It’s taken me forever to write an essay on this story by Zora Neale Hurston, because something about it bothered me—not bad-bothered, good-bothered, and it finally came to me late last night: The story is an updated version of Adam and Eve.
Technically, the story is a linear narrative, omniscient third person narration point of view, culturally based upon life for a young Negro couple in the setting of the 1930’s South, and the theme, to me, is temptation. Plot follows a believable sequence from the exposition of a happy newlywed couple, Missie May and Joe, hinting at wants and desires beyond the good things that they possess physically and within each other, to confronting opportunity of realization in the person of the wealthy Otis Slemmons, to the conflict of “biting into the apple,” the loss of paradise, and the continuation of their lives after the fall. Even the symbolic punishment of childbirth for the sin committed by Eve is carried through in the resolution of “The Gilded Six-Bits.”
The theme again, is one of temptation. As Adam and Eve were tempted by the apple—the only thing forbidden to them in paradise, Joe and Missie May are tempted by the gold jewelry Slemmons displays and the power it represents. As the title of the story indicates, the temptation is based on a belief that turns out to be bogus; the jewelry is not real gold, and the price Joe and Missie May pay to find this out causes their loss of “Paradise” – the innocence and happiness they took in what they had before envy and greed brought them down. Although they continued as man and wife, things could never be the same because Missie May had given in to temptation and exposed the weaker side of human nature. While Joe understands the lesson, and sees the weakness in himself as well and the joy of the relationship can be regained, it will never achieve the pure innocence of its original nature, tainted forever by the “original sin.”
NEXT: Symbolism and Metaphor
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology