Wrote this in maybe 30 minutes lol

Several of the works that we have read this semester have emphasized the importance of space and place as a way to anchor one’s identity and self-understanding. Compare the approach to physical space in three of the following works, including at least one from the Mexico section and one from the Harlem section:

While space might be defined as “the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move”, place might be defined as “a portion of space available or designated for or being used by someone.” In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Coming of John”, identities of power or powerlessness are fluid in a way that is tied to space and place. In each work, obeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of powerlessness and service to the maintenance of it as a place. At the same time, disobeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of power and converts it into a space where anything goes.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, disobeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of power and converts it into a space where anything goes. An example of being assigned an identity of power through disobeying the purpose of a place is that which Janie acquires through leaving Eatonsville to go live with Tea Cake in the Everglades. In Eatonville, Janie owns a shop and does not honor the memory of her dead husband, Jody Starks, even though she is expected to in a town where he had been mayor. Even though Starks had dominated her respect in life through being heavily abusive, Janie does not honor the memory of him. Instead, she assumes an independent identity and follows her desire to marry and move out-of-town with the much-younger Tea Cake. The Everglades are not a wealthy place, but she trades the security of owning the store that Starks had initially owned for a more free life there, completely dashing the idea of her dead husband as defining of Eatonville as a place and recognizing her freedom of movement through space.

In Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, obeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of powerlessness and service to the maintenance of it as a place, while disobeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of power and converts it into a space where anything goes. An example of a character being assigned an identity of powerlessness in service to the maintenance of a place is Pedro in places with his mother. After having the dream of his mother offering him food (albeit it being gristly, raw meat), Pedro develops what can be described as an Oedipus complex. He continually tries to act in ways that he believes she will affirm, not retaliating against her refusal to feed him, getting a job at a blacksmithing shop to bring money home, and when gang leader El Jaibo frames him for the stealing of a knife telling the truth about his innocence. However, acting entirely in service to the respect that the place of the parental demands, Pedro upholds the idea of his mother as someone to respect and suffers all the more for it. He eats scraps, has his hard work ignored, and ends up being charged for the theft of the knife and is sent to a reformatory work camp. He assumes the dual identities of prisoner and son. 

An example of a character being assigned an identity of power through disobeying the purpose of a place and converting it into a space is El Jaibo. El Jaibo was sent to prison once but escaped out of an evident lack of respect for the justice system. El Jaibo ignores the fact that people are his friends, are his friends’ mothers, and are his friends’ sister, and kills his friend Julián, is implied to have had sex with his friend Pedro’s mother, and sexually assaults Meche, fellow gang member Cacarizo’s sister. Through shitting where even those close to him eat, El Jaibo assumes the identity of a feared and (misplacedly) respected individual that reduces places to space.

In W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Coming of John”, obeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of powerlessness and service to the maintenance of it as a place. An example of a character being assigned an identity of powerlessness in service to the maintenance of a place is John in places of whiteness. At the preparatory school and through college, John is taught through validation and punishment to adhere to certain standards of whiteness and to view it as a positive thing. At one point in the story, John enters a concert hall to watch an orchestra perform for a nearly entirely white audience. A white woman makes the claim to her husband (and John’s white foil, his long-lost childhood friend also named John) that John had been following her. White John immediately is enraged and the two call attendants to exclude black John from the hall. They remove him, and John does not protest and respects the decision externally. He sadly considers his loss of being able to listen to the orchestra for longer, still focusing on the loss of an experience considered within the realm of whiteness and to some extent accepting the way blackness is defined for him by white people.

In the end, in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Buñuel’s Los Olvidados, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ “The Coming of John”, identities of power or powerlessness are fluid in a way that is tied to space and place. In each work, obeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of powerlessness and service to the maintenance of it as a place. At the same time, disobeying the purpose of a place puts one into an identity of power and converts it into a space where anything goes.