Discussion: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Chs. 1-10
One striking thing about Zora Neale Hurston’s style may be the dialect in which the dialogue (as opposed to the narration) of her novels and stories is written. Hurston’s choice in this matter is deliberate: as an African American author, she wanted to convey the richness of English as it is spoken by her characters. Her training as an anthropologist would have given her a theoretical validation for what she knew from experience to be the value of what is now referred to as African American Vernacular English, which itself has regional variations. In short, Hurston’s use of dialect is grounded in personal, anthropological, and linguistic knowledge and used with artistic deliberation to convey the specificity and uniqueness of her characters’ voices.
Likewise, Hurston constructs the narrative of the novel with artistic deliberation. Janie’s story is told by herself to Pheoby, with Chapters 1 and 20 representing the frame of the novel with most of the story being told in retrospect. The first half of the novel follows Janie’s life from girlhood, through her first two marriages, to Logan and then Jody, and up to the moment when she meets Tea Cake, with whom she will travel and live in the second half of the novel.
This first half of the novel also represents Janie’s fulfillment of one set of values: stability, wealth, respectability, values given to her by Nanny and which she comes to resent (89). At the same time, the first half of the novel charts how these values, in themselves, are not sufficient for a character such as Janie, whose true desire, it emerges, is to find her own voice and agency. And yet, the path to that voice and agency, after her childhood with Nanny, is also marked by a progression of relationships with men. Janie’s independence and the forms love takes are interdependent.
Hurston also tells Janie’s story through some recurring motifs, such as the horizon as a recurring figure of desires and agency; or, Janie’s hair, which often reflects the state of her happiness and is symbolic of Janie’s desirableness to the men in the world of the novel, but is also symbolic of her uniqueness and independence. These are only two examples among many motifs and metaphors. All of these qualities: language, narrative structure, motifs, and metaphors, can be thought of as facets of Hurston’s style.
For this week’s discussion, choose one of these two prompts:
1) Say something about Hurston’s technique as a storyteller, her style. There are several elements that you could focus on: Hurston’s use of dialect, the narrative voice, the way she constructs the story over the sequence of chapters, the movement between Janie’s story and those of the other, “minor” characters in the novel, etc. You can write about one of those topics, or you can identify your own. Describe Hurston’s use of the technique and discuss one or two specific passages that seem best to exemplify it.
2) Discuss either Janie’s relationship with Logan or with Jody. What seems to have drawn her to this man? What, if any, satisfactions does he provide? What does he leave Janie still wanting and how does she deal with that want? Be sure to use one or two specific passages to support your post.