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Faulkner Relaxing after his AP Lang & Comp Exam
Faulkner Relaxing after his AP Lang & Comp Exam
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Hurston employs personification in order to illuminate recurrent themes in the novel, such as death, nature, love, marriage, power, and the influence of society. One passage from pages 50-100 that has an example of personification is:
ReplyDelete“Taint no such thing! Nature tells yuh not tuh fool wid no red-hot stove, and you don’t do it neither….Naw it ain’t, it’s nature, cause nature makes caution. Its de strongest thing dat God ever made, now. Fact is it’s the onliest thing God ever made. He made nature and nature nade everything else. …Tell me somethin’ you know of dat nature ain’t made” (64-65).
This passage is an excerpt from the conversation between Walter Thomas and Sam speak about the roles of God and nature in the world. Hurston personifies nature, as if it has feelings and capabilities for creation, connoting that it has significant power and deserves much respect. By personifying nature, Hurston can convince her audience of the crucial contributions of nature in the everyday world, and that it should not be disregarded. The element of personification allows Hurston to portray nature’s central importance in the novel, but implicitly rather than explicitly. This method allows her to include a variety of structures to reiterate the same points, and display the necessity of the role of nature in all aspects of the novel and of the world.
I agree with Kara as far as what Hurston reflects in her personification (death, nature, love, marriage, etc.), but disagree slightly in Hurston's motives for doing so. I don't think that Hurston convinces "her audience of the crucial contributions of nature in the everyday world" as much as she reminds the audience that humans are as much a part of nature as nature is in humans.
ReplyDeleteOn pgs. 61-62,
"[The buzzards] were already holding a great flying-meet way up over the heads of the mourners and some of the nearby trees were already peopled with the stoop-shouldered forms. As soon as the crowd was out of sight they closed in circles...They wanted to begin but the Parson wasn't there, so a messenger was sent to the ruler in a tree where he sat...Examined it well from end to end and leaped upon it and bowed, and the others danced a response. That being over, he balanced and asked..."
The above passage reflects many parallels between humans and nature. Beyond the obvious use of the word "peopled", Hurston also creates the image of a great event in the world of the birds that follows a large gathering the human world: as the birds mill around the carcass of the body, so did the people of the town; as the birds waited, due to tradition, for their great Parson to arrive, so do the people wait for their Mayor to give his last blessing; the birds have their social boundaries just as the people have their own social definitions of who can attend the funeral ("But you ain't goin' off in all dat mess uh comonness. Ah'm surprised at yuh fuh askin'," (60)); as the buzzards follow their own protocol, so the humans are bound by their protocol (i.e. sanitation regulation, "burial services", etc.); as the birds stood on the body of the mule and make speeches, so the Mayor and Sam do too; when the birds prepare for their celebration at the end of the speech-making, so do the people of the town celebrate in their own manner the death of the mule; just as the birds were simultaneously solemn and excited with the arrival of their Parson (and the feast to come) so were the people both excited for the new prospects of the mule in heaven and saddened by the passing of the town's animal. This harmony of humanity and nature is then compounded when a mere page later, Sam and Lige Moss are debating whether or not the red-hot stove is nature or human caution...
P.S. World's longest sentence!
I also agree with both George and Kara about the ideas of personification (death, nature, love etc...), along with that, Hurston may not necessarily be pushing the "crucial" aspect of nature to the people, but uses nature to represent the people, therefore showing that nature and humans are intertwined and apart of each other.
ReplyDelete"Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun" (51). This reminded me a lot of the passage that we discussed earlier in class; "flung" and "plunge" seems to be not harsh but impulsive moves, as if it were a person not the world. As well "exposing" the sun seems negative, as if to expose someone for their true self or of some other matter, giving the sun a more negative connotation in contrast to the normal positive, similar to the earlier passage. This sort of personification of the world and "impulses" of the world illuminates the people of the town, allowing recognition that perhaps for them the day time is not as happy or as preferable of a time than night is, opposite of what we are familiar with in most literature. This to me illuminates Janie's dreams, and what seems to be a major aspect of the novel. At night is when we dream, and the dreams or "fairytale" ideals contrasted to reality are what Janie desires. By illuminating night as a happier time, dreams are therefore represented as a basis and main importance of the people and town as a whole.
