Avoiding homework...

I was avoiding doing my current homework when I decided to sift through a paper I wrote for last semester's final. I feel it is the best paper I have written to date so I felt like posting it on the interweb for your trashing pleasure.

Their eyes were Watching God Final
Language defines the meaning of communication between individuals. But who defines language? The definitions of words in language control the perceived meaning during communication between individuals. So, those who control the individual meanings of words control the meaning of linguistic communication between individuals. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston argues that people should prefer forms of communication that rely on a direct transduction of reality as a form of communication between two individuals rather than using language, because society’s control over the meanings of words forces people to accept the set definitions of words as a part of reality, which then hinder communication of an individual’s true experience of reality that does not conform to society’s standards. In doing so, Zora Neale Hurston speaks out against the stereotypical negative definitions of black race and culture that stemmed from negative linguistic and aesthetic connotations.
People tend to accept society’s consensus views of reality as true. These accepted communal ideas then manifest themselves in words and language, thus forcing society’s rendition of reality into the individual words that carry symbolic meaning in language, which then blur communication between individuals by forcing society’s rigid definitions into the meanings of their communication. People should therefore transcend society’s stranglehold on the meaning of language by creating their own definitions of reality from their experience. Janie, before her relationship with Logan Killicks, blindly accepts society’s definition of a marriage as part of reality, even when her observations run contradictory to it: “She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so” (21). However, after
Their eyes were Watching God Final
her marriage and her experience with true unaltered reality, Janie’s interpretation of the word, and thus the reality it represents, changes: “The familiar people and things had failed her, so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25). Janie’s radical shift in her idea of what defines a marriage from before her first marriage to after her first marriage stems from the realization that society’s definitions of words do not necessarily reflect reality. Janie initially believes that, contrary to her intuition, a marriage, by definition, brings love. She accepts, upon Nanny telling her that she is marrying Logan Killicks, that she will automatically be thrust into a marriage that meshes with society’s idealized image of a loving marriage because society defines the meaning of the word marriage. Thus, having no prior experience of reality, Janie understands this idealized image as the true definition of a marriage. However, after her marriage, Janie no longer blindly accepts society’s definitions of reality “The familiar people and things had failed her.” Her direct experience with an incontrovertible actuality overturns the linguistic connotations of the word marriage that created the “dream” from which stark reality awakens her. After rejecting society’s reality Janie, looks out past the “gate” of marriage that traps her in her negative relationship and becomes a “woman” by establishing her own self– identity and creating her own interpretive definition of reality. Hurston also implies, through her use of the word “woman” as the final state of Janie’s new experientially defined interpretation of reality, that women are better able to transcend the linguistic barriers of society’s reality. This assertion is supported by Hurston’s opening statement: “Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the

truth. Then they act and do things accordingly” (1). Hurston’s establishment of ‘ground rules’ from which to interpret the book here come into play by giving sharply defined gender differences, which give the simple use of the word “women” newfound significance. Women realize that the “dream is the truth.” People can only define reality by what they know of it. As Janie experiences, when she allows society to define her “dream” by accepting the reality that Nanny presents to her in the form of language, she forces herself to accept all of society’s definitions into her reality and so, that “dream” dies. However, on “became [becoming] a woman,” Janie gains the ability to define reality according to her own experiences by “forget[ing] all those things they [she] don’t [doesn’t] want to remember, and remember[ing] everything they [she] don’t [doesn’t] want to forget.” Through the ability to decide what to remember, Janie gains the power of one who can define reality because after reality passes, the only remaining imprint of reality lies within the minds of those who experience it. Women, according to Hurston, have the power to create their own definition of reality by remembering that which fits within their definitions, and so, “[Their] dream is the truth,” because it creates an interpretation of reality based on their experiences rather than society’s. By creating a narrative in which a woman breaks out of society’s definition of reality by redefining reality to fit with her real experiences, Hurston speaks out against the rigid societal definitions that attempted to negatively and stereotypically define the experience of a black woman in the Harlem Renaissance.
Through manipulating the style by which she represents Janie’s voice, Hurston argues that an ideal form of communication avoids focus on individual words and thus the rigid

