Their Eyes Were Watching God Dialogue

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Your voice, the gateway between your thoughts and the rest of the world, is a quintessential part of your being. When building a character, important decisions have to be made about how their voice comes across in their dialogue, and Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God expertly uses the transition between the black vernacular and the formal narrative to not only create compelling characters, but to give us a greater depth and understanding beyond what’s stated in the text. Dialogue, and the lack there of, is used purposefully to supplement and enhance the story, and, during Janie’s tribulations, the way that her voice is expressed demonstrates the power in her relationships and her progress in finding her place in a world full …show more content…
During Janie’s trial, dialogue is used to show the shift in the power dynamic of the novel. While previously oppressed language was present in the relationship between men and women, this scene used it to show racial dynamic as well. The black dialogue falls almost silent during this scene, and the first, and only, example of it shown by the author is when a spectator speaks up, only to be silenced by the white prosecutor, “[The] negroes in the back, they had come to talk. […] ‘If you know what’s good for you, you better shut your mouth up until somebody calls you,’ Mr. Prescott told him coldly. ‘Yassuh, Mr. Prescott.’ ‘We are handling this case. Another word out of you, out of any of you n****** back there, and I’ll bind you over to the big court’” (219). The rest of the scene is dominated by white voices, and even Janie’s testimony is glossed over by the narrator, despite her newfound voice. In this scene, the nature of the language is also a divider, with the white dialogue written in pristine, grammatical English, more proper even then the narrators writing style. However, in the only other scene where white and black people interact, this is very different. After the hurricane, white guards facilitate the cleanup of bodies by black laborers, and while a power difference is clearly present, the language no longer displays it. “Don’t dump dem bodies in de hole lak dat! Examine every …show more content…
Recently, as millions of people have been displaced from the Middle East by conflict, Europe has had ongoing debates about how to handle the influx of refugees. However, despite all the media coverage about the issue, voices of the actual people concerned rarely are heard. This allows people to detach themselves from the problem, treat it as another political issue rather than one of real human suffering. Zora Neale Hurston, in Their Eyes Were Watching God doesn’t try and follow an agenda; she is just concerned with being true to humanity, and all of its hopes, dreams and imperfections. This is why dialogue is so important in the story. You’re not reading some pretentious, stilted dialogue, seeming almost robotic in its clarity, but rather human, callous language, with all its flaws laid out before you, and from this language we can read a lot deeper into the
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