How are the works of two completely different writers, "Barn Burning" by a white, male with an aristocratic background, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by a black, female with a humble background, so similar? The answer lies in the notion that both William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston create works that thrive on the discord that is inherent to humanity; in fact, their literary force comes from the fact that they are both well equipped to tap into the sometimes grim yet always intriguing aspects of the human condition. In short, they are both southern writers writing about southern topics. The dominance of these southern themes is what makes these two works similar, although the emphasis placed upon the themes differ.
             One important thread woven through both "Barn Burning" and Their Eyes Were Watching God is tension provoked because of class or race differences. For starters, racial relations mostly serve as a background to both stories. Both take place around the Civil War, so racial prejudice is still omnipresent. However, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses race relations to portray a deeper message. She describes Mrs. Turner, a black woman with "white" features who is hateful towards blacks, with pity and sympathy because she is so embittered with her hate. The subtle satire of Turner's vision of paradise, "a heaven of straight-haired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs" (145) is a device to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to judge people by the way they look. Furthermore, it is ironic that after the verdict is read at Janie's trial "the white women cr[y] and st[and] around her like a protecting wall and the Negroes, with heads hung down, shuffl[e] out and away" (188). Here, the whites give their aid to Janie because they are able to look past the stereotype of the typical interracial relationship and do the right thing. Just as Mrs. Turn...