definitions of society. Hurston’s representation of Janie’s testimony in the form of narrated speech rather than dialogue extracts the meaning of Janie’s voice from it’s linguistic constraints: ”It was lying thoughts. She had to go way back to let them know how she and Tea Cake had been with one another so they could see she could never shoot Tea Cake out of malice. ... She made them see how she couldn’t ever want to be rid of him. She didn’t plead to anybody. She just sat there and told and when she was through she hushed” (187). Hurston’s stripping of the individual words from Janie’s voice removes the connotations of her individual word choice from the meaning of her communication. By doing so, Hurston also removes the reader’s ability to analyze Janie’s diction. In Hurston’s constructed reality that is Their Eyes were watching God, Hurston only allows Janie’s intended meaning to exist devoid of interpretation. Hurston, incongruous with many parts of the book that contain a deep message, here uses a very simple stripped down style with simple word and syntax choices. The short simple sentences portray a tone of truthful, unadorned testimony. Janie, along with Hurston’s stylistic devices that limit interpretation of this reality, does not inject any emotional or opinionated content into her testimony: “She didn’t plead to anybody. She just sat there and told and when she was through, she hushed.” Hurston also describes Janie’s communication by using words in ways that imply transcendence of linguistic limitations. Janie “let[s] them know” and “see” her love for Tea Cake rather than telling or saying. In her testimony, she fights not just the charges that are leveled against her, but deeper, “Lying thoughts.” Janie, rather than fighting the false views of reality with society’s definitions of reality that are present in words, represents true reality directly using her mastery of language, thereby avoiding connotations of individual words and allowing her to

use language as an ideal form of communication that directly embodies reality. In the form of a novel, with words as the highest concept of reality, Hurston can allow Janie to directly represent the reality of the book by using language without the implication of specific words. Hurston expresses her frustration at her inability to directly represent the reality of the black women’s experience in the Harlem Renaissance in her depiction of Janie as a mirror of herself accomplishing the impossible by directly representing reality unchanged by society’s linguistic constraints with words.
In Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship, rather than adapting their relationship to fit with society’s existing norms and linguistic constraints, Janie and Tea Cake create their own definitions of words and thus avoid society’s definitive influence on reality. They completely diverge from society’s definition of what does and does not define a relationship. In society’s definition of love and thus loving relationships, there exists no approximate definition for the true love between two individuals, because as Janie so eloquently states at the end of her journey down the path of self actualization: “Love ... it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore”(191). Love cannot be defined rigidly by society because a definition of love cannot form from society’s consensus reality. As Janie says, love changes with every different “shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.” Love presents itself in a unique form in every separate relationship and so society cannot form a consensus reality that it can use to mold a definition for love. So society abandons it’s attempt to represent love between people and defines love as attraction to things, as does Nanny when she attempts to guide Janie’s future: “But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things”(89). Janie,

in her inner monologue, rants on society’s definition of love as an attraction to things when she seeks people and a true loving relationship. However, in order to form such a relationship, people must be able to think similarly and experience love in the same way in order to form their own consensus reality and communicate their love using the language that they define between themselves as people. In doing so, they transcend society’s limited consensus reality definitions in which there is no consensus experience from which to create a definition: “Tain’t so big uh chance as it seem lak, Pheoby. Ah’m older than Tea Cake, yes. But ... If people thinks de same they can make it all right. New thoughts had tuh be thought and new words said. After Ah got used tuh dat, we gits ’long jus’ fine. He done taught me de maiden language all over”(115). Pheoby’s concern with Tea Cake’s age reflects society’s concern with definable things in relationships. People focus on that which they can define through established definitions in their judgement and categorization of relationships. Since Hurston portrays love as an undefinable individual experience, people cannot understand the love that occurs between two individuals, because they cannot have experienced that same love in their reality. Thus making a consensus reality for love impossible. Therefore they only focus on that which they can understand, things, such as Tea Cakes age. Janie and Tea Cake, on the other hand, both directly experience the love between them in their individual realities. Ergo, through their common experiences they can create their own consensus reality between the two of them and create a unique definition of love from this reality that goes beyond the shallow “things.” Thereby they recreate the “de maiden language all over” through their “new thoughts” that do not fit into society’s definitions. Consequently allowing them to communicate their unique love without society’s rigid

