Mules carry other people’s burdens. Zora Neale Hurston’s third book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, describes the condition of being a mule. They are “tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences.” People turn animals into mules. And, people turn other people into mules. This assessment can be found in Hurston’s second book, Mules and Men.
Mules and Men, Hurston’s second book, contains folktales about human and animal characters. The relationships between these subjects reflect the conditions of groups (e.g., the conditions of racial and gender groups) and relationships between these groups. A key theme in these tales is attempts by individuals to achieve their own goals by shifting the labor that will bring about those goals onto someone else. When you force someone to carry your burdens you have turned that person into a mule. This collection of folklore makes numerous very direct statements about the shifting of physical labor. However, reading these folktales in respect to existentialist concepts—including Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s definition of existence, Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of modern existential burdens, and Frantz Fanon’s conceptualization of the “sealed” body—gives us insights into how individuals and groups shift their existential burdens onto others.
Mules and Men is a groundbreaking autoethnographical study of black culture in the United States. Its first part focuses on folklore. Hurston traveled to her home state of Florida to collect folktales. While there she spent some time with black workers in saw mill camps. In the middle of a break one of the workers, Jim Allen, tells her a tale about the origin of work.
Allen’s story of the origin of work goes as follows: God created four things. First, he made the world, then animals, and then people. The last thing that he made was “a great big bundle” that he placed in the middle of the road. Millennia passed. Then Ole Missus decides that she wants to understand the mystery of the box, so she tells Ole Massa to bring her the box. Ole Massa is worried that the box is “heavy,” so he tells the Brother in Black “Go fetch me dat big ole box out dere in de road.” The Brother in Black makes many attempts at getting the box, but he is unable to do so. So, he sends his wife to get the box. She makes her way to the box in a short time; she’s curious because she thinks “there’s nearly always something good in great big boxes.” She opens it; “it was full of hard work.” The worker tells his audience, “Dat’s de reason de sister in black works harder than anybody else in de world. De white man tells de nigger to work and he takes and tells his wife.”
The summary informs one of the most famous lines in Their Eyes Were Watching God, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world.” But more broadly, this tale, “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest,” is a story about different types of burdens, the shifting of these burdens, and the reasons for the shift.
The most obvious burden is labor, defined by Karl Marx as “practical human activity” in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest” revolves around a call to action: gain possession of an object and move it from one place to another place. Yet the successive calls to, and flights from, physical labor mask other types of labor. Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher’s novel The Walls of Jericho details the inner life of Shine, one of the novel’s characters. Fisher writes “It was work that Shine loved because of the challenge it presented to his personal strength and skill.” The “challenge” inherent in labor makes labor an opportunity for growth. Fisher’s character accepts and looks forward to this challenge. Other people want to flee from it.
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil states that the true quest for knowledge demands “audacious and painful” activity. Ole Missus wants “to see whut’s in [the box].” But, she is not willing to engage this immense object which one finds in the middle of the road to enlightenment. She shifts that burden onto Ole Massa. Nietzsche writes that favoring “well-being” over challenges (e.g., work as a challenge as described by Fisher) is “ridiculous and contemptible.” Ole Massa assumes that the box is heavy. Favoring his own comfort over completion of the task, he flees physical activity and finds ease by shifting his responsibility for getting the box to the Brother in Black. Nietzsche cites “discipline” as the path to improvement. The Brother in Black engages the box a number of times, but he does not find any success, only strain. He also replaces “discipline” with ease. The Brother in Black has carried out some physical labor, so his ease isn’t as great as that experienced by Ole Massa. But, the Brother in Black still experiences ease. He shifts his burden to the Sister in Black. Retrieving the box is an act of physical labor, and the folktale “Why the Sister in Black Works Hardest” shows the shifting of this physical burden. But the simultaneous flights that accompany the shifting of the burden of physical labor—Ole Missus’ flight from “audacious” inquiry, Ole Massa’s flight from physical exertion, and the Brother in Black’s flight from disciplined pursuit of a goal—speak to the shifting of existential burdens.
