(70–71). In the end, the agrarian Hamiltons are
corrupted by city life and, eventually, morally de-
stroyed. Joe becomes a drunk and murderer, Kitty
a nightclub stage performer on a chorus line, and
Mrs. Hamilton the victim of physical abuse at the
hands of her new husband.
Released from the penitentiary after serving five
years, Berry, whose innocence is proved (the real
thief is Oakley’s playboy brother—a member of
southern gentility), travels to New York to search
for his family. Upon learning what has happened
to each member of his family, he returns home to
the South with Fannie, whose abusive husband has
been killed in a brawl. At the end of the novel, hus-
band and wife are living once again in their cottage
behind the Oakleys’ mansion. In summary, Dun-
bar suggests through his characters that, although
the postbellum South is not a virtual paradise,
neither is the North. In the end, Dunbar’s premise
is made clear by his narrator, who states that “the
South has its faults—no one condones them—and
its disadvantages, but that even what [blacks] suf-
fered from these was better than what awaited
them in the great alleys of New York” (160).
The Sport of the Gods is also a modernist text
that explores, and in fact didactically reveals, the
“pernicious influence of the city” (159), its de-
moralization and degradation of those who fall
prey to its gilded attractions and qualities. The
city is a “whirlpool” that, after its victims “enjoyed
the sensation for a moment,” sweeps them “diz-
zily down” (159). Consequently, as Charles Nilon
points out in his introduction to the novel, The
Sport of the Gods is also “contemporary in that
it provides an example of the problems of social
and psychological adjustment that face the black
family in the large city” (12). It is a forerunner
not only to JAMES WELDON JOHNSON’s The AUTO-
BIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN and CLAUDE
MCKAY’s HOME TO HARLEM, but also to RICHARD
WRIGHT’s NATIVE SON and CLAUDE BROWN’s MAN-
CHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND.
Similarly, published at a time when literary
naturalism, promoted particularly in the works
of Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie), Jack London
(Call of the Wild), and Upton Sinclair (The Jun-
gle), was popular, Dunbar also infuses The Sport
of the Gods with strains of naturalistic thought.
Despite the heavy dose of sentimentalism in the
novel, the Hamiltons are the victims of circum-
stances over which they have no control. “Whom
the Gods wish to destroy,” the narrator tells the
reader, “they first make mad” (74). The Hamil-
tons are, fundamentally, defeated by cruel destiny.
According to Bernard Bell, “The Sport of the Gods
signals both a break with the plantation tradition
and the culmination of a constantly shifting but
discernible movement of black novelists toward
a less simple form of realism that is more com-
patible with their distinctive experiences and aes-
thetic vision” (74).BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Bernard W. The Afro-American Novel and Its
Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1987.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Sport of the Gods. In-
troduction by Charles Nilon. New York: Collier
Books, 1970.
Wilfred D. Samuels“Spunk” Zora Neale Hurston (1925)
“Spunk” won second prize in the Urban League’s
literary contest and was published both in OPPOR-
TUNITY and The NEW NEGRO, an anthology edited
by ALAIN LOCKE.
“Spunk” is quintessential ZORA NEALE HUR-
STON: a combination of traditional African-Ameri-
can folk traditions and culture. Hurston has taken
tropes from African-American oral traditions and
transferred them to written discourse. The narra-
tive becomes a storytelling event. Known for his
bravado and raw strength, Spunk Banks is ad-
mired and envied by his sawmill coworkers. His
fearless feats convince them that he “ain’t scared of
nothing on God’s green foot stool” (26). Spunk’s
narcissism and intrepidness are manifested in the
love affair he develops with Lena, Joe Kanty’s wife,
whom Spunk masterly controls. He boasts, “A
woman knows her boss an’ she answers when he478 “Spunk”