The Importance of Dialogue in Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston actively used dialogue and wide ranging language to help establish the social status and define the personality of her characters in her enchanting tale Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel is the story of Janie Crawford's search for love in the form of a "frame" story, which could be defined as a literary work in which the author begins and ends with the same people in the same setting, with only a short period of time having elapsed. Within the frame, there were four distinctive units: Janie's early life with her grandmother, Nanny; her turbulent marriage to Logan Killicks; Janie's years with Joe Starks; and the final section focused on Janie's marriage to Tea Cake Woods. Each of these significant characters changed Janie's character in less subtle ways as she grew into a flourishing woman. Hurston's use of dialogue helped to define the personality and life position of each of these humans that her main character interacted with to the readers. Through the observance of the dialect and sentence formation, the resulting effect of these relationships upon Janie could be distinguished by the reader in her quest to find love and fulfillment.

Very early in the second chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston told readers what to expect in the language of her characters. She openly stated that Janie related her story to Pheoby in "soft, easy phrases", (10) exposing the common dialect spoken in northern Florida. Dialect could be defined as a spoken version of a language, possessing certain characteristics. It was a regional and often a class language with distinctive features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Attributed to the development of dialects, isolation suggested that natural and social barriers both tend to keep people apart and provide a setting for the development of a dialect. Zora Hurston evidently had a clear understanding for spoken language and was angered by false representations of it. In an essay entitled "Characteristics of Negro Expression", she scoffed at false dialects, saying that she hadn't heard any Negroes say such words as "ams" and "Ises", "Amit" or "I'se gwinter." These expressions she plainly stated, came from the white man's theatrical and romantic perception of Negro speech. Also Hurston observed that very few educated and uneducated Negroes said "I" clearly. As a matter of fact, neither did white people in casual conversation, she claimed, as it was an easy sound to "soften".

Zora Neale Hurston suggested three distinct aspects of Negro speech which were validated in the language of Janie, Pheoby, Tea Cake, and the other residents of Eatonville and the muck. First, every phrase of Negro life was highly dramatized, and some of that drama could be seen in social encounters including the gatherings on the porch. The tendency to adorn words or create new ones produced terms like "ham-shanked" "bodaciously", and "muffle-jawed". Finally the use of metaphors and similes actually supported her first statement about dramatizing language and actions. She found a tendency to create verbal nouns and make them act like verbs.

The development of speech was often influenced by several outside factors, as was the case in Janie's early years. Janie spent her childhood, when her language was developing, playing with the white grandchildren of Mrs. Washburn, Nanny's white employer. Not until she was six years old did Janie realize that she was a brown-skinned not a white little girl. Did Janie speak like the white playmates or like Nanny? There was an inseparable connection between the growth of language, the cultural setting, and the people who interacted with the child in the years of language gain. Mrs. Washburn's home was not the linguistic or cultural setting for Janie's development. The experience of learning to speak involved at least two people, one of which was Nanny, in Janie's instance. Nanny's granddaughter lacked parents, so Nanny assumed their role in building

Janie's vocabulary and grammar, and thus the child's language would then conform to the old lady's culture.

Nanny's speech reflected her position, education, and social status in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her life, a existence of labor and love, had been a very challenging one, full of stress and obstacles. Nanny had been born into slavery on a plantation near Savannah, Georgia. Nanny's language could have developed in an equally isolated plantation community, and, of course, she brought it with her when she came to Florida. Nanny's life revolved around her love for Janie and her loyalty to her employer, Mrs. Washburn, but within the limits of this small world, Nanny was an ambitious woman. With the help of Mrs. Washburn, she bought land and a little house, an unheard-of thing for a black unmarried woman to do. Without a doubt, Nanny loved Janie but it was love based on duty and responsibility. Nanny felt that it was her obligation to create a better life for Janie than she had experienced herself, thus her speech often came across as pushy in her urgency to provide for her granddaughter. "You answer me when Ah speak. Don't you dare set dere pountin' wid me after all Ah done went through for you!' She slapped the girl's face violently, and forced her head back so that their eyes met in struggle. With her hand uplifted for the second blow, she saw the huge tear that welled up from Janie's heart and stood in each eye. She was the terrible agony end the lips hightened down to hold back the cry and desisted." (14) In addition to the deliberate dialectical patterns, Nanny spoke a language rich in a vocabulary of localisms and folklore references, features characteristic of regional speech that helps make dialects distinctive. Zora Neale Hurston identified her character, Nanny, with strong, forceful language and dialect.

