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Joe Kanty begins the story as a timid man who attracts the ridicule and pity of the men in town. Although Lena is Joe’s wife, Spunk takes her from him easily, illustrating Joe’s timidity and suggesting a corresponding sexual inferiority. Hurston describes Joe as round-shouldered, slumping, and too small to fill out his overalls, a marked contrast to Spunk’s domineering size and strength. Joe moves in an enervated and defeated manner, reflecting his weak character. He does not set his soda bottle down so much let it slide from his hand. He fiddles nervously with his suspenders. Even when Joe tells them he intends to threaten Spunk with a weapon, the men laugh as he leaves, and Elijah assures Walter that Joe lacks the courage to confront Spunk. Elijah summons an image of Spunk reacting to any attack from Joe by spanking him, contributing to the image of Joe as weak and childlike. 

However, in death, Joe attains renown for courage and power which he lacked in life. Just as Spunk’s strength and bravery declines, Joe’s reputation improves. In this way, Joe becomes a character foil for Spunk. While Joe in life could not command Spunk or even his own wife, the loungers attribute Spunk’s changed behavior after the murder to his fear of Joe’s ghost. The loungers view Spunk’s marriage to Lena not as a victory for Spunk but as his acquiescence to pressure from Joe beyond the grave, in his formidable black bobcat spectral form. Spunk’s new fear of the sawmill blade and ultimately his death are likewise said to be caused by his fear of the ghostly Joe, a man too timid and weak in life to give Spunk pause. The men who laughed at Joe in life now respect him and describe him as braver than Spunk, as he dared to confront a stronger and more heavily armed man in an endeavor to win back his wife. By the end of the story, when the loungers imagine the two men meeting in the afterlife to fight, Joe’s reputation has shifted so much that they believe Joe is able to defeat Spunk, a complete reversal from his perceived character at the beginning of the story. 

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