Journal 3: Stylistic Elements

1. "The rest of the town looked like servants' quarters surrounding the 'big house'." (page 47) Allusions to slavery are common in Hurston's narration because it's such an important part of black history.
2. "Said it was a spittoon just like his used-to-be bossman used to have in his bank up there in Atlanta. Didn't have to get up and go to the door every time he had to spit. Didn't spit on his floor neither." (page 47) The use of fragmented sentences in the narration mimics Joe's style of speaking, which lends itself to the omniscient qualities of the narrator.
3. "Her hair was NOT going to show in the store." (page 55) Hurston breaks normal grammar rules by capitalizing random words for different reasons. In this case, it's to emphasize Joe's position on Janie's hair. Other times, though, Hurston capitalizes words like "Mayor" to show the power of the mayor in the town, even when the town doesn't have one. When used within the same sentence of a lowercase "god", it seems to indicate the Mayor has a more official and powerful position than God.
4. "The flock had to wait the white-headed leader, but it was hard. They jostled each other and pecked at heads in hungry irritation." (page 61) Hurston uses parallelism in her story to show the similarities between two different ideas. For instance, in this quote the vultures are descending onto the dead mule to feast, but they must wait for their leader. This mirrors the community in Eatonville, who wants to have a 'dragging-off' party with the mules' dead body, but wait for their leader, Mayor Starks (Joe). The parallelism here compares the citizens of Eatonville with beasts, vultures, which is an idea which can be seen later in the story with the women who sit on the porch waiting for someone to come by who they can 'tear to shreds' with gossip. 
5. "She wasn't petal-open anymore with him." (page 71) This refers to the pear tree in bloom from the second chapter, when the petals of all the blossoms were opening up and Janie had her first revelations about love and marriage, etc.