Imagery in How It Feels to Be Colored Me

How It Feels to Be Colored Me Imagery

When detailing her girlhood in Eatonville, Hurston writes that "the Northern tourists chugged down the sandy village road in automobiles." In this example of auditory imagery, Hurston describes the chugging sound of the turn-of-the-century cars that would drive past her house. By emphasizing sound in addition to other senses, Hurston helps transport the reader to the time and place of her childhood.

As she makes her argument for why white Americans have more difficulty living with the legacy of slavery than she does, Hurston writes that "no dark ghost thrusts its leg against mine in bed." In this example of tactile imagery, Hurston describes the feeling of a phantom presence touching one's leg while in bed. The touch-based sensory image emphasizes her metaphor about white Americans being haunted by the guilt of benefitting from slavery.

In an example of visual imagery, Hurston writes: "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." By bringing to mind the visual image of something or someone appearing darker when put in front of an intensely white background, Hurston illustrates her sense of alienation from her surroundings when she is in majority-white spaces, such as the campus of Barnard College.

 Growing up in a small town full of white people I never felt different until I enter grade six. I started to realize I was so different from the majority of my classmate except some small percentage of kids that looked like me. I remember the first time I felt different and it was when a kid asked me why I had a towel in my head. How It Feels to Be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston shares about how she never felt different until she was sent to a school in Jacksonville, a white community. This essay dealt with a time period after slavery was abolished, but discrimination and segregation were still present in people’s minds. As a colored writer, she was a credible source to share about racial barriers to sympathetic reader who want to embrace their differences. Through humor, anecdote, metaphor, and imagery. Hurston addresses her personal experiences as a Negro.

        Hurston begins her essay by telling stories of her childhood in Eatonville, Florida. People of color mostly populated Eatonville and when Hurston mother died, she was sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville where she felt color. She remembers how white people liked to hear her ‘speak pieces’ and sing. As they rode through town. They wanted to see her dance the parse-me-la and paid her generously for it. This anecdote from the author gives the reader an understanding of Hurston’s perspective. She does not just inform us by using anecdote. Hurston effectively allows the audience to empathize with her youthful innocence.

        Jacksonville shifted Hurston’s perspective: however, she still did not feel tragically colored. One of the appeals she uses in this passage is pathos. She did not weep at the world. Discrimination simply astonished her; she asked herself, How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company! It’s beyond me. Hurston used humor to emphasize her refusal to let discrimination and her differences make her insecure. Hurston makes this point clear by humorous exaggeration of her feelings.

Furthermore, Hurston delivers imagery throughout the passage by demonstrating the uses of feel and sense to lead to the finding of herself. She emphasizes on how she believes she is a part of America as a whole and not just simply a color. Hurston uses imagery to compare the culture of blacks between the white culture, which conveys that black culture is worth celebrating. Hurston takes the reader on a voyage that illustrates the finding of her self-identity.

Despite her feelings of pride, the author could not help feeling different, like she was thrown against a sharp white background. Occasionally, she realized that she was a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall, in the company of other bags of different colors. Nevertheless, she comprehended the similarity of their contents. This description gives vivid imagery for the author’s thoughts. The author uses these metaphors to underscore her isolation, which makes her revelation even more meaningful: physical features may be diverging, but people share the same essence.

        Hurston uses these rhetorical devices to add and further her opinion. It added another dimension to her writing by combining rationale, imagery, and motivation with perspective.

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What are some literary devices in How It Feels to Be Colored Me?

Some of the rhetorical devices used by Hurston in her essay are anecdotes, direct address, antithesis, metaphors, , and allusions. These rhetorical devices are mainly meant to highlight Hurston's detachment from the victim mentality of the blacks.

What metaphors are used in How It Feels to Be Colored Me?

At the end of her story the author provides an extended metaphor comparing humans and race to bags with objects. The bag color represents race, and the contents in the bag represent all things humans have in common. "Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow" (Hurston 977).

What is the main idea of How It Feels to Be Colored Me?

In her 1928 essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me,” African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston argues that race isn't an essential feature that a person is born with, but instead emerges in specific social contexts.

What is Hurston's tone in How It Feels to Be Colored Me?

“How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Zora Hurston has a very hopeful and cheerful tone to it. In one part of the essay, Hurston claims that she is not “tragically colored”. Showing that just because she was born with a certain skin tone does not mean she cannot amount to what she believes in.