A Lesson in Imagery

"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.  Dawn and doom was in the branches."

 

I noticed that the image of a tree runs throughout Chapter 2 of Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Hurston starts with the quote above, comparing a tree with all of its many different branches to the joys and sufferings of Janie's life.  She continues this tree imagery in various aspects throughout the Chapter, especially when Janie wonders what it would be like to be a pear tree or any tree in bloom on page 11.  The words that Hurston uses seem happy and full of life.  She writes of the "bees singing the beginning of the world" (maybe something to do with some sort of sexual awakening in Janie that may occur? She is 16 and has not had any experiences with a  man but will soon be kissed by one person and married to another) and Janie having "glossy leaves and bursting buds" and there is a newness to these phrases, an innocence that exists in meaning behind these words.  However, we see how quickly the beautiful imagery of the pear tree is destroyed when Nanny tells Janie that she must marry Logan Killicks.  Hurston writes, "The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating that pear tree, but Janie didn't know how to tell Nanny that (14)."


Since I am an English major, my understanding of this Chapter is focusing on what I know best, i.e., the literary devices that drive the plot or explore the theme of a story.  The dialogue is still throwing me a bit due to the phonetically spelling of the words but Hurston's language is beautiful and that is what I am focusing on to help me with my understanding of the novel.  Though some of her imagery was difficult to make meaning of at first, I feel like as I continue with the novel, I am becoming better at seeing the metaphors and how they relate to Janie's story.


As I'm reading this chapter, I can't help but think back to the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson that I recently read.  The imagery of a tree exists throughout that novel and I feel it can be related here.  There is a great quote from Speak that really summed up the point of the story. It reads:

“A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.  Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.” 

The main character in Speak breaks free from her depression due to tragic circumstances that she had to endure and she becomes stronger because of it.  Based on the ideas that I am drawing from the use of tree imagery in Their Eyes Were Watching God and in Speak, I feel like Janie will also learn to become a stronger woman even after she faces hardships and suffering.  Those branches of doom that Hurston describes must be cut off in order for Janie to grow as a woman.

My prior knowledge as an English major and someone who has experienced the use of a tree as a metaphor for life in another text is helping me understand the novel more.  Though I could be wrong since I don't know what happens to Janie in the end just yet, I'm pretty sure my assumptions are correct.  Through my experiences and things that I have learned before reading this novel, I am able to make this prediction.  I must remember this prediction and see if the knowledge that I brought to the table really did help me understand this novel better.

The Start of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Based on Teressa's reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God, I was already anticipating having a hard time understanding the dialogue because of the dialect that the characters speak with.  However, after reading some of the first chapter, I noticed that I was having more trouble with Zora Neale Hurston's flowery writing than with the dialogue! I was confused: I'm an aspiring English teacher; the author's writing shouldn't be so difficult for me.  But I noticed that the constant metaphors of the narration kept making me have to re-read lines over and over to figure out what was actually being said.

For example, the minute that I read the following sentence in the second paragraph on the very first page, I knew I was going to have a difficult time with this novel: "Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget."  I must have re-read this one sentence about three times.  I thought I was reading it wrong every time.  In my head I kept saying, "Wait, women forget things they don't want to remember? That means the same thing! And they remember what they don't want to forget? But that's the same thing!"  This sentence literally drove me nuts for about 5 minutes until I realized how redundant it was.  I didn't understand what it meant for the novel but maybe it will make sense as I read more of it.

Another sentence that stuck out to me was, "Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song." At first I didn't understand what the author meant by words walking without masters.  How are the words of the people "walking?"  But I decided to find some context in the sentences before this one. Here is my "Think Aloud" process as I re-read the paragraph:

"Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. (Okay, so they are jealous of this woman as she walks past them and they know her because it says "from other times") So they chewed up the back parts of their minds (when she writes "back parts of their minds," I think of the thoughts that you don't want anyone to know, insecure and dark thoughts) and swallowed them with relish. (relish definition from Dictionary.com: "Enjoy greatly." So they are enjoying these awful thoughts about this woman, I think)  They made burning statements with questions and killing tools out of laughs. (wow, I love "killing tools out of laughs."  It makes me think about teenagers and how their cruel laughs can really destroy a person. Look at this YouTube clip of the movie Speak; watch from 7:40-8:04 and you'll understand what I mean)  It was mass cruelty. (Again, reminds me of the movie clip, all these people talking about this poor woman and being so mean to her.  Does she deserve it? What did she do?) A mood come alive.  Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song."

