Thursday discussion

13 participants
How would you compare Moses, Man of the Mountain to Jonah's Gourd Vine?

• Easier to read Moses.
• Character of Moses was a better person than Jonah.

Why did so many of the Hebrews in Moses want to go back?

• People not remembering the bad parts.
• Hurston hammering on human ingratitude, characters were remembering a past that wasn't there.
• Freedom presents a different kind of hardship.

Parallels to slavery in America, Harriet Tubman known as Moses. Groups of freed people in Kansas known as "Exodusters."

Differences between Hurston and Exodus:

• Moses chooses not to cross Jordan in Hurston's account.
• Aaron and Miriam are Moses's siblings (more definitively) in Exodus.
• Flies, as one of the plagues, different in the biblical account.
• Plagues in Moses, Man of the Mountain:
• Lice
• Hail
• Water into blood
• Snakes
• Frogs
• Darkness
• Egyptian Gods could do some of the plagues, blood, frogs and snakes. One funny moment in the book was when the priests could not make the frogs going away.

Parallels to modern politics, parallels to the 1930s

• There is a Zepho (or a Zephon) in the bible, but not a Zeppo. Is the comic character in Hurston's book based on Zeppo Marx?

Miriam in Hurston:

• Did Hurston think of women in a negative way or was she making a humorous comment about her times and how women were perceived?
• The root of the word Miriam is the same as that for myrrh, meaning "bitter"
• Death of Miriam and Aaron: Miriam came to understand Moses and his relationship to God, where Aaron never did and their deaths reflect this.