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In comparing Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological articles with her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, readers
immediately sense two radically different voices. Hurston's writings in both genres are undoubtedly influenced by
her work as an anthropologist, but in two very different ways. In Hurston’s academic writing, the stance she adopts
seems to make it difficult for her to fully express herself; There is an obvious tension between her role as participant
in the African-American culture and her attempt to describe it in scientific terms. In contrast, her prose
successfully illustrates the same aspects of African-American culture that she attempts to describe in her academic
articles without suffering from the same tension. Her novel, therefore, stands as a much more successful description of the
customs and traditions of African-American life in the early twentieth century.
Hurston’s depictions of African-American appropriation of the English language serve, in particular, as excellent examples of
this dichotomy. In her scientific articles, the descriptions she gives seem to fall short of fully representing the intricacies of
the dialect. Her attempt to categorize the discrete details of African-American speech in traditional scientific terms seems
to hinder her efforts to fully explain its fine points. However, in Their Eyes, Hurston is able to use her understanding
of the dialect to illustrate many of the same details she discusses in her articles through more casual language that
nevertheless strikes a reader as highly descriptive. In doing so, the complexities of the African-American dialect are
presented as a much more coherent whole and readers feel infinitely more gratified after having read it.
Juxtaposing Hurston’s scientific article, “Characteristics of Negro Expression”, with chapter six of Their Eyes makes
this point clear. In “Characteristics”, Hurston talks about the African-American “will to adorn”, linking it to several specific
linguistic constructions such as metaphor and simile, the double-descriptive and verbal nouns. These constructions are,
Hurston writes, “…the Negro’s greatest contribution to the [English] language” (1021). But while her academic
description accurately recounts the types of constructions we should expect to find in African-American speech, it falls short
of expressing the power inherent in such linguistic appropriation. In chapter six of Their Eyes, on the other hand, two
of Hurston’s characters (Sam and Lige) bring these constructions to life as they carry out a debate of the importance of the
powers of ‘nature’ and ‘caution’. Hurston's prose description of the debate between Sam and Lige allows readers to gain a
real understanding of the importance of metaphor and simile to the African-American dialect and, in turn, to the culture.
Sam and Lige's entire debate is based on a metaphor: “Whut is it dat keeps uh man from getting’ burnt on uh red-hot stove…”
(64) and throughout the debate Sam and Lige continuously use metaphorical speech: “Dat caution you talkin’ ’bout ain’t nothin’
but a humbug” (65), “Nature got so high in uh black hen she got tuh lay uh white egg” (65). And they do so to debate the sort of
abstract philospohical questions we generally think of as confined to academics. After reading the passage, thoughtful readers
are much more apt to understand the importance of these constructions to the African-American dialect and to appreciate the
depth of thought and beauty that goes along with their usage.
When Hurston describes double-descriptives and verbal nouns in the "Characteristics" article, the reader again gains an
technical understanding of how the constructions are created but is left without a clear idea of how they fit into the
African-American dialect or the power that they carry. In Hurston's description of Sam and Lige’s debate, the men put the
constructions to use in a powerful way, using words such as “questionizin’” (63), “onliest” (65), and “scoundrel-beast”
(66). These examples of the constructions that Hurston describes in her article are no more accurate than the examples
she provides in her scientific article, but they gain descriptive power through the context in which they lay. By presenting the
words as part of a debate, readers are able to get a true feeling for how they are used in African-American speech. By
displaying examples in a dialogue, Hurston allows the reader to see how they fit into the dialect, and to feel the power that
goes along with such appropriation of the language. Due to Hurston’s stance in regards to African-American culture (as both
participant and researcher), Their Eyes simultaneously stands out as a beautifully narrated novel and a vivid description of
African-American life in the south during the early 20th century. Hurston’s prose reveals both her deep understanding
and her love of African-American culture.
Although many of Hurston’s academic articles suffer under the pressure that Hurston must have felt trying to bridge the gap
between participant and researcher of African-American culture, in Their Eyes Hurston seems to have been able to
find a balance between the two roles. She has obviously called upon her experiences in the African-American community,
both as participant and academic, in order to consciously construct the novel as a depiction of African-American culture. It is
clear that Hurston’s scientific study provided her with the perfect platform from which to write a novel based in African-American
culture; being able to view the culture through the eyes of a scientist allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of its
complexities and prepared her to illustrate the African-American ethos in all its beauty. As Hurston herself says in Mules and
Men, her studies allowed her to “see [her]self like somebody else” (1).
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