As I look at that last sentence now after re-reading the context that it is in, I think I understand what she means.  By personifying "words" and writing that they are "walking without masters," the author makes me think that the words have taken on a mind of their own.  The people are just spewing mean words at this woman without thinking about her and her situation.  "Walking altogether like harmony in a song" makes me think that the words have all the same meaning.  These people are saying the same mean things about her; the words fit together harmoniously even though they are so full of ugly hate.

When I read Hurston's words in this way and break each sentence down carefully, I find her writing to be so beautiful.  Look at how she wrote that paragraph.  She is basically trying to say that these people are talking about a woman behind her back.  But look at how much more she adds to that statement by the language she uses.  It is wonderful and sad at the same time.

A Lesson in Vocabulary

As I continue my reading of Great Expectations, I notice that Dickens uses words that I am familiar with in unfamiliar ways.  This is obviously due to the19th century English language that he writes in.  Many words and certain definitions that may have been used in the 1800s have become obsolete in today's society.

It took me a bit longer than usual to get through the next set of pages because every time I came upon a word that I was unsure of, I would stop, write down the word, then put it into Google to see if I could find the definition.  I used context clues for some of the words but in order to confirm my thoughts, I would rely on the internet.  For example, here are some of the words and their uses in the novel:

Bolt - "I Bolted, myself, when I was your age...as a boy I've been among many Bolters; but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and its a mercy you ain't Bolted dead."

During this section of the story, Pip, his sister, and her husband are sitting down eating dinner. When I first read this paragraph, I assumed from my knowledge that they are eating that it had something to do with Pip and his food.  After Googling "bolt definition," I found that bolt also means "To eat (food) hurriedly and with little chewing; gulp."  Bolt made more sense to me in the story based on this other definition that I had never known.

Other words which I were unsure of were "file and whittles."  I had mentioned both in my previous post but went back to them today for this vocabulary discussion.  I had figured that when the criminal asked for a file from Pip, he was asking for something that would wear something away, like a nail file.  As for whittle, I had no clue what that could mean and I really didn't have any assumptions for it.  When I googled "What is a file and whittles in Great Expectations?" I found out that I was right about my definition of "file" but "whittles" actually meant: "Wittles is 'vittles' or 'victuals.' It means food."  The person who posted this answer said that he taught the book and his text has footnotes.  In order to confirm this, I checked another website which produced the same answer.

The last word I found strange was "interlocutor."  Here is the sentence: "I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg."  Based on previous pages, I knew that Pip was referencing the criminal that he encountered in the first chapter.  However, I wanted to know Dickens' specific reason for calling him a "interlocutor," a word I had never heard before.  So when I googled the word, these are the definitions that came up:

From Dictionary.com

This made sense in several different ways.  Obviously the first definition makes sense because the criminal has a conversation with Pip.  The third one also makes sense because he interrogates him about where he lives and if anyone knows he's out.  Now, the second one--to me, this definition makes an interlocutor a middleman of sorts and the criminal acts like the middleman during his conversation to Pip when he tells him that if Pip does not bring him a file and whittles, then he will tell another man who is apparently waiting in the shadows to take out Pip's heart and liver.

My comprehension of the story became so much clearer after learning the definitions to these words.  It is essential to learn vocabulary in order to better understand a particular text or topic.

A Lesson in Dialogue

As I've been continuing my reading of the Dicken's classic, Great Expectations, I noticed something that Teressa commented on about her novel.  During the first chapter, the main character Pip is harassed by a man who asks him to bring him a file and whittles or he will cut out his heart and liver and eat them (ew).  What I noticed was that Dickens sets up the social statuses of Pip and this man based on their dialogue.  While Pip's words are spelled out correctly with proper grammar, the man's dialogue is sometimes spelled out phonetically, giving him a different dialect that I think speaks to his character and status.  It isn't as hard to understand as Their Eyes Were Watching God, but the small nuances in the man's words brought me back to Teressa's blog.

When I first began reading the man's words, it was a bit hard for me to understand.  Like I usually do while reading a novel, I re-read his dialogue a few times before I grasped what he was saying.  Here is a portion of what he says to Pip:

"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, 'what fat cheeks you ha' got"..."Darn me if I couldn't eat 'em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't a mind to't!"..."You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler...and your heart and liver shall be tore out..."

As I stated before, the words are not as difficult to read as the dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God, but it did create a slight obstacle in my understanding of what was happening during this section.  Once I re-read the man's words, I was able to understand better.  And the dialogue also helped me to picture in my head the small child, Pip and this deranged man.  Dicken's use of dialogue, once understood, creates the image of these two characters.  He doesn't have to write much about their appearance; only give these characters the appropriate speech, and the reader will figure out where Pip and the man exist in society.