Friday! Feb. 8

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”.