Their Eyes Were Watching God

The Different Styles of Writing Maturation is the main idea behind the work of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God with the main character, Janie, experiencing her coming of age as she goes through criticizing judgment almost every single day. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses many different metaphors to express her ideas, which also define the style she uses. The passage I have selected includes when Janie first arrives to town. Hurston had described the town mostly as, “These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long…They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.” (Hurston 1). Hurston combined not only a metaphor, but personification as well as she was describing the people. Hurston might be believed to have used that specific metaphor because that’s how she viewed the people of that town; all they ever did was talk, talk, talk about anything and everything or anyone and everyone. It was like their mouths were tornados, raving at hundreds of miles per second. A reader could conclude that Hurston had chosen to work with metaphors for the pure fact that metaphors can go for miles. Hurston had also tied in imagery with her metaphors. For example, Hurston described the men’s view of Janie as, “Her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair…Pugnacious breast” and the women’s view of Janie as, “Faded shirt and muddy overalls…Still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day” (Hurston 2). The men had viewed Janie as this great looking; wondrous woman, while the women were disgracing her clothing but at the same time were wishing they could’ve been her. Hurston manages to work well with imagery, making the reader able to visualize her worded pictures extremely well. Even more throughout the novel, Hurston works with personification like there’s no tomorrow. Hurston stated that the town had even more judgment, “So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish…Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song” (Hurston 2). Hurston wants the reader to see, yet again, the way she personified the town’s judgment of Janie. The words were talking themselves without the help of the people speaking them, they had flown out of the people’s mouth so smoothly and naturally it was almost like a song. Hurston managed to work truth about the town into personification that’s not the easiest to understand without going greatly into the depth of analyzing it by using a strong sense of style within her writing. However, Hurston also intertwines the imagery with the personification. For example, when she says, “The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky” (Hurston 1). Not only was Hurston personifying the sun to appeal the reader to look at the sun as something not objective, but she was also giving the reader a chance to visualize the image within them. Hurston’s idea for personification is to give the reader a better understanding of what she wants them to see. Hurston works personification in with imagery in a way that’s different rather than what most authors would do. In the end, Hurston’s level of knowledge with combining different styles is very high as the reader can see. She works in metaphors and personification with imagery. Imagery within her novel plays a major role, and the reader could believe that Hurston chose to write with this style because a novel without imagery is no novel at all. As well as metaphors and personification, she more than likely chose to work with those because an author can make those two particular styles go for miles. However, I believe the theme is, “Everyone’s going to judge you” because judgment for Janie goes on throughout the whole novel. Jody had said to Janie that, “If you’d git yo’ mind de streets and keep it on yo’ business maybe you could git somethin’ straight sometimes…Ah see one things Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don’t understand one” (Hurston 70-71). The way Jody spoke to Janie and criticized her is exactly the reason I’m persuaded that the theme is, “Everyone’s going to judge you.” First the town people, then her own husband were victims of judging her, plus all the other folks in the novel probably had plenty of their own words to say about Janie. In conclusion, not only did Hurston work well with tying all of her different styles of writing together, she also managed to make the theme something that readers might deal with almost all the time.

Work Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.