There Eyes Were Watching God. Literary Devices

get a hint

hint

metaphor

metaphor

"Put me down easy, I'm a cracked plate."

metaphor

"Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil."

metaphor

"If God don't think no mo' 'bout 'em then Ah do, they's a lost ball in de high grass."

simile

"Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain. "

simile

"It was a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been"

simile

"But even these things were running down like candle grease as time moved on."

hyperbole

"Every tear you drop squeezes a cup uh blood outa mah heart. Ah got tuh try and do for you befo' mah head is cold."

hyperbole

"Nanny had taken the biggest thing God had ever made, the horizon- for no matter how far a person can go, the horizon is still beyond you - and pinched it to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck to choke her."

hyperbole

"Tea Cake's house was a magnet the unauthorized center of the "job"

imagery

"It was a cityfied, 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 sleeve holders was dazzling enough for the world."

imagery

"Morning came without motion. The winds, to the tiniest, lisping baby breath had left the earth. Even before the sun gave light, dead day was creeping from bush to bush watching man."

imagery

"Like bags hanging from an ironing board. A little sack hung from the corners of his eyes and rested on his cheek-bones; a loose-filled bag of feathers hung from his ears and rested on his neck beneath his chin."

alliteration

"The varicolored cloud dust that the sun has stirred up in the sky was setting by slow degrees."

alliteration

"Weeping and wailing on the outside."

alliteration

"The shirt with the silk sleeve holders was dazzling enough for the world."

personification

"Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place."

personification

"The Sun was gone, but he has left his footprints in the sky."

personification

"Words walking without master; walking although like harmony in a song"

anaphora

"They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nation through their mouths. They sat in judgement."

anaphora

"She kept the store in the same way except of evenings she sat on the porch and listened and sent Hezekiah in to wait on the late custom. She saw no reason to rush at changing things around. She would have the rest of her life to do as she pleased."

anaphora

"He looked like the pear tree blossom in the spring. He could be a bee to a blossom -- a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent with every step he took."

dialect

"Well, nobody don't know if it's anything to tell or not. Me, Ah'm her best friend, and Ah don't know."

dialect

"Tain't no use in your tryin' to cloak no ole woman lak Janie Starks, Phoebe, friend or no friend."

dialect

"Fact of de matter, Ah loves yuh a whole heap more'n Ah do yo' mama, da one Ah did birth."

allusion

"You can't welcome uh man and his wife 'tout you make comparison about Isaac and Rebecca at de well, else it don't show de love between 'em if you don't."

allusion

"...walkin' de waer lak ole Peter"

allusion

"Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all me cherish, which was terrible. The thing that Saul's daughter had done to David."

antithesis

"They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down."

antithesis

"She did not reach outside for anything, nor did the things of death reach inside to disturb her calm."

antithesis

"Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget."

parallelism/epistrophe

"So Janie waited a bloom time, a green time and an orange time."

parallelism

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

parallelism

"Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and Janie gone to a dance,"

juxtaposition

"She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things."

juxtaposition

"For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon."

juxtaposition

"She knew she didn't know his name, but he looked familiar."

symbolism

"She thought awhile and decided that her conscious life had commenced at Nanny's gate."

symbolism

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon."

symbolism

"The thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!"

epistrophe

" These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long."

polysyndeton

"They scrambled and upset the board and laughed at that."

polysyndeton

"She could listen and laugh and even talk."