpinning of "Spunk" is that when Banking institutions is about to die, he is lain on
sawdust with his encounter pointing toward the East to serve as a catalyst that would hasten his
demise. A lot of of the town's folks, such as Banks himself, feel the big, black bob-cat is Kanty's ghost
seeking vengeance.
Furthermore, the pointing of Banks's confront to the East and laying him in sawdust to hasten his
death is an invocation of ancestral phenomenon. In this sense, "Spunk" is a ghost tale in which

Hurston shows through her use of folklore that the teleological and ontological miasma of violence is
death.
A quintessential ingredient in the menu of ghost stories is that the ghost avenges his loss of life.
Shortly soon after falling onto the sawmill device, Kanty dies from his wounds, firmly grounded in
the belief that Kanty did it. Established in central Florida, "Spunk" is a tragic ghost tale that shares
some qualities with Shakespeare's Hamlet due to the fact of the poetic justice or comeuppance at
work. Indeed, although Hurston wrote "Spunk" in cost-free oblique discourse, it is a witty quick story
infused with humor, sympathy, dignity, and bravery.. Banks's flaw is that he was as well brazen and
also brash in his dealings with Lena. The interrogation and intertualization juxtapose brilliantly with
the comparison of "Spunk" with Hamlet. But unlike Gertrude, Hurston spares Lena's lifestyle, and
Jeff Kanty, Joe's father, celebrates Spunk Banks's death at his funeral.
Not lengthy following his acquittal, Banks mysteriously falls onto a sawmill equipment, and he is
fatally wounded. Even though Kanty's name is not glorified in royalty, and Lena is not a queen, they
make excellent substitutions for the King of Denmark and Gertrude. "Spunk," revealed in 1925 in the
Harlem Renaissance journal, Chance, is one particular of Hurston's limited stories in which she
employs her patented totally free indirect discourse as a trope and the Cartesian dualism of society
and language to illustrate what transpires to a male who forcefully unsettles a married female from
her marital home.
The ancestral connection in "Spunk" is the belief in ghost stories. Ahead of he died from his
accidents, Elijah and Skint laid Banks on a saw dust with his encounter toward the East to facilitate
his passing absent.
Spunk Financial institutions normally takes gain of his cumbersome corporeal body and military
training and lures Lena Kanty from her respectable spouse, Joe Kanty, a improvement that qualified
prospects to the demise of the two gentlemen. In this perspective, "Spunk" is a revenge ghost tale
that reads like a morality tale due to the fact of the poetic justice exacted by Kanty's peeved ghost.
Consequently, Hurston looks to be interrogating Shakespeare's intentions in Hamlet, so in "Spunk,"
Kanty wastes no time in tormenting Banking companies before killing him at some point. A little
discreetness and discretion could have provided a realm of longevity for each gentlemen. However,
Kanty's ghost is not the forgiving sort, so the ghost is rumored to haunt Banks in the type of a big,
black bob-cat that overtly stalks the latter. Yet again, Elijah notes, "If spirits kin fight, there's a
effective tussle goin' on someplace ovah Jordan 'cause Ah b'leeve Joe's all set for Spunk an' ain't
skeered any a lot more--yas, Ah b'leeve Joe pushed 'im mahself" (Hurston 173).

Evidently, there are some similarities in

between "Spunk" and Hamlet. Having
eradicated royalty from the formula, Spunk
Financial institutions can be likened to Claudius
who poured a venomous vial into the ear of the
king, Hamlet's father, and Joe Kanty can be
likened to Hamlet's father who was also
murdered, and the murderer quickly married
the widow. The procrastination of Hamlet in
killing Claudius following his father's ghost had
revealed himself to him is problematic, even
mind-boggling