Language Appreciation and Interpretation

Hurston has a way with words. Her writing has the same beauty as a da Vinci painting. There are so many different examples of her phenominal writting in There Eyes Were Watching God, but the one that stood out to me the most was on page 89 and 90. It is when Janie is critiquing Nanny's thoughts about love. Janie reveals her hatred for her grandmother in this passage because Janie believes that the love wasn't genuine. It was "mislove" and in turn hurt her more than it helped. Instead of Nanny showing Janie off to the world, and having "the jewel down inside of her" shine, Nanny put her in the "marketplace to sell". While this is an important part in the novel because it shows Janie's true feelings about her grandmother and how she was raised, the beauty of her words that come after it are what caught my eye.

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing and covered each one with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling and mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine" (90) is the magnificent writing that I am referring to. I love how Hurston is putting forth the idea that everyone came from this greater being, and therefore, everyone is great in their own ways. Also that everyone has the potential to shine because they had glittered once, a long time ago. So no matter how low you feel you are, there is always ways to ameliorate yourself considering that once upon a time, everyone had an aura of perfection. This is an extremely motivating and uplifting quote from the novel because it encourages the reader to strive and allow their true self and their positive characteristics to shine through to the rest of the world.