Figurative Language In Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses lots of characterization and figurative language to give the reader an inside on Janie’s feelings and surroundings. In chapter the way the men focus of Janie’s physical features, and women criticize Janie’s hygiene and looks allows the reader to make an image of how Janie looks. The men were “saving with the mind what they lost with the eye,” and the women “took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance,” this also shows how the women were going to keep that image of Janie in their head to hold over her (Hurston 2). Janie has a love for nature, the figurative language and metaphors allows the reader to understand Janie and her connections with nature. Hurston uses the pear tree in the backyard to show how Janie felt free and

After reading Hibben’s critique I agree with the statements she makes. Hibben’s talks about how Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship was different from the others. When Janie was with Mister Killicks she didn’t care about his “land, and his sagging belly, and his toenails that looked like mules’ feet,” she wanted love not material things. Janie wasn’t pleased with all the nice things she could obtain from marrying Mister Killicks, she was looking for the happiness love would give her, not what Killicks had. This can also explain why Janie ran away with Joe Starks. Janie was enticed with Starks’ words and thought that he could be the one that could give her the love she was searching for. However, she was not happy with being the “mayor’s wife,” that just did what Starks told her to do. Janie did not feel love until, as Hibben’s describes, “Tea Cake came along with his trampish clothes and his easy way and his nice grin,” allowing Janie to fall for him. Even if Tea Cake was younger he made her feel something she never had before,