Zora Hurston - John Redding Goes to Sea

I enjoyed reading the story ‘John Redding Goes to Sea’ but the language was difficult to understand because it was written in slang.  This short story was Hurston’s first ever published.  The short story was published in May 1921 in the issue of the Stylus, the literary magazine of Howard University.  It was then reprinted in the issue of Opportunity in January 1926.  This story is clearly the work of a new writer because of its highly unnatural plot, excessive sentimentality, and shallow characterizations.  In the story John Redding is a young, male character, who wants to leave his hometown to understand and explore parts and things unknown.  There a several events that happen to keep him from fulfilling his dream.  The first event is with his mother.  She is pitifully controlling, obsessive, and irrational.  She declares illness and threatens to deny John if he leaves.  Matty Redding is determined not to let John engage in his dreams.  The second event is John’s marriage to Stella Kanty which seems to bind him permanently to his surroundings.  His new wife, Stella, joins forces with his mother to discourage his desire to travel.  John’s mother’s rages keep him from even joining the Navy when that opportunity comes his way.  John is then killed in a rainstorm while he is working with a crew to build a bridge on the St. John’s River.  His father prohibits his body to be retrieved from the river as it floats toward the ocean.  Finally, John will get his wish to travel and see the world, although in death.  The plot seems to be overdone and sentimentally overwhelming but it provides the reader the first of many glimpses of life among black Floridians and their habits, superstitions, strengths, and shortcomings.  Matty believes that her son was cursed with “travel dust” at his birth.  John’s longing to travel is Matty’s punishment for having married his father away from a competing man.  Hurston delays judgment on Matty’s beliefs because she knows that these and other beliefs are important parts of the life of these folk. A strength that is easily visible in Hurston’s first short story is her detailed description of the setting.  Hurston has a sharp eye for detail.  This is obvious in her descriptions of the magnificence of Florida.  The most important aspect of ‘John Redding Goes to Sea’ is the theme that people must be free to develop and follow their own dreams.  John Redding is deprived of self-expression and self-determination because of the wishes and interpretations of others that were forced upon him.  Hurston has no sympathy for those who would deprive another person of freedom and independence.  She disputed all such restrictive efforts throughout her career as a writer and a folklorist.    

Works Cited

Carson, Warren J., and Deborah Kaplan. "Salem Press." Salem Press - Welcome. SALEM PRESS, INC., Apr. 2006. Web. 01 Mar. 2011. http://salempress.com/store/samples/notable_african/notable_african_hurston.htm.