Literary Choices in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston employs many tactics that make the story come to life around the reader and force them to more deeply engage with the novel. Though the list is extensive, two things that have stood out to me so far have been the figurative language used by Hurston and how she writes all of the dialogue between characters in a southern dialect.

One of the characteristics that forced me to more deeply engage in the novel was to have the characters speaking in a dialect of the deep south. One example of is when Pheoby and Janie are talking about the gossipers on the porch, Janie says, “‘Ah don’t mean to bother wid tellen’ ‘em nothin’ Pheoby. T’ain’t worth de trouble. You can tell ‘em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat’s just de same as me ‘cause mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf’” (6). Unlike a book written with “standard” spelling and grammar, I found it impossible to speed read or skim over any of the dialogue in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Because I was not used to reading the dialect the characters were speaking in, I had to really slow down and take the time to work out what was being said. The result of this was not only that I paid a lot of attention to what the characters were saying, but that I could almost hear their voices in my head as I went, and that reading the dialogue felt more like listening to a conversation than reading words on a page.

Another aspect of Their Eyes Were Watching God that I felt made the story come to life was the use of figurative language in the descriptions of characters. One example of this is when Nanny is telling Janie the story of her life and describes the wife of her former master. Instead of simply describing her as cold-hearted and bitter, Nanny says that she “Look lak she been livin’ through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring . . . Ah tried not to feel de breeze off her face, but it got so cold in dere dat Ah was freezin’ to death under the kivvers” (17). I found this to be an incredibly powerful metaphor because the reader can see the woman much more clearly, both physically and in terms of her personality and its effects on Nanny. The other metaphors and uses of figurative language have had the same results on me. They make it much easier to visualize the characters and the setting, and make the novel a lot of fun to read!

I’m curious to observe how these two literary devices develop throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God, and how they continue to affect my reading of the novel.  

Connecting With His Roots

Shortly before giving the speech that attracts the attention of the Brotherhood, the narrator stops and buys three yams from a street vendor. In this moment, we see the narrator briefly reconnect with his roots and realize that he’s been kept running his entire life before he joins the Brotherhood and has the veil lowered over his eyes once more.

When he sees the man selling yams, the narrator is overcome with nostalgia. This is an unusual emotion for the narrator; normally, he seems to be ashamed of his past and avoids talking or even thinking about it. Especially in Harlem, we have repeatedly seen the narrator try and cast off his past self, all connections to his former life, and move forward as a new person. For example, when the narrator first arrives in the north, he describes in depth how he plans to redo his wardrobe to create a new persona for himself. Later when he is having breakfast in a diner, he refuses to order the special consisting of foods he associates with the south, and instead chooses toast, something plain and generic.  

I also saw it as quite ironic that the moment where the narrator realizes “I yam what I am” directly precedes his being recruited by the Brotherhood where his identity is erased and sense of individuality is suppressed. Immediately upon his acceptance into the Brotherhood, the narrator is given a new name and persona, erasing the past he had just begun to connect to, and told that there is no “I” and that no one’s individual beliefs or history are significant in the bigger picture.

I also think that the narrator briefly realizes here that he has been kept running for his entire life. He says, “What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? . . . I had never formed a personal attitude towards so much. I had accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem simple…” However, though he has made this realization, he is still far from discovering invisibility. Instead of trying to appear as though he still believes in the accepted attitudes while secretly having his own opinions, he decides to just flat out believe and do whatever he wants. We can see, even by the end of this scene, that this isn’t going to work out for the narrator; “Yet the freedom to eat yams was far less than I had expected upon coming to the city. An unpleasant taste bloomed in my mouth now as I bit the end of the yam and threw it into the street; it had been frost-bitten”. 

The Narrator's Briefcase

The narrator’s briefcase has made three appearances so far in Invisible Man. Although it is given to the narrator at the height of his humiliation at the battle royal, he sees it not in that light but instead as a symbol of prestige and his self-worth. “I was so moved that I could hardly express my thanks. A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped it quickly away. I felt an importance that I had never dreamed” (32). Even as the narrator is literally swallowing and drooling blood, he is not ashamed, or even aware that the ceremony is not truly being done to honor and reward him. This theme of humiliation that the narrator cannot or will not see remains associated with the briefcase, and though it we can see how the narrator develops as a character.

