Today in class we did the following:
1. Lit terms test
2. Discussed chapters 9-12
3. Looked at example introductions
Homework:
1. Read Eyes ch. 13-16
2.
Journal 5: Ch 13-16: Tonight, I want you to practice analyzing specific language. You’ll do
this by analyzing each sentence (on its own) of the assigned paragraph. Your
analysis does not have to be in complete sentences or form a coherent whole,
you just need to demonstrate that you can look at individual words and phrases
for meaning. You should have analysis after EVERY sentence. Be sure to find a way to show which
sentences are yours and which are Hurston’s
My example: (p. 125… “All night…like ants”, just about
three pages in to Ch. 14). Note: Hurston’s language is italicized.
All night now the jooks clanged and clamored.
Hurston uses onomatopoeia with “jooks” and “clamored” to create vivid aural
imagery for the reader; she also has “jooks” as the subject, implying that
these establishments take on a life aside simply from humans. Blues made and used right on the spot.
“Blues” here could be a play on words—referring to music or emotion. The word
“used” implies the blues are totally spent, not mean to last a lifetime,
perhaps showing how fleeting this moment is. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love
every hour. The list of gerunds shows activity, particularly with words
like “fighting”. The natural juxtapositions of more positive actions
(“laughing”) and negative ones (“crying”) not only creates hyperbole but shows
the richness of the emotional experience. Even the syntax, a fragment, implies
movement, action but still a lurking undercurrent of the impossibility of the
moment lasting forever. Work all day for
money, fight all night for love. The use of the word “all” creates clear
hyperbole and the split sentence, with parallel structure creates juxtaposition
not just between “money” and “love” but how each is procured. Hurston seems to
imply that these are the only actions of life. Interestingly, the more negative
of the two verbs, “fighting”, is paired with love, which creates somewhat of a
paradox. Can we ever get love from fighting? The rich black earth clinging to bodies and biting the skin like ants.
First, we get an image of the earth (“rich” and “black”); due to the previous
mention of money, one cannot help but wonder if Hurston creates another pun
here. The verb “clinging” seems to imply that the soil is almost desperate, as
if it is more attached to the humans than they are to it. Finally, the simile
created at the end “biting the skin like ants”, shows how troublesome the land
can be, like a pest. However, we get a complex image, the land is both “rich” and
“biting”, implying, as before, that such an emotionally rich experience comes
with the good and the bad; in suffering there is beauty, in beauty there is
suffering. Again, the use of another fragment could imply that the moment is fleeting;
times seems to move quickly in the paragraph.
Your paragraph: Page 113 (in my book), it is the ninth
paragraph in Ch. 13. It begins “But don’t care how firm your determination is,
you can’t keep turning round in one place like a horse” and ends with “day and
night she worried time like a bone”.
