Joe Starks fooled 'em all.

From their first meeting, Janie knows that she is not meant to be with Joe Starks; "he did not represent the sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon" (29). To get an idea of the "horizon" Janie imagined, we need only to look back on the promises Joe made in his attempts to convince Janie to run away with him: she would never be behind a plow, she would never have to cut potatoes (though she could eat ones other people had cut for her), she could sit on the front porch (with a rocking chair and fan) and through all of this she would be his wife. In this horizon "he would be a big ruler of things with her reaping the benefits" (29). For Janie, who was at this time still very young and naive, this horizon represents all the potential she was denied in her marriage to Logan Killicks.

Janie: Duped by the promise.

When first arriving in the town of Eatonville, Joe Starks begins to work his magic on the community and is eventually (albeit unofficially) elected mayor. His ambitions supply the town with a road, post office, general store and street lamp. Yet rather than building up the people of his community in order for them to thrive independently, Joe continuously reminds them that their day-to-day lives are contingent on his "noble" and "gentlemanified" nature (73). It is his porch the community gathers on each night, it is his mercy that frees the mule, it is the money from his pocket that feeds the ever grateful Mrs. Robbins. And so the people of Eatonville "bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down" (50). It seems that Joe Starks was charitable not because he wanted to be, but simply because he had the power to be.

Eatonville: Duped by charity.

For readers, it is almost impossible to deny the feeling of excitement that begins to build when they are first introduced to Joe Starks. He is suave, articulate and ambitious. He comes alive on the page with a finesse that all the other characters (arguably, even Janie) have lacked. And at this point in the novel, readers are so weighted down with all the bad things that have happened to their beloved main character that they are open and welcome to the possibility of good coming her way. Yet as if this were not enough to get readers to like Jody, Zora Neale Hurston goes one step further by actually altering her narrative to fit his disposition so that readers are temporarily (28) thrown into the mind (or at least the narrator's idea of the mind) of Joe Starks. It could be argued that this weaving of the words actually spawns a weaving of the mind - because consciously or subconsciously, all readers of this novel are entangled with Joe Starks.

Readers: Duped by the words.

It is through the ambitious, articulate and obliging character of Joe Starks that Zora Neale Hurston dupes everyone into thinking that, at least for a while, Joe Starks might be the answer to all of their problems. For me, Joe representative of power in this novel and I think Hurston uses him as a way of warning her readers that good leadership is wanting of more than the vision, the drive and the ability to make things happen.

It is worth our time to consider the motivation behind each of these things before deeming someone a good leader.