The ache in his head was all he felt.” (Morrison 157) The third person pronouns used here are “his” and “he” as well as referring to Cholly by his name. Later in the book, during flashbacks, it switches to third person point of view. “ My supply of ideas exhausted, I began to concentrate on the white spots on my fingernails.” (Morrison 27) The use of the first person pronouns “my” and “I” are what I used to identify the first person point of view. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses first person point of view. This happens for Pecola’s parents, Pauline and Cholly, and a religious man, Soaphead Church. As additional major characters are introduced to the story, the narrator flashbacks to the beginning of each of their stories.
Like Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Claudia then goes back in Pecola’s story to fill in any missing information. Claudia tells Pecola’s story from her 9-year-old point of view. This excerpt is where Pecola is introduced to the story. The county had placed her with us until they could decide what to do, or, more precisely, until the family was reunited. Mama had told us two days earlier that a ‘case’ was coming- a girl who had no place to go. Pecola’s story is mostly told by her friend, Claudia. It is divided up by the seasons and also told from different points of view. In The Bluest Eye, we follow Pecola’s story for a year of her life. “So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead.” (Hurston 1) In this example sentence from the text, Hurston uses the past tense verbs “was” and “had come”. Their Eyes Were Watching God is told in past tense. However, the dialogue does not affect the point of view and the “Ah” is only seen in the dialogue. When Janie is speaking in the dialogue she uses “Ah” (I) when referring to herself. The use of “Janie” and “her” are what I use to identify the point of view. “ Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.” (8) While Janie is the one who begins to tell her story to Pheoby, the narrator takes over and tells the story from a third person point of view. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses third person point of view. The dialect gives a depth of reality to the characters, it allows the reader to hear how they would actually be speaking if they were standing right in front of you. The characters in Their Eyes Were Watching God speak with a Southern African American dialect. She goes back to when she was a child living with a white family that her grandmother worked for, and continues her story until she catches up to the evening she returns to town and catches up with Pheoby. Janie trusts Pheoby to listen and let her get everything off her chest. This is where Janie begins to tell her friend, Pheoby, her story. And Ah’m talking to you from dat standpoint. Kissing’-friends for twenty years, so Ah depend on you for a good Ah got the houseĪll opened up to let dis breeze get a little catchin’. Well then, we can set right where we is and talk. We see what her life had been like growing up with her grandma, and through her life with three different husbands. Her story takes us back to her childhood. She is coming home from being away for a while and telling her friend what she had been through. Their Eyes Were Watching God begins at the end of Janie’s journey. Taking excerpts from each novel, I will compare and contrast the rhetorical grammar devices and styles used. Each book follows a young woman through important events in their life. Both of these novels have an informal tone as the narrators are telling a story. Their Eyes Were Watching God, written in 1937, and follows the life of an African American woman as she tells her life story to a friend. Our main character’s story is told mostly through her friend’s point of view. Through the rhetorical grammar lens, what differences and similarities can be found between the two novels The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston? The Bluest Eye, written in 1970, follows the life of a young African American girl named Pecola.
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