Rhetorical and Stylistic Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”. (Pg-.114-117)
Zora Neale Hurston was an “American folklorist, anthropologist and author during the time of the Harlem renaissance.” If you would like to learn more about her you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston (couldn’t get it to link)
One of the main reasons why I chose this piece is because I am familiar with the author. I have read one of her other works entitled, “Their eyes were watching God.” It is the story of a strong female character and the odyssey of life that brings about her personality. I find this to be a recurring theme in her works, including this one, of strong female characters with the power to challenge authority. I personally enjoy reading about strong women, so when I saw her piece I was quick to set it aside.
This story begins with a very powerful statement of self definition, “I AM COLORED but offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances …” It quickly captivated my interest to continue reading. I think this to be a trademark of a strong writer, to be able to captivate a reader with just a few words.
After this, the exigence is presented when the author goes on to retell the story of the very day that she became colored. This strikes me as the exigence because while living in a predominantly Negro community, she had never experienced singularity because of the color of her skin. It is only after she moved away to attend school inJacksonville, a city, that she became just another colored girl in the sea of whiteness. She explains that, “I was not Zora of Orange County any more; I was now a little colored girl.” (115) This is the first time that this circumstance is presented to her.
As the story continues I perceive that her audienceis all of those people who might in a way try to oppress her. She is writing to let them know that, “I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a low-down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it…No, I do not weep at the world.” She writes to show them that even though they may try to make her feel inferior; she is not one to let their opinions influence her. She is a strong woman with other important things to worry about. This is why I also feel that her audience may include those people who are colored and who feel the burden of discrimination placed upon them simply because of a little pigmentation. She is trying to encourage them to be strong and to work hard to achieve their goals because ultimately, “No one on Earth ever had a greater chance for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost.” They have been granted the opportunity at freedom and should seize it. Anything they accomplish will be monumental.
Some of the constraints that she faces are the oppression and discrimination placed on her by white people, as this was written during the time of segregation. I also find a constraint in the fact that her essay was never published during her lifetime. Female Negro writers were not popularly published. Much of her work was not discovered until after her death.
I enjoyed this reading because of the writer’s descriptive wordage. It vividly illustrates the story being told and did so in manner that is distinctly Zora. This made it personal and interesting to read. I will try to emulate this in my writing because I want my readers to get a sense of who I am and what my objectives are.
Her voice resonates to me in the most inspiring way because nobody ever looks at opportunity through more adoring eyes than the person who has been denied it. She makes it a point to let the reader know that even white people can feel isolated and different. They will never experience what a colored person can. She tries to provoke the feeling of desperation that both cultures have toward understanding one another.
Why do you think she does that, drawing parallel experiences between her and a white person experiencing jazz?
One thing that somewhat confused me was the ending. What thoughts came to your mind with this last paragraph? What do you think she was talking about when she mentions the brown bag? Do you think that she trying to find an explanation for the way that things are?
Sorry for all the questions but I really want some input.
Correction for the constraint: This essay was first published in 1928; it was not reprinted until after her death. Hurston died in 1960. “Over a career that spanned more than 30 years, she published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays” from http://www.zoranealehurston.com/biography.html. She did not get the financial recognition she deserved and died poor.
I thought she talked about the jazz club to emphasis how colorful she is on the inside. Who wants to be white and boring when you can be colored like Zora? Not only is she colored on the outside, but she is also colored on the inside. Maybe the “colored” in the title refers to her personality, not her nationality. Maybe another exigence was to explain her odd/colorful personality.
I liked how she saw everyone as a bag with miscellaneous items. We are all the same on the outside though each in a different color (skin color), but it is just the plain old paper bag holding our personalities, the worthwhile and the worthless parts of us–we are all different inside. We are not perfect inside; we all have something great (a first-water diamond) but also a whole lot of useless stuff. I was wondering how she came up with the items in the bag? They seem symbolic. And is the colored glass supposed to be the color of her personality? If so why broken glass? Isn’t it usually a bad thing to have broken glass? Unless it is because there is more colors with small pieces, and they can be very beautiful. The last paragraph seemed like an explanation to why we are who we are and why we shouldn’t discriminate. it was kinda random compared to the rest of the essay.
