Zora Hurston's novel “their eyes are watching God” portrays the ideas of social norm through colloquial diction, connotative diction, and isolation syntax. “What she doin’ coming back here in dem over-halls? Can’t she find no dresses to put on?” Hurston's writing is full of conversations using colloquial diction. He uses a regional dialect to create the picture in your head of what the people speaking may look like by how they talk. In this excerpt, it describes a group of men and some women sitting on a porch watching another local women walk to her home. They are judging every move she makes. “What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wild her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal?” The way he portrays their accents makes me picture them as somewhat idiotic. …show more content…
They are judging and basically ‘talking crap’ about a women that obviously has no mind for their opinions and that they don't know very well. It made me hate them as soon as I read them talk and somewhat gave me a sympathetic feel for the women they’re judging. Isolation syntax gives the excerpt the power it has. When reading what the people on the porch say there are multiple dashes. The dashes cause you to pause, or switch who is saying it. It gives a special feel on how to read it and causes you to really think about what they’re saying about the women. This excerpt is also full of connotative diction.
Almost everything it says isn't the direct meaning, its suggested. “I was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters have been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes occupied their skin. But now the sun and the bossman were gone….” This is the biggest suggestive meaning in the except because it leads to show you why the people on the porch feel drawn to talk negatively and judge her. They have been nothing but slaves all day. They spend their days working long and hard, being nothing but mules. Expected to keep quiet and do nothing but their work. Therefore, speaking harshly about the woman gives them a sense of power. It makes them feel better about how low on the poll they are by portraying her lower than them. There are multiple other suggestive meanings such as “she turned her face and spoke. They scrambled a noisy “good evenin” and left their mouths sitting open and their ears full of hope.” They talk big game knowing if she gave them the time of day it would be much different. The men talk bad about her to other women knowing they think she's beautiful and would be eager to be at her beckoning
call. I believe this excerpt is portraying the ideas of the ‘social norm’. They judge the women for how she looks, what she's wearing, who’s she's dated, her money, and more. She obviously isn't expected to be how pretty she is for a forty year old woman, and she also should have a husband. Why? because that’s how everyone else in the town is. She’s not bothering anyone, she is doing no harm. This speaks to me because people throughout your life encourage you to be different, to stand out, but that puts you in the category outside of the ‘social norm’. It puts you in a place where you will get judged and criticized. I take from this that I’d rather stand out and get judged than fit in and judge others.
In the sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards, he preached about a stricter Calvinist theology of Puritanism. Edwards delivered it at the Massachusetts congregation on July 8, 1741. He blatantly uses rhetorical strategies to instill fear into his audience if they are to continue to not be active Puritans in religion. Edwards uses polysyndeton, harsh diction and tone, and the appeal to emotion along with the use of semicolons to develop his message.
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
“Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don’t speak tuh suit ‘em dey got tuh go way back in yo’ life and see whut you ever done.” (Hurston
Media such as movies, video games and television, in general, are all created to support some form of social context. This helps with generating popularity because people are able to relate to the form of media. In Greg Smith’s book What Media Classes Really Want to Discuss, he describes 6 different representational strategies that justifies people’s way of thinking. The trope that I will be amplifying is the white savior tactic. In addition, I will connect this strategy to the movie The Blind Side. There are clear examples throughout the film where racism and low-income cultures exist in which the white family is there to help. The Tuohy family from the movie “The Blind Side” serves as the white savior for the progression of Michael
Mrs. Hurston uses Southern Black dialect through out the book. This is appropriate because all of the dialog is between Blacks who grew up in the deep South. Some authors that write in a dialect totally confuse their readers. However, Mrs. Hurston’s writing does not confuse us at all. One particular example of this is on page 102. Tea Cake starts off saying, "‘Hello, Mis’ Janie, Ah hope Ah woke you up.’ ‘Yo sho did, Tea Cake. Come in and rest yo’ hat. Whut you doin’ out so soon dis mornin’?’" Janie replied. This dialog is easily to understand. The reader really gets the feeling of the speech because reading it is just like listening to it. Mrs. Neale also knows where to stop writing in dialect. All of the narration and description in the book are in plain English: she does not confuse us by putting narration in dialect, only the speech of characters is in dialect. This part of Zora Neale Hurston’s art adds to the story without confusing the reader.
Each person, whether they realize it or not, has been shaped by their relationships with others. The effects that piers or family members can have on someone are limitless and often times profound. In many instances, people do not even know that they are being influenced by others. Even if it is in the most subtle manner, all characters in novels are directly influenced by other figures. Authors use rhetorical strategies to demonstrate the different ways in which relationships affect and shape character’s identities.