definitions. Through her use of the new reality that she and Tea Cake create, Janie Goes beyond things that society uses to define loving relationships by surpassing Tea Cake’s age difference through her creation of a consensus reality with Tea Cake that allows them to define and communicate their mutual true love.
The experience of a consensus reality stems from people’s ability to interpret reality in the same way, which then leads to the rigid, definitive meanings that form language. Hurston argues that music communicates by transferring the intended message into a form that the musician defines entirely, rather than society, and that people then interpret this form of the individual’s message without ever resorting to symbolic definitions. Hurston uses the music of the everglades as just such an example: “Pianos living three lifetimes in one. Blues made and used right on the spot. Dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing love every hour”(131). Hurston’s description of the musical forms of the everglades identifies them as ideal forms of communication that do not hold the trapping qualities of linguistic symbolic representation. Hurston’s description of the “Pianos living three lifetimes in one” indicates that through music, people can express entire realities that encompass their experience of entire lives. Hurston portrays music as a superior communicative device because an individual is unbound by constrictive rigid definitions of a permanent language defined by society that must remain fixed and unaltered. Music can be “Blues made and used right on the spot” purposefully composed by an individual for their communication, perfectly representative of their individual experience of reality. As opposed to language, where Hurston, in the same passage that she establishes music as a superior form of communication, demonstrates the limitations inherent to language in her

linguistic description of the life on the muck with her list of verbs that attempt to describe the experience of life on the muck. However, as language, it holds to the limitations of language and, while crafted by a master writer with incredible control over the meaning of her language, it still fails at it’s intended meaning. Hurston, upon attempting to describe the entire experience of life on the muck resorts to a slew of unstructured words to attempt to completely describe life and the quest for love on the muck. Nevertheless, the list is still incomplete, as the words only describe the parts of life on the muck to which society’s limited consensus reality definitions limit their meaning. Society defines the meaning of each word. Thus the meaning of the sentence can only mean the sum of the definitions of it’s words. However, love, as represented by Hurston cannot be defined in language because of it’s reliance on a unique experience. Thus rendering the linguistic depiction of “winning or losing” love pointless because society cannot create a consensus definition for love. And so no matter how masterful a writer, Hurston is still limited by the natural limits of defined symbolic communication. Music however, as Hurston represents it, describes an entire moment in it’s completion, without resorting to symbolic packets of meaning that break up the intended meaning. Rather, the musician expresses their entire experience and transfers it into music where the listener then interprets it. Musical expression avoids rigid definition and relies on an understanding that the listener interprets from the musician’s portrayal of his experience. Hurston’s portrayal of musical expression as superior to linguistic expression stems from her experience of white linguistic domination and it’s negative definitions of black culture and society. So she seeks to portray a communicative medium in which there is only the

unlimited and undefinable expression of the “speaker,” and the entirely interpretive, undefined by society, understood meaning of the listener.
Hurston implies after the death of Joe, that music best expresses a person’s inner “spark” of individuality that language cannot communicate. She does so by using imagery in which music represents people’s unique individuality that language cannot express: “When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud”(90). Music holds the key to true individual expression. Hurston defines the individual as a “shine and a song.” Originally, a person’s inner individuality, the “stuff” from which God made him, was “sung all the time.” So, Hurston represents the “stuff” from which God defines a persons individuality, and thus, represents the ultimate reality of an individual, as music. However, Hurston goes on to say that man’s individuality united through free expression was beaten into sparks. This separation symbolizes the institution of language, with it’s symbolic limited meanings that separate individual realities and make communication of them impossible. Furthermore, Hurston does not simply identify the oppressor as general society or any other stereotypical oppressor. The oppressors of man’s individuality through language are angels. Angels, are white. Dominant white society in the Harlem renaissance forced black society’s individual expression, which Hurston symbolizes as music, into white society’s rigidly defined language. However, the dominant white oppressive society which Hurston represents somewhat sarcastically as angels remained unsatisfied.

