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Metaphor in their eyes were watching god
Metaphor in their eyes were watching god
Symbolism in their eyes were watching God
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Introduction
Metaphors can be defined as those concepts where a term is used to portray a different meaning in a phrase than what it literary means. Additionally, metaphors are also used to make rhetorical statements where one is speaking of something else but by the use of words that do not have the same meaning. Moreover, metaphors can be used when one is trying to compare two different items with different meanings to portray the same meaning in describing something (Arduini 83). The book “Their eyes were watching God” has several metaphors, which have different analyses.
Analysis of Metaphors
The book tells the story of the dreams of a young black American woman who has the beauty and characteristics of a young Caucasian woman. It starts when the young woman is a young girl and grows up under the care of his grandmother. The young girl now grows up to become a young woman. All through the stages of her growth, the young woman, Janie, has several dreams in her life. Janie is later married off to a rich young man by her grandmother. After a while, the two break up and she runs away with another young man who becomes her second husband. The book then takes a turn in the twist of events when it stops from just being dreams and it becomes reality. Janie now realizes the reality of the situation. In the book, the author has used several metaphors to tell the story.
The book contains several metaphors, which can be analyzed. One of the metaphors, which have been identified in the book, is in the statement, “As Janie climbs the pear tree to see what exists around her, she sees the horizon” (Wall 45). The metaphor, which has been used in that phrase, is the horizon. Usually the horizon means that the sun might be setting. In the co...
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...d to help her solve the challenges in her life as a black beautiful woman. Alternatively, it can simply mean that Janie is standing in the dark with the rest of the people trying to watch God. Therefore, it is a metaphor, which has different meanings that have been brought together to portray the same meaning.
Conclusion
In the book, the author has used several metaphors to make the book to be more interesting for the readers of the book. Additionally, the author of the book has used metaphors to bring about some of the meanings in the story. This has made it easy for the readers to be able to understand what they are reading. In conjunction to this, the author has used the metaphors to bring out the character traits of some characters like Janie and Joe in the book. Therefore, it is through metaphors that the book has been very interesting and easy to understand.
Hurston invokes the symbol of horizon recurrently throughout the novel, to portray Janie’s dreams, aspirations, and her growth as a strong independent woman while attaining her horizon. The symbol, horizon, is used in both the beginning and ending of the story to represent the desire and fulfillment of Janie’s dreams. In the novel's opening sentence, the narrator introduces Janie's motivation to pursue her dreams, “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time” (Hurst 1). The horizon in this passage represents a dream that is not easily attainable, as
They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics,2006), Chapter 18, page 160. Throughout the novel, Janie doesn’t really have a connection with God. She doesn’t mention him often, and when she does, it’s often judging the way that people portray God or play God. Like when she tells the men at the store off for saying that they are any closer to God or superior than women. She tells them that it wouldn’t be so easy to play God if they had more to be superior to than women and chickens (Hurston 75).
Metaphors are powerful tools often used by authors to communicate a deeper meaning. Metaphors also tend to make the piece more thought provoking, and thus more interesting and intriguing. Laura Esquivel does a marvelous job of using food as a metaphor for unexpressed emotions in the novel Like Water for Chocolate. She takes the aching soul of a young girl and turns it into a cookbook of feelings and emotions cleverly disguised with food.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.
the dream of marriage that she has. But, he represents a black man who wishes to gain wealth and
As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...
... A metaphor, used as a communication skill, is best described in a political way. Think of Reagan’s Voodoo economics, or Bill Clinton building a bridge to the 21st century. Politicians can easily scam an ignorant voter, should one not understand a metaphor. For example: Clinton refers to building a bridge, but does not tell us with which tools he intends to build it with. This particular concept is valid alone for the above reason. Whether you are talking to a teacher or watching television, metaphors need to understand.
