44 pages • 1 hour read
Zora and Me
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Character Analysis
Carrie Brown
Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Black racism, including lynching, in the Jim Crow South, as well as racist slurs.
Carrie Brown is the narrator and protagonist of Zora and Me. She is completely fictional, unlike Zora, and she is a vehicle through which young readers can be introduced to Zora Neale Hurston (See: Background).
Carrie is not as confident and self-assured as Zora; she is much more like a typical 10-year-old than her best friend. She grapples with grief after her father’s disappearance and likely death. She is not able to spend much time with her mother because she works so much, which leaves her isolated. Carrie loves her mother, but she actually spends more time with Zora’s family than her own. Her personal development involves the theme of The Coming-of-Age Experience. She is unable to fully understand the events taking place around her and relies on The Power of Storytelling to contextualize and explain Ivory’s death. She needs to use magic and myth to understand death, murder, racism, and social isolation.
By the end of the book, Carrie has progressed on her journey and is able to better understand the world. She understands why Zora made “a story out of events that were too huge and too frightening for [her] to hold” (103), and she accepts that a human killed Ivory. She also accepts that her father is dead, which demonstrates her increased emotional maturity. Carrie has also resolved her feelings about The Complications of Race and Belonging. Having accepted the truth about what happened to Ivory, Carrie steps into a new sense of belonging and connectedness to her community in Eatonville. She no longer sees herself as isolated; she is connected to everyone in Eatonville. Unlike Gold or Mr. Pendir, Carrie understands herself as integrated into her community, rather than separate from it.
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora is the fictionalized child version of the real Zora Neale Hurston (See: Background). Zora as a child is remarkably self-assured. She displays wisdom beyond her years, though she also makes mistakes consistent with her age.
Though Zora the character does not yet know that she will grow up to be Zora Neale Hurston, the famous Harlem Renaissance writer, she has an intrinsic understanding of the power of storytelling. She insists that her stories are all true. While she is not lying, she does not always have all of the information, so she fills in details with magic and myth. She recognizes early on that Ivory could not have been killed by anything but a monster. Although she takes this literally and imagines a monstrous gator man as Ivory’s killer, it is true that whoever killed Ivory was acting monstrously.
Like Carrie, Zora is negotiating her understanding of the complications of race and belonging. She is a curious child who yearns to travel beyond the boundaries of Eatonville. She wants to see the world, unlike Carrie, who feels completely at home in Eatonville. Zora’s father, Mr. Hurston, tells her that, by “wanting things that are out of [her] reach” (53), she is acting like a white person. This wounds Zora and throws her sense of belonging off-balance. Zora is lucky to be so close to her mother, Mrs. Hurston, who is able to affirm that she does belong and has not acted wrongly. Thanks to Mrs. Hurston, Carrie realizes that she is deeply connected to all of Eatonville, just as Zora learns that no matter how far she travels, she will always have her family and her people to come back to.
Teddy Baker
Teddy Baker is Zora and Carrie’s friend. Carrie has a crush on him and often imagines their future together. It is through Teddy that Carrie is able to deepen her connection to Eatonville; their imagined future helps her put down roots in her community. Teddy is a kind, thoughtful boy with an affinity for animals. He loves them even when they might be dangerous, like the razorback pigs he finds in the woods. He cares for sick animals and buries dead ones.
Teddy lives on a farm with his parents and two older brothers. Both of Teddy’s brothers had to leave school early to help out on the farm, but the family now has enough money to send Teddy to high school. His brothers are good-natured and do not resent Teddy for getting opportunities they were denied. The precarity of Teddy’s family situation underscores the ways in which the coming-of-age experience looks different for the three children. Like Carrie, Teddy will build a life in Eatonville, not traveling the world.
Ivory and Gold
Ivory and Gold are siblings whose lives have taken very different paths. They grew up in Lake Maitland near Joe Clarke. Although Ivory and Gold are both Black, Gold is able to pass as white. When she was a child, her mother would pretend to be her nanny so that they could access white-only stores and spaces.
