Hurston’s metaphors help the reader to understand the great deal of oppression that the handkerchief symbolizes. The author’s metaphors such as “girl was gone”, “woman had taken her place”, and “the glory was there” emphasize that Janie is able to reveal her true beauty in overcoming her struggles. The author implies that by Janie uncovering her hair, she is revealing the constant shadow that has prevented her from her self-examination and in finding her true identity. The author’s metaphors are used to help the reader understand that the moment for an individual to overcome a struggle is profoundly beautiful and
Hurston contrasts this style by using a strong African-American dialect. Later in Chapter 11, Janie says to Hezekiah, “Oh dat’s all right, Hezekiah. Thank yuh mighty much” (143). Hurston chooses to define her characters’ voices using the vernacular in which
“Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore,” says Janie in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (Hurston 191). This novel is about a woman who refuses to live in worry, bitterness, doubt, or preposterous romantic dreams. It is a story of a passionately independent Janie Crawford, and her maturing selfhood through her three marriages. Each husband was compared by the people and each were different in their own ways.
She comes to understand that love is not what she made it out to be when she was a young girl in the back of her nanny’s yard looking up at the pear tree. It is “ uh love game” (Hurston 114). It is not until the end of the novel, where Janie understands that she has lived her ideal “love” with Tea Cake for it was unconditional, raw, and
Zora Neale Hurston reveals inner self versus outward self through different vocal and lyrical diction. Zora Neale Hurston uses dialect to cause familiarity in her novel and described the struggles as an everyday African American faced in their community. The theme of my novel was gender roles and relationships not as a black woman, but as a human being. Even having the desire for love from different men. The connecting themes were that “Black folks” were proud of their culture instead of being oppressed.
Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” This realization made by Janie supports one of the biggest themes in this novel, which is that the concept of innocence and womanhood can’t exist at the same time. Because Janie finally lets go of her “childish fantasy”, her innocence is lost and she is now a woman. The theme of lost innocence in exchange for womanhood is also prevalent in Hurston’s story Sweat. This idea is one of the reasons that Sykes and Delia’s relationship begins to fall apart when we meet them.
Hurston describes Janie’s quest to finding love and to recovering herself, though
She shows how strength comes in in all different manners. Power can come from a person 's physical features, through good deeds, or money. Janie 's hair is an example of a woman 's power, and Hurston uses Janie 's hair as a way to introduce the idea that strength causes conflict in the world. Hurston used this conflict throughout the book warn society about how it could be running itself off the rails, and by giving an early warning Hurston shows that she believes that society will be able to correct its own course by becoming more accepting. Zora Neale Hurston uses a woman 's suffering as well as black inequality to warn the world about their inherent fate.
She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there” (87). The reader sees Janie’s turning point and transition into someone with more feminist values: someone who takes control of their own future and fate. By “[letting] down her plentiful hair,” something she was previously forbidden to do, Hurston makes Janie’s personal evolution clear to the reader as she realizes she can no longer be controlled by
This proves how Hurston’s decision on how Janie, as well as bystanders actions, can affect how other characters like Joe and Tea Cake are
Hurston tells the story of Janie, a black woman who because of her grandmother experiences and beliefs was forced to marry into a loveless marriage with Logan Killicks, a hard-working farmer who had 60 acres of land and could provide for Janie. This marriage ended when Janie ran away with Joe Stark, a man that she fell in love with and thought could give her the love absent between her and Logan. But Janie soon realized that her second marriage wouldn’t turn out better than her first. Joe was just as controlling and degrading as Logan. He hardly expressed his love for Janie and spoke to her like an incompetent child.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects the Harlem Renaissance through Janie 's individuality, and departs from the Harlem Renaissance with the common recurrence of black woman empowerment. In the novel, Hurston reflects the ideas of the Harlem renaissance with the ways in which Janie rebels and goes against norms for women.
Although some readers might argue that the characters do not contribute to Janie’s voice, it is clear through the details that Hurston places in the novel that they very much do help create Janie’s voice. They play an important part in Hurston’s novel because they are Janie’s story. The characters in the novel make up who Janie becomes and contribute to making her the way she is and therefore contribute to her voice. Through telling the story to Phoeby, Janie finds her voice with the help of the others in the story, which make up the frame
A strong-willed woman refuses to be manipulated no matter the role she plays. In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston and the short story, “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway, there is a common theme of independence blooming from judgment. While Hurston focuses on true development, including puberty and relationships, Hemingway highlights reproductive rights and the role of women during this time. Hurston portrays Janie as a minority, illustrating her with flawless mixed skin and beautiful long hair that symbolizes her freedom throughout the novel. Mrs. Turner says Janie is “a heaven of straight haired, thin-lipped, high-nose-bone white seraphs…
Through the rise and fall of the Harlem Renaissance there were a variety of influential writers and poets that preached their dreams to the generations that would listen. These authors centered their writings, be it books, poems, or papers, on promoting equality for the black community. The Harlem community strives to tip the scales of progress, aspiring to rise above all others as a beacon of advancement and prosperity. Zora Neale Hurston had a different mindset when it came to expressing her ideas through writing. Hurston was not trying to bring one side higher, but instead balanced the scales and made everyone equal.