I also agree that Hurston personifies nature throughout her story thus far, and that the significance of her doing so is to show that, as George and Molly said, humans are a part of nature and must learn to realize this. The final sentence, on page 99 "So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day."(Hurston 99). This sentence directly parallels the sentence that we talked about in class (yesterday?). "They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged."(Hurston 33). Through personifying nature, and more specifically the moon and the sun, the night and the day, multiple times throughout her novel thus far, she is allowing the reader to realize the difference in feeling related to these aspects of nature in the hearts of the characters as opposed to the preconceived notions we have about them. As we talked about in class, the quote on page 99 also personifies the night time to give it more appealing qualities. Stating that Janie "watched the moon rise." rather than the sun set, implies that she is anticipating the arrival of the moon rather than dreading the loss of the sun. This yearning for night time speaks to the fact that for Janie the night time was more peaceful and calm. Also, by choosing to state that the moon was "quenching the thirst of the day" also implies that the day was lacking somehting that the night offered and that Janie was anticipating. Through personifying the night time and the shift between day and night, Hurston is able to portray to the reader the longing for night time and the comfort in night time that Janie has.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so now that we've established WHAT Hurston is personifying (or at least some of those things) think about a rhetorical analysis essay... why, how, to what effect on the reader does Hurston employ personification? How does personification function as a rhetorical device in the novel? In a given passage?
ReplyDeleteMolly I was thinking about the relationship of the sun and the earth too as I was thinking about this question. From Tuesday I had been thinking about how if the sun hides in a crevice in the Earth at night it is a linear journey instead of a complex orbital system that it actually is and this going and returning pattern is a very one-sided. The Earth is dead and stifled as it waits for the sun to plunge and emerge, and is therefore an unequal balance of power and responsibility upon the two parties, and I think this points to the unequal power and the unequal responsibility between men and women. (Another thought: if the sun were too tired to haul itself out of the crevice, the Earth would be left in darkness, this leaves a greater margin of error for the sun to misstep and disappoint the world as opposed to the regular, systematic orbiting of the sun by the earth—more at risk?) At the end of Chapter 10 Janie “sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.” To add the moon into the sun/earth dynamic, if it is solely responsible for quenching the day, could this be a comment on the roles of men, women and nature? Is it women who quench the day while the men flit about nature, or is it nature who relieves some tension from the male/female power struggle?
ReplyDeleteNot to sound like a broken record, but I agree with the notion that Hurston personifies nature as well. This being said, I believe she does it for a different reason then those stated above (unless I missed it in which case I suppose I AM a broken record). Anyways, in my opinion, Hurston personifies natures in order to highlight the connection it has to the characters in the story, and therefore give the characters a new dimension of purity. I cannot really prove this in the text, so I suppose what I am implying is just a hunch, but at the same time, I feel like it is definitely arguable. I mean, nature is generally seen as the purist of life on earth, and the literal definition of personification means to give something human like qualities. In short, I guess what I am trying to say is that since Hurston is giving nature these human like qualities, it is not too hard fetched to believe that she is making a direct link to the characters in the story.
ReplyDeleteBy personifying (as an example) the moon and the sun, Hurston chooses the two polar opposites of life, but at the same time, compares them in a way which links them in the purest way possible; the cyclical notions of birth. “They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged”(Hurston 33). The wording in this sentence is especially interesting and I think many of the points I made in class correspond to the epiphany I just had now. For instance, the fact that the sun is plunging down while the moon is being exposed clearly exposes connotations of both birth and death. These two facts of life are arguable the purist that we can comprehend, and the link between them and the characters show the link of purity.
That thought is not exactly well developed so ill gladly clarify any misunderstandings if there are any.
Maggie, this makes me think of your other comment and my reaction to it... that a cycle is itself a sort of paradoxical symbol but one that is really rich for breaking apart for understanding of either a character or a series of events. This comment hits on a lot of what the cyclicality of nature itself does for the novel, but also about the ways in which journeys themselves are cyclical even as the "hero" moves "forward"
ReplyDeleteThe notion of opposites like day and night, male and female, sun and moon are resonated throughout the text so this is definitely something to keep an eye on.
I can't find any more specific examples of personification of nature in pages 50-100, but think that personification as a rhetorical device is to amplify the importance of the major themes of the novel such as love, marriage, , and nature. Personification can also provide new insight to the purpose or importance of something. The specific diction within the personification also creates a distinct image, which generally has either a positive or negative connotation. For example, "Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun" (51). The connotation of the world plunge makes it seem like an impulsive action as Molly said, or something negative. Because the town is being "exposed" to the sun, it appears as though the presence of the sun is dangerous to the people. This also reminded me of the quote we discussed in class, "They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same in the earth from which the night emerged" (33). Because the night and the sun emerged from the same place, it seems as though darkness and light are closely correlated, and it does not take much for one to transform into the other.