When the briefcase is first presented to the narrator, it contains a scholarship to the “state college for Negroes” (32) that the narrator goes on to attend. The narrator sees this too, as a reward for his accomplishments, and given his naivety, this makes sense. But when he dreams of his grandfather that night, the reader, if not the narrator, realizes that the scholarship might not be all that it seems. The grandfather instructs the narrator to take the envelope out of his briefcase and open it. The narrator does, but inside every envelope he finds just another envelope until he reaches the last one with an enclosed message that instructs whoever it may concern to keep the narrator running. In place of what the narrator perceived as a prestigious reward and a momentous opportunity, there are in reality only empty envelopes (empty promises?) and instructions to the rest of the world to never let him stop chasing what Bledsoe later refers to as “that promise which, like the horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful traveler” (187).

The second time the briefcase makes an appearance, the narrator is once again on the brink of a new phase in his life as he prepares to leave the college for Harlem. The contents of the briefcase are also similar. Bledsoe gives the narrator seven envelopes addressed to trustees of the college, important men who will be able to help him find work. But yet again, the envelops cause the narrator humiliation while masquerading as something that he hopes will allow him to return to the college. The similarity of the narrator’s goals and circumstances, and the contents of the briefcase show just how little the narrator has developed since he received the briefcase. However, this time, instead of his grandfather in a dream, the disillusionment is brought about by Mr. Emerson and the narrator can no longer ignore the game that is being played without his knowledge. Interestingly, the narrator connects this incident to the dream about his grandfather, even using the phrase “keep him running” when composing a satirical version of the letter.

In the final appearance of the briefcase that we have seen so far, the narrator is once again entering a new phase of his life as he leaves Mary’s to take a job with the Brotherhood. Otherwise, however the circumstances are totally different. Instead of papers, the briefcase now contains the remains of the bank that the narrator smashed at Mary’s house. Instead of having something that the narrator sees as prestigious but is truly humiliating in the briefcase, the narrator is now using the briefcase to hide the object of his humiliation. This difference shows how the narrator is beginning to develop as a character. He now is no longer the blind and naive student that he used to be; he now sees the game and is learning to play along.

The Fine Line Between Sanity and Insanity

            Chapter two of Invisible Man begins with the Narrator remembering his college days and taking us on what almost seems to be a scenic tour of the campus. One seemingly small detail in his description is the insane asylum. Though this could appear extraneous – the reason I noticed it in the first place was because of how matter-of-fact and nonchalantly the Narrator mentioned it – I think that the insane asylum is actually an important detail in understanding the narrator and his circumstances.   

How the grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone down on the buildings, how the bell in the chapel tower rang out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at night, I’ve closed my eyes and walked along the forbidden road that winds past the girls’ dormitories, past the hall with the clock in the tower, its windows warmly aglow . . . on up the road, past the buildings, with the southern verandas half-a-city-block long, to the sudden forking, barren of buildings, birds, or grass, where the road turned off to the insane asylum.

There is a certain irony to the insane asylum being placed directly next to the college campus. Our Narrator has come to the college in order to learn, expand his horizons and prepare to get a prestigious job one day, so it seems a little foreboding that just a wrong turn away is a building for the housing and care of people who once shared many of the same aspirations as the narrator, but for one reason or another have been deemed insane.

            We get a little more insight into the meaning of the insane asylum in chapter three, when the Narrator and Mr. Norton encounter some of its patients at the Golden Day. Though the men are all patients, that’s not the way they see themselves; they consider themselves primarily doctors, composers, chemists, students, psychiatrists etc., and we see the Narrator get more and more uncomfortable as the fine line between crazy and sane, perhaps symbolized by the asylum’s proximity to the college, begins to blur. One conversation that represents this especially well is that between the Narrator, Mr. Norton and the doctor in which after diagnosing Mr. Norton and explaining how he gained his medical knowledge, the doctor describes invisibility and blindness similarly to how the Narrator does in the prologue.

“You see,” he said turning to Mr. Norton, “he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It’s worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn’t digest it. Already he is - well, bless my soul! Behold! A walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams sir! The mechanical man!”

The Narrator says he doesn’t understand, and worried, confused and dismissing the doctor as insane, tries to hurry Mr. Norton back out to the car. The conversation continues for a little longer, but when the doctor realizes neither the Narrator nor Mr. Norton understand what he is saying, he ends the discussion, threatening to bash their heads in if they don’t leave and “leaning against the wall making a sound that was a blending of laughter and tears.” This seemed to echo the scene in the prologue where the Narrator describes his invisibility to the reader, and then beats up a man in the street and runs away laughing.

The similarities between the doctor and the Narrator, the sense of foreboding created by the image of the insane asylum and its proximity to the college, and the gradual blurring of the line between sanity and insanity throughout the first few chapters are causing me to begin to wonder how sane the narrator actually is by the time he is able to recognize his invisibility.