Nora Zeale Hurston: Master of Imagery

Nora Zeale Hurston has some amazing imagery in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Ten of the quotes are below.

“So she went on thinking back to her young years and explaining them to her friend in soft, easy phrases while all around the house, the night time put on flesh and blackness” (page 10).
Janie explains her story to her friend as the evening progresses.

  “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch” (page 11).
Janie is delighted to see a bee pollinate a bloom in the pear tree.

“That was before the golden dust of pollen had beglamored his rags and her eyes” (page 12).
Johnny Taylor wore rags, but the mood that Janie was in—she was happy with everything in springtime—made him look more attractive to her.

“She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether” (page 25).
She knows that the world moves on air—constantly moving, like a stallion rolls in a pasture.

“She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up” (page 25).
She knew that every day was a new day, a new chance.

“It was a citified, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn’t belong in these parts. His coat was over his arm, but he didn’t need it to represent his clothes. The shirt with the silk sleeveholders was dazzling enough for the world… He was a seal-brown color…” (page 27).
Her first impression of Joe Starks is that he is an outsider from the city that has a lot of money and a high opinion of himself.

“The noon sun filtered through the leaves of the fine oak tree where she sat and made lacy patterns on the ground” (page 27).
The sunlight looked pretty when it went through the oak tree.

“Joe noted the scant dozen of shame-faced houses scattered in the sand and palmetto roots…” (page 34).
There were little houses that were scattered everywhere, without much regard to urban planning.

“They cut all sorts of capers and whiffed the meat as it slowly came to perfection with the seasoning penetrating to the bone” (page 45).
The men got excited as the pig was roasting.

"A circle, a swoop and a hop with spread-out wings. Close in, close in till some of the more hungry or daring perched on the carcass” (page 61).
The vultures are getting ready to eat the dead mule.

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