"Real gods require blood"

Near the end of the Mrs. Turner narrative, the narrator breaks off into an extended analysis which compares Mrs. Turner's views of race to religious fanaticism. Hurston includes a passage which discusses gods in very general terms--a style reminiscent of the opening lines of the novel. The shift from talking about the specific to the general occurs in the sentence "It was inevitable that she [Mrs. Turner] should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs." The rest of the paragraph makes wide claims such as "All gods who receive homage are cruel," and "Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood." The striking change from a straightforward narrative mode to an anthropological style leads one to ask: What is this section doing here? Hurton seemingly provides a gratis interpretation of Mrs. Turner as someone stuck in a pagan mindset, but we know our narrator too well to accept such sweeping statements at face value.

At least for Mrs. Turner, interpreting her racism as caused by worshipping ivory idols seems appealing. Her rigid hierarchy of race fits with a model which places her in a middling position between gods (those whiter than her) and devils (those blacker than her). Her willingness to be snubbed and humiliated by Janie also fits with a similar religious desire to grovel before the gods and propitiate them with one's own suffering.

However, one way of interpreting the hurricane would be to see the lake-monster as a pagan god who provides the fertility of the muck, but also "dispenses suffering without reason." But where are the sacrifices to the muck-god? Where is the fear and trembling that Hurston insists accompanies "real gods" and is the "most divine emotion"? Do we see a "first fruits" ceremony where a portion of the beans is ritually thrown back to the muck to placate the muck-god and pray for continued fertility and no hurricanes this year? Instead, the muck-dwellers seem to simply commune with the blackness, and accept the hurricane as a fact of life, not a divine punishment. As is the case with other broad generalities put forth by the narrator in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the passage about gods and sacrifices is challenged by other events in the novel. Perhaps we should read such "truths" served up by the narrator as conditional and local--applicable only to the situation at hand and not all cases.