The Web. 22 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Rhetorical Analysis “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards uses imagery and symbolism to persuade the audience to become more devout Christians by channeling fear and emphasizing religious values. Jonathan Edwards was a Puritan minister who preached during the time of the Great Awakening in America. During this period of religious revival, Edwards wanted people to return to the devout ways of the early Puritans in America. The spirit of the revival led Edwards to believe that sinners would enter hell. Edwards’ sermon was primarily addressed to sinners for the purpose of alerting them about their sins and inspiring them to take action to become more devoted to God.
She does this by writing out the words the way the characters pronounce them, not necessarily how they are spelled. An example of this style is a line spoken by a minor character: “Yep. Hot or col’, rain or shine, ies ‘ez reg’lar ez de weeks roll roun’ Delia carries ‘em an’ fetches ‘em on Sat’day.” Hurston exemplifies the traditional southern speech, used specifically by African Americans, by removing letters and replacing them with an apostrophe, eliminating the sound to match the omission of syllables by the speaker. When the reader reads this line, they not only understand the message, but the way that it would be spoken. This allows for a deeper connection to each character, and for the regional and cultural influences on their language to be showcased naturally. The physical representation of language influences our perception of the character, and in most other books written in “proper” English, this connection is somewhat lost. This phonetic language represents the culture of the area perfectly, and contributes the development of characters and their
Narrator, this was a third person account, thus leaving much to the imagination. The conversation’s language was left as if truly taken from an African American speaker in the south in such a time. The way Hurston made the scenery appear before me was like a white sheet gets stained with red wine, unable to wash out of my mind. The narration was very brut in a grammatical manner, giving a wash bucket effect of never being settled.
Hurston begins the essay in her birth town: Eatonville, Florida; an exclusively Negro town where whites were a rarity, only occasionally passing by as a tourist. Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers
Pollan’s article provides a solid base to the conversation, defining what to do in order to eat healthy. Holding this concept of eating healthy, Joe Pinsker in “Why So Many Rich Kids Come to Enjoy the Taste of Healthier Foods” enters into the conversation and questions the connection of difference in families’ income and how healthy children eat (129-132). He argues that how much families earn largely affect how healthy children eat — income is one of the most important factors preventing people from eating healthy (129-132). In his article, Pinsker utilizes a study done by Caitlin Daniel to illustrate that level of income does affect children’s diet (130). In Daniel’s research, among 75 Boston-area parents, those rich families value children’s healthy diet more than food wasted when children refused to accept those healthier but
The movie trailer “Rio 2”, shows a great deal of pathos, ethos, and logos. These rhetorical appeals are hidden throughout the movie trailer; however, they can be recognized if paying attention to the details and montage of the video. I am attracted to this type of movies due to the positive life messages and the innocent, but funny personifications from the characters; therefore, the following rhetorical analysis will give a brief explanation of the scenes, point out the characteristics of persuasive appeals and how people can be easily persuaded by using this technique, and my own interpretation of the message presented in the trailer.
The segregation in the southern states is very prominent during that time period. For instance, Lily’s housekeeper Rosaleen could not live in the same house as Lily, nor could she worship in the same church. Lily finally had enough of her abusive father T.Ray and decided to run away along with their housekeeper Rosaleen who she broke out of jail. The only place she desired to go was the town written on one of her mother’s pictures. On the back of a photograph of a black version of Mary Lily’s mother had written the town Tiburon. Lily and Rosaleen arrive at the outskirts of Tiburon, after a combination of hitchhiking and walking, hungry and tired. As Lily shopped in a convenience store for lunch she noticed a jar of honey with the picture of the same black Mary as her mother’s picture. The store clerk points them in the right direction and they end up at the Botwright's house. As she is conversing with August Botwright Lily notices something peculiar. As she lies on her cot she thinks to herself; “T. Ray did not think colored women were smart. Since I want to tell the whole truth, which means the worst parts, I thought they could be smart, but not as smart as me, me being white. Lying on the cot in the honey house, though, all I could think was August is so intelligent, so cultured, and I was surprised by this.” (Kidd.78). Meeting and interacting with August depicts how much involuntary prejudice she had inside of her that she was not previously aware of. Lily used this experience to learn how you can’t judge a person based off their race and made herself rethink her thoughts on African-American people. Lily’s first meeting August contributes to the theme of not judging people based off of prejudice because August disproves Lily’s stereotype that African-Americans couldn’t be as smart as
Jonathan Kozol revealed the early period’s situation of education in American schools in his article Savage Inequalities. It seems like during that period, the inequality existed everywhere and no one had the ability to change it; however, Kozol tried his best to turn around this situation and keep track of all he saw. In the article, he used rhetorical strategies effectively to describe what he saw in that situation, such as pathos, logos and ethos.