“Theme Interpretation Through the Characters in ‘The Gilded
“The Gilded Six-Bits” is a short story on survival of love in a black family living in a rural area. Although Missie May and Joe are somewhat isolated from others, they are indeed happy with their lives. The love between them is all they need to live a happy and wealthy life. One day, though, their love is tested when Joe walks in on Missie May and a “wealthy” black businessman, Otis D. Slemmons. Thus, their love and happiness is tested by the power of different social classes (wealth). Although this is a very tough thing for a close family like this to go through, Missie May and Joe eventually realize that their love for one another is the most important thing that they have going and they overcome the odds to survive the incident. In Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits,” the power of social values is a prominent theme as depicted through Missie May, Joe, and Otis D. Slemmons to prove that every person needs different things in life in order to achieve happiness and that money is not the most important thing in many family relationships. The rural location of Joe and Missie May had a lot to do with their social values and thinking patterns. Joe and Missie May’s individual values were reflected by where they lived. . . .
The temptations of Slemmons nearly destroys the family’s happiness. When the boy is born, Joe gets a new sympathetic feeling towards his family. By using actions instead of words, he said more than he could have ever said with dialogue. When speaking to each other, Joe and Missie May, like the rest of their society, use “slang” dialect which is hard to understand many times. Since they only had each other, they loved each other that much more and hence the closeness of the family. It also helps that the boy looks likes Joe. An observer would easily see the change of behavior before and after the incident and could see the damage it caused. Every payday, Joe would throw his money in the hall and Missie May would go after him and take it. This proves that they need each other more than they ever needed money. He was happy with the family that he had and she should have known that. He worked hard to get his money and make a family. The hardest part of the incident was not actually experiencing it but the aftermath. The family had the same small luxuries as it did before this incident but now those things failed to make them happy, as they had done before. In a way, this incident made the family physically weaker as well.
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Acceptance Essays
