Portrayal of African Americans through Written Works Fredrick Douglas, an escaped slave and one of the most influential African American writers and abolitionists once said, “If there is no struggle, there is no process.” This quote means if one is not willing to undergo conflict, then they will never reach their goals. This is vastly applicable to the African American characters in two stories, namely, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, which illustrate the struggles that these individuals faced in their journey to happiness in a discriminatory society. In these two novels, the authors are given the ability to describe the people of color in their own way, and this brings positives and negatives. Throughout these books, there are strengths and…show more content… One of the weaknesses is she focuses too much on Janie’s personal wants and desires, which makes her seem self-absorbed. Hurston fails to capitalize on the opportunity to address all the racial issues going on in society and focuses only on Janie’s personal issues. This can be seen as unfair as only an extremely slim amount of African Americans share the exact same struggles as Janie. For example, a personal issue Janie shares is her longing for a loving man. Janie states, “‘Ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all de wantin’’” (Hurston 23). As one can recognize from this dialect, Janie’s individual hopes for a loving man do not speak for the entire African American community. Janie’s struggles are accurately portrayed, but the black community as a whole is shoved to the side as a secondary issue. One way that one could argue how the vernacular style used by the authors hindered the characters in these books is that it was used just for entertainment and showed a lack of education throughout the black