In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty defines existence as “the permanent act by which man takes up, for his own purposes, and makes his own a certain de facto situation.” Ole Missus, Ole Massa, and The Brother in Black shift a burden of physical labor. Yet, each of them also shifts their existential burden, that of determining their own situation. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew says that a person’s situation “forms [the person] and decides [their possibilities, even though] it is [they who give] it meaning by making [their] choices within it and by it. To be in a situation, as we see it, is to choose oneself in a situation, and [people] differ from one another in their situations and also in the choices they themselves make of themselves.” Ole Missus seeks a situation wherein she gains knowledge. Ole Massa wants to meet the needs and desires of Ole Missus. The Brother in Black needs to placate Ole Massa. Each of them issues an order. They command someone else to perform the labor that will bring about their own desired existential situation. Hurston frames the folktales found in Mules and Men as an ontological statement, a description of things and their relationships. The nature of folklore means that the actions of Ole Missus, Ole Massa, the Brother in Black, and the Sister in Black should not be solely interpreted as reflections of how these individuals acted at one point in time. These actions should be taken as indicators of qualities and dynamics which, in general, define these groups and their relationships to each other. Those relationships entail the shifting of modern existential burdens.
Merleau-Ponty describes the existential mission. Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil explains how the workings of modern society often transform this mission into a series of burdens. Nietzsche argues that modern society imposes a number of notions, each treated as a dogmatic “good,” as “[a single] truth for everyman.” Yet Nietzsche views any dogmatic “good” as posing a problem for our “spirit,” our “power of invention and simulation.” Modern existential anxieties are created by the conflict between dogmatic goods and the possibilities of the spirit. The folktales in Mules and Men offer many parallels to, and illustrations of, Nietzsche’s points in Beyond Good and Evil. These folktales repeatedly identify a key element of the modern good, the existential burden that this element produces, and how this existential burden is shifted. Mules and Men includes tales with titles such as “How the Preacher Made Them Bow Down,” “Ah’ll Beatcher Makin’ Money,” “How Jack Beat the Devil,” and “Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men.” What each of these tales indicate—sometimes even by their titles alone—is the sense that achieving a high place in the social hierarchy is an important part of the modern “good.” The pursuit of such stature is an existential burden, a burden felt especially by those who fail to do so.
The conflict in “Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men” is driven by The Man lacking the “strength” that he needs to subjugate The Woman. His lack of status makes him “troubled in [mind and spirit].” So, he hatches a plan to ease his troubles. This plan involves shifting his feelings of powerlessness onto The Woman. Projection is similarly a topic in Beyond Good and Evil: those who “do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else.” The onset of modern existential anxieties and the flight from these desires emerge in the African-American folktales collected in Mules and Men.
Mules and Men also covers unsuccessful attempts to shift existential burdens. These incidents are important because they help foreground the dynamics of how projection is used to shift existential burdens. There is an undomesticated cow that an “old” man and his wife want to depend on. They want the cow’s milk to be their sustenance, but the cow fights them. They went to get milk from the cow “but [the cow] kept on rearin’ and pitchin’ and kickin’.” Frustrated, the “old” man and the woman go to their son. He tries to use science to control the cow’s nature. The family will be able to control the cow if they can stop her “humping.” The cow’s “rearin’ and pitchin’ and kickin’” can only happen after the cow stretches her mighty back. They decide to use “weight,” a type of force, to stop the cow’s humping. The son’s father will serve as the weight. The “old” man climbs on top of her back and clutches her stomach tightly. He strains the cow as she starts to move. He slows her down, but he’s not enough to stop her. This tale, “The Son Who Went to College,” ends with the “old” man holding on to the cow for dear life, “bustin’ on down de back-road.” You must weigh down a person, or a group, before you can turn them into a mule. The weight keeps them in place so that you can shift your burden onto them. They are what Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks describes as existentially “sealed.” Contrary to reality they live their lives according to an unreal set of limits. Here the father’s weight isn’t enough to accomplish his mission. A different and greater, if not physically heavier, weight is needed if you want to make mules out of people.
In another tale from Mules and Men, “’Member Youse a Nigger,” we learn of John, who back during “slavery time” worked out in the field of Ole Massa. Ole Massa was married to and had two young children with Ole Missy. One day, Ole Massa and Ole Missy aren’t paying attention to their children. But, John hears the screams of the girl and the boy. The two children are in a frail boat in middle of the water with no oars. John finds their parents and tells them what is happening. Ole Missy is paralyzed. She takes their death as a given fact. Ole Massa does not. He rouses his wife from her combination of Stoicism and pessimism. Then he, Ole Missy, and John go to the water to save the children. When they find them John jumps into the water, swims to the boat, and gets into it. As the folktale doesn’t mention John’s having oars, he must have used his mighty arms to safely bring the boat and the children through the water and onto shore. Ole Massa is glad that his children are safe and promises “to set [John] free.” Not then and there. But later. Next year. Maybe. If John’s work in the fields yields a “good” crop. John does all of the labor that Ole Massa demands of him. In fact, he does even more: the crop he raises can’t fit into the barn in which it is supposed to be stored.