Although the author, Roger Rosenblatt, was correct in proposing that when Janie and Tea Cake marry and completely avoid the white world that they thrive; however his idea that nothing in Janie’s life is simple or easy is inaccurate because throughout the entirety of the story she never had to try for anything that she received, things just fell directly into her hands and her whole life tumbled into place piece by piece. Throughout the novel, the majority of the characters are dark skinned, and few white characters are introduced. So when Janie and Tea Cake go out on the muck and separate themselves from white society, this is not new or shocking. Although the segregation between blacks
In the journal “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor – now new and improved!” the author Gerard Steen talks about new some ideas in the study of contemporary metaphor. The author explains “[T]hat metaphorical models in language, thought, and communication can be classified as official, contested, implicit, and emerging, which may offer new perspectives on the interaction between social, psychological, and linguistic properties and functions of metaphor in discourse”(Steen 1). I believe that not only can metaphor be classified in these groups, but when we look at the emerging model — which refers to metaphors that emerge through social interaction – we can see that metaphors found in computer science that occur during social interaction usually
Times of reflection symbolize a person’s need to place previous situations in a correct perspective. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston introduces Janie Mae Crawford as a woman of mystery and then uses a flashback to unravel the intrigue surrounding Janie. As Janie arrives at her house in Eatonville, her best friend Pheoby joins her to discuss the circumstances concerning recent events which brings Janie back to her old house. When Janie begins her tale, memory takes over to relay the important aspects of her life’s adventure. Life experiences are shared which had impacted Janie’s journey of finding love. Hurston comments that “women forget all those things they do not want to remember and remember everything they do not want to forget” (Hurston 1). In the details of the search for true love, memory recalls the entrapment for love, the blinding aspirations for love, the fulfillment of love, and the loss of love which weaves itself into Janie’s recollection.
However, Tea Cake is able to teach Janie how to work for herself and to further defend herself from slurs from Mrs. Turner. After they have settled in the muck Janie lives with all working class blacks, where no one but Mrs. Turner is trying to be something he or she is not like Janie believed Jody had with their big house from which“the rest of the town looked like servants’ quarters surrounding the ‘big house’” (Their Eyes, Hurston 47). For it is only in fully immersing herself in the blackness of the everglades that Janie is able to find her true identity and voice. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar assert that, “self definition necessarily precedes self-assertion: the creative ‘I AM’ cannot be uttered if the ‘I’ knows not what it is,” therefore, Janie must abandon all that she has been previously defined as in order to discover her true self (qtd in DeShazer 905). Janie turns her back on her status as Mrs. Mayor in blue satin dresses and finds a job working in the crops in mud-splattered overalls. She ignores Mrs. Turner’s “altar to the unattainable – Caucasian characteristics,” and the unseemly worship bestowed on Janie as a result (Their Eyes, Hurston 145). After all of the struggles of the everglades, Janie must literally weather the storm yet again, resulting in the death of Tea Cake and the rise of the rabid dog inside him. This beast reverses the idea of the woman as brute seen earlier in the work, reversing the beatings and abuse of Janie to a situation where she must kill Tea Cake out of mercy and self preservation (Garland). The true test of Janie’s voice is in the courtroom, when she must defend her life on the stand. She is able to “integrate voice and vision” so depict her story for the jury, who is “not there to watch but to listen. Janie’s verbal defense succeeds because she ‘makes them see’” (Clarke). Her testimony
Though both modernist authors, Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neal Hurston often turn to natural imagery and elements in their novels. In Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has an immediate connection with her natural surroundings, namely the pear tree and blossoms. This relationship defines how she views herself and the world around her. Like Janie, Hemingway’s character Nick Adams in In Our Time has a special relationship with nature, seen in the first and final stories featuring him. His experiences shape who is he is. Both authors apply reproductive imagery to the natural world, creating a connection between the feminine and nature that teaches Janie and Nick about their relationship with their gender.
In this opening lines, Zora Neale Hurston characterizes the central contrast amongst men and women. She depicts how women are surrendered to their destiny and don't have the opportunity to dream, however rather should secure those considerations and leave themselves to straightforward activities and regular day to day existence. Men, then again, have the opportunity to accomplish their fantasies since society gives them more prominent flexibility. Men are not kept down by any conditions as are women, restricted to a supporting part in their own particular stories. Janie challenges this generalization of women, which is the thing that makes her trip so interesting. She can break out of the sexual orientation hindrances and accomplish her fantasies
and metaphor enhances the reader’s perspective to see one thing, but come to conclusions of
It has been shown that metaphors are made of consistent part which are strongly attached to one another. The previous terms have also been analyzed based on their similarities and differences as well as problematic aspects concerning