Language Appreciation and Interpretation

"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" (pg.8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i4yrPeuofI&feature=related

This quote leads the reader into chapter two and into learning more about the protagonist, Janie Crawford. It is set in the novel just before Janie tells Phoeby of her life after leaving Eatonville. As we learned from our transcendentalism unit, humans and nature share countless similarities. One of which is the idea of development and growth. We are all born as seeds, having little knowledge and experience in the world. Though at times we struggle and find ourselves in pain, we discover happiness to counter it. Suffering and contentment coexist throughout the span of our entire lives. We thus learn to develop a tough skin, similar to that of a tree’s bark, in order to protect ourselves during the hard times. Eventually, we bear our branches to show our accomplishments and our failures, our dreams and our regrets.

This quote is perhaps a foreshadowing for the course of the novel. The line “Dawn and doom was in the branches” seems to leave a feeling that there will be, or have been, moments in Janie’s life filled with creation and the birth of new dreams. With that dawn, however, lies the doom, or the destruction of both her dreams and self- empowerment.

The descriptive language that Hurston uses in the novel is an interesting contrast to the southern slang dialect that makes up the dialogue. Each time that I read long strings of conversation and finally get to a narrative paragraph, I’m continuously shocked by the deep imagery and passion by which Hurston uses to illustrate a character, setting, or mood. As opposed to the intricacy of the narrative, the dialogue is made up of a large amount of slang and drawling. This helps to set the scene for the southern culture at the time.