So Friday come, and Massa said “Well, de day done come that I said I’d set you free. I hate to do it, but I don’t like to make myself out a lie. I hate to git rid of a good nigger lak you.”
…So John put [on his new clothes] and come in to shake hands and tell ’em goodbye. De children they cry, and Ole Missy she cry. Didn’t want to see John go. So John took his bundle and put it on his stick and hung it crost his shoulder.
Well, Ole John started on down de road. Well, Ole Massa said, “John, de children love yuh.”
“Yassuh.”
“John, I love yuh.”
“Yassuh.”
“And Missy like yuh!”
“Yassuh.”
“But ’member, John, youse a nigger.”
“Yassuh.”
Fur as John could hear ’im down de road he wuz hollerin’, “John, Oh John! De children loves you. And I love you. De Missy like you.”
John would holler back, “Yassuh.”
“But ’member youse a nigger, tho!”
Ole Massa kept callin’ ’im and his voice was pitiful.
Ole Massa has promised “to set [John] free.” This promise is made and kept even though Ole Massa (as well as Ole Missy and their children) want John to continue to be their mule. Weight is a force that is placed on people’s backs, but it is not great enough to settle people so that they are always receptive to the burdens of others, so that they become mules. This is even true for people living under the conditions of enslavement. In Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, Lewis Gordon writes, “[The crack of the whip] places limitations on the options over which the slave chooses, but not over the slave’s ability to choose.” The enslaved person is still free even when they are living under the oppressive conditions of enslavement. People turn people into mules, but every mule is still, and will always be, a free person. What are some components of the process that causes free people to take up the position of mule?
People have strong backs. Mules have strong backs that have been exhausted by a weight. In Nietzschean terms, this weight is love. Nietzsche’s The Antichrist states that “Love is the state in which man sees things most decidedly as they are not. The power of illusion is at its peak here, as is the power to sweeten and transfigure.” Love is a process that takes us from reality to the “beyond.” Sometimes the beyond is virtually impossible. Sometimes it is completely impossible. Ole Massa wants to continually and eternally transfer his burdens onto John. In order for this to happen John, a free man, must go beyond reality and live his life as though he is not free. Ole Massa endeavors to uses his love to do this. Successful completion of this mission would entail three steps. First, Ole Massa must construct an illusory world where John is not free; instead he is beholden to Ole Massa, Ole Missy, and their children. Second, Ole Massa must impose this obligation (i.e., weight) onto John. These first two steps are reflected in Ole Massa telling John, “I hate to git rid of a good nigger lak you.” A “good nigger” is someone who is, and will always be, beholden to their master.
Having established and imposed this illusory world on John, Ole Massa seeks to reinforce it. This happens through Ole Massa’s public relations project: “‘John, de children love yuh.’ … ‘I love yuh.’ … ‘And Missy like yuh!’” For Ole Massa, these words of “love” impose a weight onto John, a weight that intended to make John receptive to the various burdens Ole Massa seeks to shift onto him. Ole Massa practices a master’s love, an “illusion” that has “the power to sweeten and transfigure” to the point that individuals and groups live as though they are not free when in reality they are free. A master’s love can only be effective when it elicits a slave’s love, which happens when a free person chooses to believe they are unfree and obligated to someone more valuable and more important than them. This is the final step that must happen before Ole Massa can shift his existential burdens onto John. Hence, Ole Massa’s efforts to relate these words of love to the repeated reminder, “’member youse a nigger, tho!”
Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil and elsewhere, offers a sketch of the centrality of shifting existential burdens in modern life, those who shift those burdens, those who receive those burdens, and the processes that create the illusions that foster these shifts. Hurston’s Mules and Men helps to complete this portrait of modern life, providing an expanded picture of the social processes through which some people are more readily made to function as “mules” while a separate group of people are able to enjoy the deceptions afforded to “men.” We can improve the focus on this picture by exploring the many types of love practiced in our modern society.
H. Alexander Welcome
Alexander Welcome is an associate professor of Sociology at LaGuardia Community College. His work covers alienation, the racial wages paid to white people, the social nature of existential experiences of time; and how all three of these elements emerge in the stand-up comedy of Richard Pryor and Jackie “Moms” Mabley. He is currently revising a manuscript that uses comedic texts and Zora Neale Hurston’s early fiction to explain the social processes that allow groups to shift their existential burdens onto other groups.