I really like your interpretation of the bags, and what’s inside of them. Great questions too. Broken shards of glass may be the consequence of some sort violence or disruption, but a beautiful consequence, nonetheless.
Hurston’s reference to the Jazz, I think, reinforces the fact that she came from African bloodline. Jazz has elements from West Africa which the slaves brought over to America during slavery. While listening to the music, she describes her face to be “painted red and yellow and [her] body [painted] blue… [her] pulse throbbing like a war drum.” She comes to life, raw almost; however, when the music stops she “creep[s] back slowly to the veneer we call civilization”. Civilization as become a front, covering up what’s natural to African Americans, not taking pride in who they really are, where they came from, their own roots.
The last paragraph is difficult to understand. Hurston depict the jumble on the ground (all the random items from the different bags) to be all equally the same.The jumble (our being, our existence, our purpose, our end) are all equally the same, we don’t need to waste our time worrying about about other people because when it come down to “our contents” we are all the same. You put the value in these items (your contents) and no one else can tell you what that value is because each thing can mean different things to different people.
First off, just wanted to let you know you had a few errors, some words were not separated by a space.
It’s great that you picked a piece from an author that you had read from before. It’s nice to see what the author can do from different writings they publish to its audience.
I have to agree with Caitlin talking about the parallel experiences between a white person and her. I think Zora expresses color as her personality. It doesn’t matter what you look like, people can have common things they like.
As for the brown bag, I think Zora was metaphorically saying the whole world is in a brown bag. All of the objects represent a lot of metaphors that happen in the world. Her last paragraph is filled with metaphors and items that deal with the real world. I really like this last paragraph for being very creative and symbolic when Zora was talking about the “brown bag.”
You really had a great essay on Zora with the exigence, audience, and constraints. Great analysis and questions as well.
I found her writing to be very cheerful, like she was never put down by anything especially when people were to mention slavery. I have to agree with your exigence, but I think it maybe more of her being her rather than being seen as a regular colored person. She mentions on page 115 “No, I do not weep at the world-I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife”. Which leads me to think that the world is the oyster, closed and can’t see anything, while she is the knife trying to open it up. The jazz event I believe is related to the topic of being open and seeing things differently. She describes how she dances wildly trying to show the White person that she is different, but he does not.
I think the bag paragraph has some sort of symbolic meaning that other races brown, red, yellow, white are bags. She only describes what the contents were in the brown bag, but I believe each is filled differently. And in a melancholy tone describes all these unique things in the bag, and all the stuff was put back into it, unchanged. I think this an interpretation of how she feels she is being viewed at, the view of an African American will never change, they will always be viewed the same.
I like your personal take on the exigence, and that you used a specific part of the text to discuss it. Your interpretation of the oyster line is thoughtful and insightful.
He words were wisely chosen, despite the fact that she is a colored person made her stronger as an individual. She choose to be judge by not the pass, but by her action towards the future. She just want to be a person as she said “At certain times I have no race, I am me” (p.117). She is pointing that the color in her is an exigence for the things she want to do. She wants to do things without her race being involve. So, rather then fight about her race, she choose to challenge it. She wants to beat the term race, and make it a obsolete term. Just like the paper bag, it is fill with all these wonderful content that people just don’t recognize. We judge base on the outside before we get a chance to look at what’s inside.
First of all this is a very beautiful essay and I read it before in another class I loved it. I was going to choose it ,but I heard you on monday that you picked it. I really like your analysis. I really like her description at first two paragraph because reader can clear picture a naive and sweet little girl. On other hand, when she shares her experience from Jackonsville school that she was isolated from the world. I think as others mention she is talking about her inner color not just her skin because she said that she saw colored in her heart and in the mirror. I really like the way she uses symbolim in her essay. I think her audience can be anyone since she does mention all colors yellow , red, purple , white. I think she is trying to tell the world that she is still the same zora as she says in the first few paragraphs ” everybody’s zora”. she is using her self to represent every colored people since she does mention in last three paragraphs that her hand was one color and her face was other she give example of many colors. I think this qoute kind of explains her feeling, ” Slavery is the price I paid for civilization , and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it” ( 115).
