Duncan Padgitt
Mrs. Froemling
English 10 honors
3/8/23
The Irony of Racism
In her novel, “Their eyes were watching god '', Hurston writes about the hardships and cycle of being oppressed using imagery, dialogue, and even irony to show the true redundancy of racism and the cycle it creates. As Janie was home alone she saw some native americans, and after they warn her of a hurricane she brushes it of and thinks “ Beans running fine and prices good, so the Indians could be, must be, wrong. You couldn’t have a hurricane when you’re making seven and eight dollars a day picking beans. Indians are dumb anyhow, always were”(Hurston 178). She was using the irony of an oppressed individual being racist to an individual that shares the same hardship,
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She mostly illustrates the effects that it had on the african american community, but she really likes to allude and show the fact there are other misrepresented, like the native americans in the passage. The way she decided to address the issue is by using irony. She writes “, so the Indians could be, must be wrong.” This line itself is not that bad, when I first read it I thought Janie was just in denial. But, She also says “Indians are dumb anyhow, always were.” Now I feel this line came out of left field because of the theme of the book, but I understand why she wrote it like this. She wrote like this very deliberately. When she uses the word “Could” she implies the possibility of; in contrast to, when she redacted “could '' and said “Must '' instead. Must implies the idea of guaranteed and the impossibility of being wrong, so we know she views the natives as idiots. This is also backed up by the fact that she says “Indians are dumb anyhow, always were.” I found her saying this highly interesting, because she says “Anyhow” and “Always were.” I believe that the significance of this is a really good message from Hurston, “Anyhow” means besides or anyways, and by