Ivory never approved of Gold’s passing, but she kept it up because it brought so many benefits. Ivory grew up to be a turpentine worker and a traveler. He plays guitar and sings beautifully, and he looks a little like Carrie’s father. Ivory is a kind man who inspires Zora to travel when she gets older. To everyone’s shock, Ivory is murdered in a racist hate crime. The children initially believe that he was killed by Mr. Pendir in his alligator form. The power of storytelling pushes them to sing a lullaby at the Blue Sink to release Ivory’s spirit, which they find cathartic even though it is not based in reality. Ivory’s death is the catalyst for Carrie starting to mourn her own father, who was likely also murdered.
Gold grew up and continued to pass as white, eventually getting engaged to a white man named Will. After Ivory dies, Gold comes to Eatonville to look for him. She suspects that her fiancé saw her talking to Ivory, assumed they were having an affair, and murdered him in a jealous rage. She thinks Will has been acting strangely recently, though she has no concrete evidence to support her theory. Gold has to reckon with the choices she has made regarding the complications of race and belonging. She cannot openly mourn her brother because doing so would reveal the truth about her. She cannot trust her fiancé because he might be a murderer. Joe Clarke will not let her live in Eatonville, and Mrs. Jefferson starts telling people that she is passing.
Gold eventually ends up in Orlando, but besides that, her fate is unclear. The story does not go into much detail about Gold’s choices, except to condemn her for choosing to pass as white. Passing is more than just a “white lie” because it can cause genuine harm both to Gold and to other Black people who get too close to her.
The People of Eatonville and Lake Maitland
There are several relatively minor characters who live in either Eatonville or Lake Maitland. Joe Clarke is the marshal in Eatonville, and he also owns the town store. He was a real person that Zora Neale Hurston knew when she was growing up; he appears in some of her stories. Joe Clarke is willing to talk to Carrie and Zora about their questions and suspicions, though like all adults, he is wary of talking to them too much about difficult or upsetting topics. He listens to their suspicions about Mr. Pendir and tries to assure them that Mr. Pendir is not an alligator-human hybrid. Joe Clarke refuses to let Gold live in Eatonville after Ivory’s death, and he is the one who takes her to Orlando at the end of the story. He is framed as a wise and just man who has the best interests of the people of Eatonville at heart.
Mr. Pendir is a reclusive old man who lives near the Blue Sink. For most of the story, the children believe that he is capable of turning into an alligator. They eventually learn that he is actually just a traumatized man who carves animal masks to feel strong and face his fears. Mr. Pendir keeps to himself, but he is a kind man who is prepared to help Carrie when she injures her shoulder. He dies at the end of the story without ever really connecting with the people of Eatonville.
Old Lady Bronson is another older person in the town. She is stubborn and can be unfriendly, but she has worked hard to raise her granddaughter, Miss Billie. Billie is a kind young woman who cares for her grandmother and finds Mr. Pendir after his death.
Mrs. Eunice Jefferson is a Black woman who either lives in Eatonville or Lake Maitland. She works in Lake Maitland and has her finger on the pulse of how white people there are reacting to the violence in Eatonville. Mrs. Jefferson holds Gold in contempt and starts a rumor that she is a Black woman passing as white, effectively destroying her reputation before she moves to Orlando.
Mr. Ambrose is a white man who lives in Lake Maitland but sometimes visits Eatonville. He and Zora have a special bond because he was present at her birth. Although Mr. Ambrose presents himself as a kind and trustworthy man, he often uses racist slurs to refer to Black people, and he initially assumes that a Black person killed Ivory. He gives Zora the book about alligator myths instead of trying to help her find a rational explanation for Mr. Pendir’s gator snout. At the end of the story, Mr. Ambrose destroys Will’s business and has him run out of town on the assumption that it was he who killed Ivory.
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