Zora Neale Hurston's writing style in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Presently, I’m only through chapter 2 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, but something about Zora Neale Hurston’s writing style is strange enough to me that I had to stop and write this post about it. I’m not talking about the Black English. What I find strange is that Hurston decided to write the novel in third-person. Generally, I prefer third-person to first-person, but in this case, first-person seems more appropriate. So far, there is a lot of dialogue—sometimes multiple pages without any narration. For me, it makes the transition between dialogue and narration rather “clunky.” It just seems, to me, that the novel would read better if written entirely in Black English rather than just the dialogue—the transitions are almost distracting.

In the foreword, Mary Helen Washington states that one reviewer described the novel as “a rich and racy love story, if somewhat awkward.” Though not for the same reasons, I think, I agree that the novel is a little awkward. I don’t understand at this point why Hurston wouldn’t have written the novel in first-person, allowing Janie to narrate, so that the transitions between dialogue and narration wouldn’t be so awkward. I can’t imagine that Hurston didn’t realize the strangeness of switching between Black English and something more closely resembling Standard English, so I’m assuming it was a deliberate stylistic choice. But why? I’ll be paying close attention to these transitions as the story progresses, and hopefully by the end I’ll have some idea as to why Hurston chose to write Their Eyes the way she did. Though I find the transitions a little awkward, the story isn’t bad, so I don’t mind having to get used to them. And who knows, maybe by the novel’s end I’ll have grown accustomed to the style and agree with Hurston’s choice.