Throughout the entire novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses exemplary imagery. Imagery is meant to paint a picture in your mind. Mrs. Hurston does an outstanding job when it comes to painting pictures with her words. Her are some examples from Chapters 1-8.
1. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men." (pg 1)
2. "They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song." (pg. 2)
3. "The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hips pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to bore holes in her shirt." (pg 2)
4. "There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight." (pg 24)
5. "The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off." (pg 25)
6. "The noon sun filtered through the leaves of the fine oak tree where she sat and made lacy patterns on the ground. She had been there a long time when she heard whistling coming down the road." (pg 27)
7. "They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged." (pg 33)
8. "The idea was funny to them and they wanted to laugh. They tried hard to hold it in, but enough incredulous laughter burst out of their eyes and leaked from the corners of their mouths to inform anyone of their thoughts." (pg 37)
9. "She must look on herself as the bell-cow, the other women were the gang. So she put on of her bought dresses and went up the new-cut road all dressed in wine-colored red. Her silken ruffles and muttered about her. The other women had on percale and calico with here and there a head rag among the older ones." (pg 41)
10. "She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too." "It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham." (pg 67-68)
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