Because even after “ beat[ing] him down to nothing but sparks,” “ each little spark had a shine and a song.” So even after being broken into different bits the black individuals still retained their individual expression. So, could white society do? The answer was simple, “they covered each one over with mud.” After breaking down black society and forcing it’s mode of expression into separate “sparks” of individuality, the people of it still retained their individual “song[s]” even though they were no longer a whole defined entity. White society’s answer: “Mud.” The dominant white society of the Harlem renaissance simply imbued the definition of black society and culture with negative linguistic and aesthetic connotations, stifling the expression of the reality in which black authors lived. With white society’s negative linguistic definitions of black culture and society stifling linguistic expression of the black voice, Hurston portrays music as a more ideal form of communication that avoids such negative stereotyping.
Rather than defining their relationship within the negative stereotyping and constraints inherent of language, Janie and Tea Cake express their communication in an undefined form: Music. Janie, after deciding to reject Tea Cake on the grounds of society’s definitions, has the following encounter with him. “Tea Cake stood there mimicking the tuning of a guitar. He frowned and struggled with the pegs of his imaginary instrument watching her out of the corner of his eye with that secret joke playing over his face. Finally she smiled and he sung middle C ... ‘Crazy thing!’ Janie commented, beaming out with light”(100). While her planned reaction was, “to treat him so cold if he ever did foot the place that he’d be sure not to come hanging around there again.” Janie’s planned reaction to Tea Cake exemplifies the power of language to obfuscate true individuality and replace it with a stereotyped definition. Rather than getting to

know Tea Cake and then passing judgement on him, Janie initially uses society’s definitions of reality to decide that since Tea Cake is a single male, he must conform to the definition of a single male as defined by society and be “the kind of man who lived with various women but never married”(100). However, upon reaching a deeper level of communication with Tea Cake in which the stereotypical definitions of society do not apply Janie transcends the definitions of society and even direct linguistic meanings when she uses “Crazy thing!” as a positive expression to describe Tea Cake. This transcendence of linguistic meaning begins with Tea Cake’s musical expression. He struggles with his instrument as he attempts to portray to Janie “ that secret joke playing over his face” without resorting to linguistic meaning where he is stereotypically defined by society. His struggle with the instrument represents his struggle with the medium in which he wants to communicate and the pegs symbolically represent his “tuning” of his meaning. However, Tea Cake ultimately succeeds in his attempt at nonlinguistic undefined communication as evidenced by Janie’s reaction upon Tea Cake when her face “Beam[ed]” out with light upon tea cake “sung [singing] middle C.” He finds the pitch with which he wants to portray his message. Janie’s reaction brings another symbol of communication into Hurston’s attempt to portray nonlinguistic communication through words. When Janie’s face is “beaming out with light” Hurston brings together the two symbols that she uses to portray the highest forms of expression: “a shine and a song.” Thus, Hurston represents Janie and Tea Cake’s communication as ideal because it avoids direct linguistic definitions by communicating through music and other methods that rely on a direct transduction of reality.
Their eyes were Watching God Final
Language, relies on defined symbols to stand for reality. However, if no true reality exists then language must draw it’s definitions from an interpretation of reality. Therefore, the definitions of individual words in a language comprise mainly of the generalizations and stereotypes that society can agree upon as real. The individual who seeks to communicate now faces a choice: to accept society’s stereotyped definitions as truth, to shun them by redefining language, or to rise above language, and it’s rigid definitions.

alt conclusion:
True communication cannot happen, for the same reasons that language cannot define love. For reality relies on interpretation for it’s existence. An individual cannot understand the experiences of another person. Because no matter how perfectly that person recreates their experience in an interpretable form, that form must undergo interpretation and in that interpretation the form that the individual choses loses it’s original meaning by the natural truth that all people are created differently and experience reality differently.