Their Eyes Were Watching God Voice Analysis

Her Story, Her Voice The unique story that is Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story of voices collected together to create one big voice. Hurston uses many characters’ voices to help Janie find her own, actual voice and tell her story by the end of the novel. The story by Zora Neale Hurston is a frame story which is a story within a story. Hurston, like many other authors, uses the frame narrative to help the story come full circle and create a sense that the reader is part of the story. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses multiple voices throughout the story to show all the parts that come together to fully understand Janie’s story. It seems important to acknowledge that there are two narrators: Janie and the anonymous speaker that helps Janie tell her story. Although Janie is the main narrator, the anonymous narrator speaks every now and then about Janie. The main example is at the very beginning of the story when the anonymous narrator is telling of Janie walking back into Eatonville and describing the scene. The anonymous narrator passes the torch to Janie for most of the story so that she can tell Pheoby what happened in her own words. The anonymous narrator is important because he or she gives Janie a chance to catch her breath and describes Janie to the reader in a way Janie might

Although some readers might argue that the characters do not contribute to Janie’s voice, it is clear through the details that Hurston places in the novel that they very much do help create Janie’s voice. They play an important part in Hurston’s novel because they are Janie’s story. The characters in the novel make up who Janie becomes and contribute to making her the way she is and therefore contribute to her voice. Through telling the story to Phoeby, Janie finds her voice with the help of the others in the story, which make up the frame