I think at the end of the essay i think the bag is a symbol of what color(race) is shown on the outside but there is more to the bag because of the inside. Later she also added that there are other bags, white, red and yellow which also i think represents other race with color. Like what Chiam said, many of us just judge the people from the outside but we never get to see what is on the inside. Just like her reference, people think the bag’s color is not nice, but however it is a style to other people. I really like her writing because of how she compares the race and how she herself does not believe in defining herself as a race and people should not define themselves and judge just by the race they are.
I enjoyed reading this essay because of the authors positive attitude. She explains how racism astonishes her instead of making her angry because she can’t understand how anyone would deny themselves of her company. Zora was an African American woman living in the 1920′s and although she experienced racism daily she kept her positive attitude. She mentioned that she felt feminine more than black or white showing that she knew her identity was more than her race despite comments from others. She seemed to be an extremely strong woman who was ahead of her time.I agree that the ending was confusing, I think she was using the bags as a metaphor for the judgement of others based on external appearance. We never know what’s on the inside of the bag and that’s what is important.
Another possible exigence — The author wanted people to see the “real” Zora instead of just a typical “colored girl” in the neighborhood, but the problem was that she didn’t know how to show people her “real” self.
Audiences — the people whom she wanted to reveal the “real” Zora.
Constraints — The discrimination that she faced from white people and the inferior status that her own race held onto.
From the last paragraph, I think the author was trying to explain how her own race was viewed and how their value as humans were being judged by the color of their skin just like those “worthless” and “priceless” items from the brown bag. People judged and saw them as a group rather than individuals. No matter how different you were inside, as long as you were colored then you were one of them. “A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place—who knows?” (117)
I really like this sentence of your analysis, “Her voice resonates to me in the most inspiring way because nobody ever looks at opportunity through more adoring eyes than the person who has been denied it.”
Yes, everyone basically has the same interpretation of the colored bags as me. Its the idea that if we dump all of our contents on the floor, we are essentially made up of a mixture of the same kind of priceless and worthless things. So when everything is revealed we all contain practically the same broken and promising elements, we all hold the same skin- but in different pigments. The “Great Stuffer of Bags” might be whoever one thinks has created oneself (unfortunately Society and its attached stereotypes- I dont think God or any deity in this context). We are in this melting pot of DIVERSITY, but for some reason.. we take that for granted and interpret it as an excuse to DIVIDE.
This is how Zora symbolically sees being colored. She doesn’t feel any different from anybody other than her skin color.
Thanks for pointing out how Zora expressed that Whites feel isolated too at times. This is her putting herself in others shoes. This is being objective. Something others should learn how to do. I really like how she is embracing who she is, detaching herself from the history of her ancestors.
The last line of your comment raised some questions for me: Is it ever possible, even if we desire it, to detach ourselves from the history of our ancestors? Is this part of Zora’s exigence? Has she succeeded? Even if she herself feels detached, will society allow it?
Zora words do not take an aggressive stance on racial segregation. To her the idea of racial segregation somewhat of an illusion. Her paper bag metaphor says it all. It doesn’t matter what color the bag of skin color is; we are all made up of the bones and muscles. In science class we learn that 98.5 of humans DNA are exactly the same. Zora metaphor of different bag made me think of science and how we still have silly assumptions of we are different. Till this day there is no proof of racial superiority, yet there are still so many ignorant people who don’t know that.
I think her audience was meant for the black people of her time. I think she wanted them smile thinking of the irony, instead of wanting revenge for unfair treatment.
Her constraint are obvious; not only was black but was also a women. It is not surprising to hear that she had a double whammy of discrimination.
To your last question: I don’t think she is trying to find an explanation for the way things are. I think she knows exactly what she is talking and that she wants to present her work in a way that makes the audience enlighten.
Like everybody has said above, I also think that the brown bag is a representation of her outer skin. But when you empty the contents of the bags with different colors, their contents are the same. She talks about the “Great Stuffer of Bags”, it seems that she is referencing God.
When she was talking about the jazz club, I think she was trying to point out the difference in culture. The music comes on, and she feels alive and the emotion takes over her body. While her white friend, on the other hand, seems to just “hear” the music and not feel it.
