Use of Metaphors in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston Essay

Zora Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawfords excursion into woman and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janies eternal struggle to find her own vocalism and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the primordial 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to unify (as heat content Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novels themes and narrative thus providing a greater spirit of Janies quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity the pear steer metaphor, metaphors representing the inside and outside world, and lastly the figure of the mule. I. The Pear TreeThe pear tree metaphor is one of the most prevalent and recurring metaphors throughout the novel. It is one that represen ts Janies sexual awakening, her relationships, her dreams, and her journey to womanhood. Gates argues that this repetition of the tree metaphor is fundamental to the process of narration, and Hurston repeats the figure of the tree both to expound her theme of becoming and to render the action of the eyepatch and simultaneous and as unified as possible (78). The tree first appears when Janie is preparing to tell her story to Phoeby Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches (8), seemingly setting out what Janies story will entail and as Henry Louis Gates Jr. asserts in Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text, this introduction of the metaphor re... ... CitedDilbeck, Keiko. Symbolic Representation of Identity in Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Explicator. 66.2 (2008) 102-104. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. Gates, Henry Louis. Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text. Zora Neale Hu rstons Their Eyes Were Watching God A Casebook. Ed. Cheryl. A. Wall. tonic York Oxford University Press, 2000. (59-116). Print. Haurykiewicz, Julie. From Mules to Muliebrity Speech and Silence in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Southern Literary Journal. 29.2 (1997) 45-60. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God a Novel. New York Perennial Classics, 1999. Print.Johnson, Barabara. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God A Casebook. Ed. Cheryl. A. Wall. New York Oxford University Press, 2000.