Assignment task:
In the days after the hurricane has passed, Tea Cake is forced to help find and bury the bodies of hurricane victims near Palm Beach. White guards order Tea Cake and his fellow workers to segregate the dead bodies along racial lines. While the white corpses are provided with pine coffins, the black corpses are buried without coffins. A guard warns Tea Cake, "don't lemme ketch none uh y'all dumpin' white folks, and don't be wastin' no boxes on colored" (171). Yet Tea Cake finds that the flood has made it difficult to classify the corpses according to race. He observes, "Nobody can't tell nothin' 'bout some uh dese bodies, de shape dey's in. Can't tell whether dey's white or black" (171). What does this scene reveal about social relations in the outside world? Why might Hurston include Tea Cake's comment that one "can't tell" whether the corpses are "white or black"?