ReplyDeleteYikes I'm sorry this is so late!!!
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of the personification of nature. I'm sorry if I end up repeating things because I haven't read everyone's posts yet. I think I found another example: "In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be" (72). Hurston is personifying the pear tree that Janie was so facinated with earlier in the novel. When she was living with Nanny, Janie was particularly enthralled by the changing of the tree from barren branches to flowers to ripe fruits. This could represent the cyclical nature of life, and the growth of Janie. She wonders at how the leaves give way to flowers, just like she is working towards "blooming" herself. It is interesting that Janie described herself as the tree, because it also emphasizes the connection between nature and humans. Fruit trees are noted for their different appearances in different seasons, and the cyle which produces fruit and then loses that fruit. Hurston could be making the point that humans live through an ever-changing cycle, so maybe the pear tree represents all of the characters and not just Janie.
I like what Nicole brought up about the correlation between night and day. The use of the word "exposed" definitely has a negative connotation, and could be referring to how reality (i.e. Janie and Jody's terrible relationship) is dangerous to the town.
AHHH I'm so sorry for this being completely late but to be completely honest, I sort of fell asleep while reading the book and I just woke up....so I apologize for my two posts being so late.
ReplyDeleteLike Libbey, since it's so late I don't really have the time to read everyone's posts so I'm sorry in advance if I repeat anyone's ideas. I noticed that many already pointed out the examples of personification within the text so I thought I would quickly focus on why the author chooses to use personification. Personification of objects/feelings/ideas all draw the reader in closer to the concept the writer is trying to grapple with. Our connection between the thing being personified and ourselves is deepened and in turn so is our understanding. Because something so distant from ourselves is presented in such a way that we can relate to it effortlessly, the author's writing is furthered because a deeper understanding between reader and text can be established. For example, for Death (which I believe someone mentioned already) the author states "So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way in the West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it, and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come" (84) In this quote, by picturing a scene where Death is an actual being, living in an exposed room, the reader finally can begin to understand the weight of the word behind "Death". In this scene the author argues Death's almighty powers. It is in this scene that we finally see the final dominating power of humanity, the thing that truly controls us all...Death. Through the use of personification, Hurston's ability to connect with the reader and bring such broad and complicated subjects, some with conflicting emotions, to a solid center-- (somewhat) a definition of what is being talked about. I believe that through illustrating this scene of Death, our own connotations of death become almost irrelevant. I may be going crazy because I'm typing this while half asleep but I believe that because her personification of things allows for a formation of a definition due to this common image, we see Death for what it is, not anything else. The word is only as deep as what Hurston makes it. This word becomes only what she depicts it as and as a result, the author's argument can develop from this. For example, going back to Death, her reference to it being a "being" allows us to see Death as a powerful force or presence rather than a person. In this way, we cannot relate to death. It contains no personable attributes, acting as a robot, an empty shell, as it waits for the messanger to summon "it" to its next duty. It's stoney power that is illustrated in this scene erases all past connections with death and leaves only this new way of looking at death--as a power and as a controller.
Pretty sure that made absolutely no sense...
To follow Kara's initial post and expand on her ideas. Hurston's use of personification within death, nature, love, marriage, power, and the influence of society is evident throughout Hurston's novel. I believe that Hurston's use of personification is an attempted way to create equality among the different aspects in the book. Rather than speaking about lawn mower and an Ivy league graduate in the same sentence, Hurston uses personification to create a balance between the topics discussed. I found Hurston's use of personification when she mentioned the mule after it had been purchased and free from malnutrition.
ReplyDelete"Anyhow a free mule in town was something new to talk about. Starks piled fodder under the big tree near the porch and the mule was usually around the store like the other citizens...he almost got fat and they took a great pride in him" (Hurston 58).
However it is difficult to clearly state what the personification is in this sentence, because it does not blatantly tell you what the personification is, it is clear to the readers where these human-like attributes are in the mule. Previously in the novel, the general store was discussed as the 'center of town' or the gathering place for people to meet. The fact that the mule gathered at the general store with the other citizens, classified him as being a part of society, due to the social stimulation he created in the new town. The mule was seen as a part of the community, because it brought about conversation and interaction among the people to discuss what had happened, regarding the buying of the mule to set it free. Also the relationship between the mule and the community was also personified as being a relationship similar to that of siblings. The people provided for the mule with food and water, as the mule provided excitement and stimulation in the monotonous town.