"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. Although Joe and Missie May were not very rich (they were a middle class family), they more than made up for this in the love that they had for each other. This is illustrated in the story when Joe was thinking, "That was the best part of life-going home to Missie May. Their whitewashed house, the mock battle on Saturday, the dinner and ice cream parlor afterwards, church on Sunday nights when Missie out dressed every woman in town- all, everything, was right." (Hurston1720). Because Missie May and Joe lived in their own little world, they never saw the need to communicate with others to make themselves happy. One can say that they were somehow isolated f...