Janie's first husband, Logan Killicks was an old, unattractive farmer with a very simple life. A hard-working farmer with sixty acres of land and a comfortable house, Logan did not have a major role in Janie's life as a whole, yet he represented a significant type of person in the culture of the South. He owned his own land and farmed it successfully. On the farm Logan followed the demanding routines of agriculture and did certain household chores, as well as expecting Janie to work just as hard. Logan was old and set in his way; farm routines controlled his life. He knew that Janie was a spoiled girl and was unable to understand the depth of her boredom. Logan was not quite unintelligent, but he did not have the expansive drive to learn that many possessed, including Janie. His simple-mindedness was reflected in his speech. "Naw, Ah needs two mules dis yeah. Taters is goin' tuh be taters in de fall. Bringin' big prices. Ah aims tuh run two plows, and dis man Ah'm talkin' 'bout us got un mule all gentled up so even uh woman kin handle 'im." (27) He expressed his desire for Janie to work in the fields with him, unable to perceive why she would not want to follow his wishes. Logan was a simple, ignorant man whose dialogue proved to his wife as well as the reader that he lacked ambition or aspiration for self-improvement.

Soon after Logan went away to buy a gentle mule, Janie met Joe Starks, and it was not long before she left Logan, escaping down the road to meet Joe and follow his dream. If Joe Starks had one outstanding trait, it was confidence. Joe was a dreamer of very pragmatic dreams. He brought money, charisma, and a young bride to an up-and-coming town which he dubbed Eatonville. No one else had though about adding acreage to the town, but Joe bravely went off to a white land owner and bought a deed to tow hundred acres. Having thus attracted the attention of the townsmen, Joe called a meeting and got himself elected mayor. He was the only character described in the novel who smoked a cigar. The cigar, which quickly became Joe's signature, indicated that he was the manager and mayor - different from the farmers and laborers in the town. "So Joe Starks and his cigar took the center of the floor. "Ah thanks you all for yo' kind welcome and for extendin' tuh me de right hand uh fellowship. Ah kin see dat dis town is full uh union and love. Ah means tuh make dis our town de metropolis uh de state. So maybe Ah better tell yuh in case you don't know dat if we expect tuh move on, us got tuh incorporate lak every other town. Us got tuh incorporate, and us got tuh have uh mayor, if things is tuh be done and done right. Ah welcome you all on behalf of me and mah wife tuh dis store and tuh de other things tuh come. Amen." (43) Joe's extraordinary self-confidence led to control, a manifestation of power. One sure object under his control was Janie. He had a very demanding attitude which instilled fear and, his strong-willed ideas were reflected in his the dialogue that Hurston created for him.

After the death of second husband, Janie stumbled across a happy young man named Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods who came strolling into Eatonville hoping to watch a baseball game. Tea Cake, having appeared from nowhere and seeming to have no visible means of support, worried the porch sitters because they were sure he was after Janie's money. He was just as independent as Joe Starks but didn't seem interested in building towns or stores or acquiring possessions. Tea Cake had the personality to make Janie think that maybe this man might give her the sort of love she had been waiting for. Tea Cake led Janie to discover things about herself that she never knew about in her years with Joe, Logan, or Nanny. He taught her to play checkers and to handle guns. Tea Cake's pride came from self-confidence, just did Joe's. He was, in an unpretentious way, a leader in the muck. Unlike Joe, Tea Cake's self-confidence was not combined with ambition; unlike Joe, he could openly express his love for Janie. Tea Cake was characterized to a great extent by his language. He was the only character who consistently used "us" as a nominative, perhaps a subtle way of suggesting that Tea Cake was of a lower class than Joe or even the porch sitters. Despite his social status, Janie loved Tea Cake and accepted him for who he was.

A scholar and writer like Zora Neale Hurston was capable of shifts in diction, assuming whatever language was appropriate for the setting. A child was not likely to be able to make such shifts. Janie's dialect remained true to the language of the community in which she lived. It should signs of degradation in the muck when she no longer had to play the game of being "Mrs. Mayor".

Zora Neale Hurston gave her characters the language that she personally was familiar with and the language she wanted them to speak. Hurston left the physical appearances of her characters to the imagination of the readers, but she demonstrated clever insights to her characters' personalities and social classes through her carefully chosen dialogue. Each significant person who made an impact on Janie Crawford's life at some point, possessed different traits made clear by the way that they expressed themselves through speech.