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How Does Hurston Use Figurative Language In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Anthropologist, and Harlem Renaissance writer and activist Zora Neale Hurston sought to share the “untouched, raw” characters of the South with her readers. Zora masterfully incorporates metaphors, imagery, idioms, and personification into her narratives as she shares her biography, folk tales, voodoo customs, and the social context of black life. Similar to Dust Tracks on a Road Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, she uses metaphors and imagery to rise from her childhood poverty in the rural South to a leader taking over a captivating movement of her time, the Harlem Renaissance. In Mules and Men, a black America’s folklore who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery.Figurative language in Hurston’s work is used in order to convey its themes and messages and make the language richer and deeper. Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of Zora’s eminent bodies of work shows examples of Hurston using figurative language to bring Janie's (the main character) experience of tragedy to life.Janie wants something out of life and love that seems …show more content…

Mules and Men, unlike any of her other stories, is a straightforward depiction of the humor and "exoticism" of African American folk culture, Zora Neale Hurston carefully arranged her folktales and meticulously delineated the contexts in which they were narrated to reveal complex relationships between race and gender in Black life. Underscoring the traditional subversive role of African American folklore, she highlights the continuing role folktales play in Black people's struggles with economic and racial oppression. Hurston also details the function of folklore in conflicts between Black men and Black women, showing both how men use folktales to reinforce and legitimate oppression of women and how women use them to fight against a subservient role and to assert their

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