Jasmine Padgett
Instructor: Jonathan Patterson
LIT 300: Literary Theory
SNHU
October 13, 2025
Module 7: Final Project
Final Project: Witness and Decoder: Reclaiming Hurston Through
African American Criticism and Structuralism
Literary theory is not a mirror—it is a scalpel, a compass, a lens. It cuts through surface, charts unseen terrain, magnifies the machinery of meaning. Where traditional interpretation once sought authorial intent or moral clarity, theory interrogates structure, power, and silence. It asks: Who speaks? Who is silenced? What codes govern the telling? Through African American Criticism, I enter Hurston’s world not as observer but as witness. This lens centers Black vernacular, resists dominant narratives, and honors cultural memory as archive and resistance. Structuralism, meanwhile, reveals the scaffolding—binary oppositions, shifting signifiers, the choreography of repetition and rupture. Together, these theories allow me to read Hurston’s “The Gilded Six Bits” as both testimony and text, both lived and layered. I chose this story because it sings in dialect and dances in contradiction. It is intimate, yet insurgent. Hurston’s coin—gilded, not gold—is a symbol of illusion, of value assigned not earned. It is a cipher. And I, through theory, become its decoder. This project is not just analysis—it is reclamation. Expect a reading that listens to the hush between words, that maps the architecture of betrayal, that honors the joy tucked inside survival. Theory, here, is not decoration. It is the engine. In “The Gilded Six Bits,” Zora Neale Hurston crafts a narrative that is both culturally rooted and structurally intricate—a story where love and betrayal unfold within the architecture of race, language, and illusion. By applying African American Criticism and Structuralism, I will examine how Hurston reclaims Black identity through vernacular brilliance and symbolic resistance, while also revealing how meaning emerges from oppositional design. These theories allow me to explore not only what the story says, but how it says it—how Hurston’s coin becomes a shifting signifier, how silence speaks, how repetition wounds and heals. My analysis will show that Hurston’s work is not merely a tale of domestic rupture, but a coded meditation on value, survival, and the emotional cost of performance within a racialized economy.
Zora Neale Hurston’s The Gilded Six Bits is a deceptively simple narrative that reveals profound truths about Black identity, economic desire, and emotional resilience. Through the lens of African American Criticism, Hurston’s story becomes a site of cultural reclamation—where vernacular language, symbolic resistance, and communal memory converge to challenge dominant narratives and elevate Black experience. African American literary theory centers the lived experiences of Black communities and interrogates the racialized structures that shape literary production and reception. At its core is the principle of cultural reclamation, which elevates Black vernacular, traditions, and storytelling as legitimate literary forms. In Hurston’s work, this is evident in her unapologetic use of Southern dialect and folkloric rhythm, which resists assimilation and affirms Black oral tradition as a site of beauty and power. Another key tenet is resistance to racial stereotypes. African American Criticism challenges reductive portrayals of Black characters and communities, insisting on complexity, dignity, and emotional nuance. Hurston’s characters defy caricature—Joe’s quiet strength and Missie May’s vulnerability are rendered with depth, not stereotype, allowing readers to witness Black love and betrayal without the filter of white gaze. Historical contextualization is also essential. This lens situates texts within the legacy of slavery, segregation, and systemic oppression, revealing how literature responds to and reshapes historical trauma. Hurston’s Eatonville setting, a historically Black town, becomes a counter-space to dominant white narratives, offering sanctuary and self-definition during the Jim Crow era. Finally, intersectionality allows readers to see how race intersects with class, gender, and geography to shape identity and narrative. Slemmons’ seduction of Missie May is not just a personal betrayal—it’s a collision of class aspiration, gender vulnerability, and racialized desire. Through this lens, Hurston’s story becomes a layered exploration of how systemic forces infiltrate intimate spaces. These principles allow readers to interpret literature not just as aesthetic expression, but as cultural testimony and political critique—an approach Hurston masterfully embodies.
Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six Bits” glimmers with intimacy—love, betrayal, repair—but beneath its emotional shimmer lies a lattice of signs. Through Structuralism’s lens, the story unfolds not as sentiment, but as system. Coins, kisses, and dialects don’t merely decorate—they encode. Meaning pulses through contrast, repetition, and cultural rhythm. Hurston doesn’t just tell a tale; she builds a semiotic architecture where emotion is engineered. Structuralism rests on the idea that meaning is relational, not inherent. Binary oppositions—wealth vs. poverty, betrayal vs. loyalty—create tension that drives interpretation. The signifier (the coin) and the signified (its emotional weight) shift as context evolves. Narrative structure echoes mythic patterns: rupture, reckoning, return. Language itself becomes a system—layered, rule-bound, rhythmic—where repetition isn’t redundancy, but revelation. These tenets invite us to read Hurston not for what she says, but for how her symbols speak. Hurston’s narrative thrives on tension. Slemmons, the outsider, glitters with false gold—his coin a hollow promise. Joe, rooted in community, speaks in vernacular truths. The six-bit coin, gilded but not golden, shifts meaning as it shifts hands. In Slemmons’ palm, it seduces; in Joe’s, it restores. It is not the coin itself, but its relational journey that matters—a textbook signifier whose signified evolves through emotional context. Candy kisses, too, are more than sweet gestures. Their presence marks intimacy; their absence, rupture. Their return signals repair. Hurston repeats them not for sentiment, but for structure. Each kiss is a node in a semiotic cycle—love, loss, reconciliation—mapped through symbolic rhythm. Even dialect becomes design. Joe’s speech, rich in colloquial texture, signals authenticity. Slemmons’ polished diction performs wealth but lacks depth. Language here is not neutral—it codes identity, intention, and illusion. Hurston’s linguistic choices reinforce the binary between real and performed, grounding the story in cultural semiotics. Structuralism reveals “The Gilded Six Bits” as a blueprint of meaning. Hurston doesn’t merely narrate—she constructs. The coin, the kisses, the dialects—each operates within a system of oppositions and repetitions. These aren’t just motifs; they’re mechanisms. Through Structuralism, we see how Hurston critiques material illusion and celebrates emotional authenticity—not through plot alone, but through the architecture of signs. Through Structuralism, Hurston’s story becomes a choreography of signs. The coin’s journey—from Slemmons’ seduction to Joe’s candy purchase—traces not just economic exchange, but emotional evolution. Each symbol—kiss, coin, dialect—shifts meaning through context and contrast. Hurston’s narrative doesn’t unfold; it oscillates. Betrayal and forgiveness, illusion and truth, become structural forces—not just themes, but engines of meaning. Hurston builds emotional truth not through sentiment, but through semiotic design. Her story endures because it is not just felt—it is patterned. Structuralism lets us see the blueprint beneath the beauty.
Hurston’s story did not change—my reading did. Through African American Criticism, I heard the hush of vernacular resistance, saw Eatonville not as backdrop but as sanctuary. Through Structuralism, I traced the choreography of betrayal, the architecture of repair. The coin no longer glinted with plot—it pulsed with meaning. Kisses became code. Silence, syntax. My arguments hold because they listen—to rhythm, to rupture, to the cultural memory braided into Hurston’s prose. I defend not just interpretation, but intention: to read with rigor, to honor complexity, to decode without erasure. Literary theory is not an accessory to literature—it is its excavation. It reveals the scaffolding beneath sentiment, the politics beneath plot. In Hurston’s hands, theory becomes praxis. Her story is not just told—it is built. And I, through these lenses, do not merely analyze—I witness.
References
Barthes, Roland. “Structural Analysis of Narratives.” Image-Music-Text, Trans. Stephen Heath, Hill and Wang, 1977.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six Bits.” Helicon Nine, vol. 17/18, Mar. 1987, pp. 51–59. Wyman, Sarah. “The Gilded Six-Bits by Zora Neale Hurston (1933)– an analysis.” Literary Ladies Guide, 19 June 2018. https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-analyses/the-gilded-six-bits-by-zora-neale-hurston/
“The Gilded Six-Bits: Historical Context.” SparkNotes. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/the-gilded-six-bits/critical-context/