I agree with your interpretation of Zora’s attitude–being a strong woman facing discrimination and with your exigence about her essay. She does clearly express a positive attitude toward herself while being isolated in her community, and she is writing to encourage those feeling discriminated to do the same. I like your take on the constraints; Zora seems to think that discrimination is an issue that can’t be solved, and that is why she writes to encourage those who feel discriminated to empower themselves like her. And in regards to the last paragraph, and to your question about the “brown bag” I do think that she is referring to herself as just another minority race is that often targeted from discrimination. And where she mentions about the contents of the bag, she seems to be describing how discriminated individuals typically feel like, “priceless and worthless” and later on where she mentions about the bags being able to be refilled, I think she might be suggesting that these discriminated people can change their attitude towards themselves. I think this last paragraph is a really good ending to her essay because it serves as a rhetorical statement to help us readers engage more with her writing.
“He is so pale with his whiteness … I am so colored”, one would expect a nagging whining attitude with this line, yet we get a wonderful, determined and joyfully contagious personality. I love that the writer presents such an acceptance and ambition for success without having to resource to her “disadvantaged” birth. She accepts the struggle of her ancestors and sees the difference or lack of understanding from non-black people. This only reinforces her neutrality when it comes to anger or self pity. “How can anyone deny themselves the pleasure of my company?” It is so inspiring to reach this level of self esteem and confident, god knows I need some of it on myself.
She is at no time separating herself from her background; She is telling her audience that she used to be that little girl that would get her coins for the wrong reasons. She wanted to strike a conversation and experience the joy of being heard and looked at since she was a little girl. When she opened her mouth and talked, other listened. Now she sits in front of her house, and it is no longer her blackness that shies away, it is her neighbors. Just in case we start thinking that this writer’s main purpose is to inspire the black community, we are stricken with “I belong to no race nor time”. Who doesn’t have a whole trail of things, bag, following us? We all kind of want to do away with it, but whatever pieces we hold there, they are what make us unique! So keep enjoying your “jazz” and then “creep back”, be part of both, because who knows what the “Great Stuffer” intentions are!.
Yes, I agree with you the last paragraph was confusing because I had to read it over a few times. I think a lot of people said this already with the comments above (which I skimmed through) that she was like the brown bag. The other bags that have a different color like red, yellow, and white are people of other races. I agree with Daniel that “the Great Stuffer of Bags” is supposed to be God.
I think that she was kind of making her own interpretation about the explanation for “the way that things are” using the bag metaphor because bags can have their contents/items fall out. The “jumble” that falls out doesn’t always need to be put back inside because there can be new or different things to put in. So it is like a person (the bag) can change with the things that take in.
Zora Neale Hurston is a wonderful author and I’m glad you chose her essay to write your analysis on. I too saw her connections with a few stories, essays that tie in with each other. And I most definitely agree that she is a strong-willed woman that helps empower many other individuals – shout out to the women!
I really enjoyed your post and the responses to your posts as well. They go hand in hand, some minor adjustments but all relating to the same rhetorical situation, or at least quite similar.
I believe she brushed upon a parallel between her and a white person experiencing jazz to show a difference between the two personalities. Jazz was first brought up in the 20th century and so the type of music is black yet American origin characterized by improvisation. With that said, jazz has a strong rhythm bringing forth the message jazz sends. In her situation, she was able to feel and listen to the music and create her own story while her white friend just heard the tones of the notes not knowing what to do with it. There shows a distinct personality change of the two.
Her message is strong and I believe it was based on the racial segregation at the time it occurred. Racial discrimination played a huge part in the separation of whites and colored. But I believe she ought to put that aside since we are unable to detach ourselves from our roots. You may ignore your own race, but you were born into it so don’t be ashamed who you are, we are one and the same.
I think she tries to compare her experience with jazz that of with a white person. They are both attending the same thing. Their taste in music might be a commonality but their expience is totally not. This is what distinguishes both of them.
I think her audience could have been anyone who opposed color people or anyone who could have had a similar experience. So I think it could go either way.
I thought it the approach taken on racism was interesting. Usually the writer uses their experience of racism as the attacker while they are the victims dealing with it everyday. This essay does a great job in challenging that because to her its another persons loss if they exclude you because of your race. However, the other did grow up in a mostly colored town where her self esteem had an opportunity to grow and develop rather than be constantly oppressed.
[...] are to lead the discussion. Two of my favorite readings are “Coatesville” by Lineah and “How It Feels To Be Colored Me” by Maria. Lineah’s essay talked about a white man defending a black man, which lead to a [...]