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To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
To kill a mockingbird examples of symbolism
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What is a symbol? It can mean many things to many different people. To me a symbol means you say something but it means a totally different thing. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston she uses a lot a symbols throughout the novel. Janie is a beautiful black woman with partially white ancestry. As a child, Janie is brought up by her grandmother, Nanny. Janie listens to her grandmother and marries a man of her choosing Logan Killicks. Janie leaves Logan when she realizes that she doesn't love him. She runs away with Joe Starks, a man with huge dreams for the future. Instead of allowing Janie to develop her own voice. After Joe dies, Janie finally finds her true love Tea Cake Woods. When Tea Cake dies suddenly, Janie returns to
Every novel has a protagonist and an antagonist of the story. There has to be a "good guy" and "bad guy" in order for there to be some sort of an interesting plot. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, my most and least favorite characters happen to be the protagonist, Janie, and the antagonist, Jody Starks. There are many things that symbolize these characters that are both comparable and contradictory of my personality. Symbols, objects or characters that are used to represent abstract ideas or concepts, play a major role in this novel. Janie is represented by her hair and Jody by his power, wealth and status of the town. Janie Jody and the symbolic representations are the three most appealing fundamentals of the story.
Path to Finding True Love “True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together.” This quote by Ricardo Montalban tells us that true love simply has to develop and it doesn’t happen right away. Janie is the main character from the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and she struggled on the concept of true love. This quote explains exactly why Janie never found true love.
Oprah Winfrey mutilated the classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston by turning the movie into a story with no resemblance to the book. Throughout Janie Crawford’s life, love is a dream she wished to achieve. Oprah makes changes to Janie’s character, her marriages, and the differences of symbolism, the change of themes, and the significance of Janie’s childhood which will alter the entire moral of the story. Another difference is the way the townspeople gossip. Oprah changes the point of Janie’s life journey to find herself to a love story.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Sweat,” Hurston uses the characters Janie Crawford and Delia Jones to symbolize African-American women as the mules of the world and their only alternative were through their words, in order to illustrate the conditions women suffered and the actions they had to take to maintain or establish their self-esteem.
There are various pieces of written work that do not fall into the category of literature work. This is because a piece of writing can be said to be literature when it has distinct features that follows the rules of literature writing. Some of the distinctive features that can be used to classify a piece of writing as a literature are the nature of language, themes and stylistic devices (Irmscher, 1975). Literature does not fully use the rules of grammar and may involve the use of informal writing. Hurston and Toni Morrison applied feature such as using colloquial language, development of various themes and some stylistic devices which have lead to their pieces of work being considered as important literary art. This paper will focus on two pieces of written work written by Hurston and the other by Toni Morrison Their Eyes Were Watching God and Beloved respectively and why they are considered important works of literature.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
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 movie and the book of Their Eyes Were Watching God both tell the story of a young woman’s journey to finding love; however, the movie lacks the depth and meaning behind the importance of Janie’s desire for self-fulfillment. Oprah Winfrey’s version alters the idea from the book Zora Neale Hurston wrote, into a despairing love story for the movie. Winfrey changes Hurston’s story in various ways by omitting significant events and characters, which leads to a different theme than what the novel portrays. The symbolisms and metaphors emphasized throughout the book are almost non-existent in the movie, changing the overall essence of the story. While Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal gives a more in depth view of Janie’s journey of self-discovery and need for fulfilling love, Oprah Winfrey’s version focuses mainly on a passionate love story between Janie and Tea Cake.
So many people in modern society have lost their voices. Laryngitis is not the cause of this sad situation-- they silence themselves, and have been doing so for decades. For many, not having a voice is acceptable socially and internally, because it frees them from the responsibility of having to maintain opinions. For Janie Crawford, it was not: she finds her voice among those lost within the pages of Zora Neale Hurston’s famed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This dynamic character’s natural intelligence, talent for speaking, and uncommon insights made her the perfect candidate to develop into the outspoken, individual woman she has wanted to be all along.
Lee Coker - Lee Coker lives in Eatonville. He was one of the first people to meet Jody and Janie.
Throughout the movie of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Oprah Winfrey alternates Zora Neale Hurston’s story of a woman’s journey to the point where nobody even recognizes it. The change in the theme, the characters, and their relationships form a series of major differences between the book and the movie. Instead of teaching people the important lessons one needs to know to succeed in this precious thing called life, Oprah tells a meaningless love story for the gratification of her viewers. Her inaccurate interpretation of the story caused a dramatic affect in the atmosphere and a whole new attitude for the audience.
“Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used by the author to represent abstract ideas or concepts.” Symbolism in literature is the depth and hidden meaning in any piece of work. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a powerful and evocative novel laced with symbolism. The most obvious is the symbol of the scarlet letter itself, representing Hester’s sin of adultery. Hawthorne’s other symbols are less obvious and are very often obscured in the novel.
Janie finds her way out when Joe Starks appears. The first thing Joe does after asking for a drink of water is to name himself: "Joe Starks was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in and through Georgy" (47). Hurston's naming of Starks is ironic for several reasons. The word stark is often used as a synonym for barren, and Joe Starks and Janie never have any children. Hurston hints at sexual problems that develop between the pair because of their separate beds and Janie's eventual verbal "castration" of Joe in the store. Starks's name is also ironic because of his focus on capitalistic pursuits. Starks's wealth gives him a false sense of power because the townspeople resent him and the things he does to gain his wealth. Starks's name could also be seen as a comment on his desire to be a "big voice." As Janie eventually finds out, there is not much behind the big voice; it is a facade for the starkness inside Joe.
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Select a novel or play and, focusing on one symbol, write an essay analyzing how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot. (2009 Open-Ended Question for AP English Literature and Composition).