Spunk

Spunk Banks is a large, confident man who drives the story’s central conflict by pursuing Joe’s wife, Lena. His very movement exudes confidence, and the narrator describes his motion as a “saunter” on multiple occasions. When he appears at the store following Joe’s death, he wears his hat at a “rakish angle,” exhibiting his ease and lack of concern over the death of his rival. Spunk changes, however, as he becomes convinced that Joe continues to haunt him, first as a bobcat, then as a presence that pushes him onto the saw, leading to his death. Spunk’s transformation makes it clear that his earlier confidence was empty bravado: When the bobcat appears, it gets “Spunk so nervoused up he couldn’t shoot” (60). Though Spunk continues to talk with confidence up until the moment of his death, his angry outbursts at the sawmill reveal his insecurity. By subverting Spunk’s initial depiction as a model of iconic masculinity, Hurston critiques those that value the appearance of courage over the thing itself.