Real Characters

I'm loving Their Eyes Were Watching God so far. I'm looking forward to seeing where the plot will go, but right now I am enchanted by the characters. Unlike Invisible Man, this book starts off with a greater coming-of-age theme for the protagonist. Ellison skips over his narrator's transition from child to man, instead focusing in great detail on the narrator's growth as an adult. Although Hurston covers a broader range of years and with much less detail than Ellison gives his protagonist, both succeed at creating very relatable and dynamic characters. Thanks to the strength of their characters, the two authors are able to use their protagonists as powerful mediums for a discussion on many different topics, including African-American rights, coming-of-age, and coming to understand society. 

There are many similarities between the last two books that we've read in class. Both novels follow a similar flashback style and frame narrative. At the very least, there is a prologue in each, the book being told as a story describing that person's life. Both of the protagonists grow over the course of the book from naive and idealistic teenagers through to responsible middle-age adults. The powerful retelling of their personal lives lets the reader follow their growth and change over the span of multiple decades. Making the narrative even more compelling, there are similarities between each of the protagonists and their author, reinforcing the feeling of reality each novel provides.

The greatest difference I've seen so far is the conflict that the two characters face during their lifetimes. The invisible man has many different challenging experiences that, as a whole, result in him growing out of his naive youth and instead applying his ambition and skills towards independently set goals. The narrator is a very analytical character, often caught up in deep subconscious arguments about his own life. His core beliefs change little over the course of the novel, but with more experience he grows to understand what he believed in from the start. Although Ellison's way of depicting character growth is different from Hurtson's, both authors wrote their protagonists extremely well.

Hurston focuses on a much more personal discussion than Ellison. For one, we actually know who we are reading about, making it easier to sympathize with Janie. Another big difference stems from the two slightly different frame narrative setups that Invisible Man and Their Eyes Were Watching God have. Ellison's invisible man wrote the story we see as an autobiographical book, so his internal dialogue fit in well with his actions. Janie is telling the story of her life to a friend, so the reader has a comparatively superficial view of that book. Instead of focusing on particular events in her life, Janie is defined by a series of relationships. She goes from Johnny Taylor to Logan Killicks to Joe Starks and to Tea Cake, her own persona changing depending on her relationship with those men. Even when her relationships aren't up to par, the reader has confidence in the positive resolution of Janie's story thanks to the frame narrative of the novel. 

I look forward to seeing if the similarities between the two novels continue!