Literary Device Evaluation- Joshua Jenson

Zora Neale Hurston affectively uses literary devices throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston sprinkles metaphors, similes, and conflicts throughout the book which creates rich reading content. This essay will be going over an example of each of these: metaphors, simile, foreshadowing, symbolism, and mood. Each of the examples is the strongest out of each category above that is in Their Eyes Were Watching God.
“Janie saw her life like a big tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (Hurston 8). It talks of a pear tree which Janie loves to watch. This tree is a simile comparing Janie’s life to the tree. This tree represented the horizon which Janie is pursuing in her first two relationships. The tree was the essence of love she wished and longed for during her younger years.
The blossoming of the flowers on the tree represented Janie transitioning from being a child to a woman. At the end of Janie’s story she says, “Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons” (191). This statement showed that eventually she really did find the love that she longed for. She looked at that tree as a sign of hope and encouragement that love could happen.
The love Janie experienced with Tea Cake was the horizon Janie had been waiting for. But, this love was not to last. The good times Tea Cake and Janie spent shooting the rifle foreshadows Janie’s painful deed later in the book. “’Tain’t no need uh you not knowin’ how tuh handle shootin’ tools. Even if you didn’t never find no game, it’s always some trashy rascal dat needs uh good killin’” (Hurston 130). Janie became very handy with the firearms. Hurston makes special emphasis on the fact that Tea Cake buys a rifle and a pistol after the storm claimed their original guns. This creates a great deal of suspicion that something will happen pertaining to the guns and it does. Janie is forced to shoot Tea Cake in order to save her own life near the end of the book. This sad act confirms the suspicion that is fed earlier in the book.
“The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church.
This contains another simile but it also represents a person vs. person conflict. Jody slowly drives Janie away from him until she finally closes him out of heart and replaces him with her dream to one day find happiness. She had become a hypocrite, pretending to have a perfect marriage in public while acting hostile in private.
The story about the mule serves the purpose of letting us get to know Janie’s relationship to the town and the restraints Jody put upon her. It also serves as a symbol of Janie. She was waiting to be broken free from Jody’s rules and restraint’s. She longed to move towards the horizon instead of away. The mule was a symbol to her that one day someone would come and rescue her from her bondage and suffering and bring her into the horizon where she could bloom.
Finally, we see the tension between Jody and Janie in the phrase, “The silence was the sleep of swords” (77). This shows that the “honeymoon phase” of their relationship over and the grim truth of marriage had struck. They began to draw apart until the silence was their only comfort and yet also a great burden. Silence reigned in the house to prevent both conflict and love from happening again.
Hurston truly painted a great work of art when she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. She captures Janie’s independence by comparing her to the pear tree. Hurston also depicts Janie’s life as a journey to the horizon (the horizon being a place where love reigned supreme). The rifles foreshadowed dark times in her horizon, eventually leading her to kill the very one who had brought her into her horizon. The silence between Jody and Janie is descriptively written as the sleep of swords. While Janie replaced Jody with her dream like a Virgin Mary in a church, Jody replaced Janie with his work. Hurston created a story that requires deep intellectual thought to properly understand the plot by sprinkling these powerful devices as guideposts to truly understand the message of her book: Their Eyes Were Watching God.