How it feels to be colored me literary devices

Comparison of Mariam Toews "A Father Faith" And Zora Neale Hurston "How It Feel To Be Colored Me"

Zora in Colored Me explores the discovery of self-pride and identity. Following description convections, she employs imagery, figurative language and colorful distinction to take the reader through the reading. By use of multiple colloquialisms and conversational tone, she delves her childhood in Eatonville at the beginning of the essay through anecdotes describing instances when she sang and danced in the streets and when she greeted her neighbors. Then she was everybody’s Zora and free from the feeling of alienation ( https://www.enotes.com/topics/how-it-feels-to-be-colored-me ). However, she became immediately colored after her mother passed on and she went to boarding school. On the other hand, a father’s faith written by Miriam explores the culture and beliefs of the Mennonites and how they affected the people in the community and also gives tribute to her father. She described her take on the relationship between her father’s beliefs and the Mennonite beliefs and has a feeling that these may have led to her father’s demise. She employs the use of figurative writing, metaphors, flashback and colorful diction to take the reader through the essay. The two essays bring out several similarities when critically analyzed. The similarities range from the tone, style, purpose, evidence, argument, language and message as analyzed ( just write the theses like what you going to write about ex: the tow essay have a message of hope…etc) below.

From the two essays, there is the use of metaphor (there’s no metaphor she say) . For example, in Zora’s writing, she says “I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in a company with other bags, white, red and yellow” to mean that the world is full of different types of people who have an invisible uniqueness. On the other hand, Miriam in her essays uses metaphors to describe the joy her father had when he was discharged from the hospital. Moreover, she goes ahead to indicated how her father greeted everyone he had missed for those two and a half weeks that he had been in the hospital.

Flashback is evidence in both essays. Zora uses flashback to show how her life was before she became colored. She lived in Eatonville town where everybody else was like her, the only white people she could see were those passing through the town or coming from Orlando. She explains how she was entertained by this people just like they were entertained in see her village. When she joined boarding school, that’s when everything changed, and she became colored. In Miriam’s writing, she uses flashback to take the reader back to her childhood days and also through the memories of her father. She recalls her childhood days and how she loved her stay in Steinbach together with her friends and loved most playing at the stage.

A message of hope and living beyond expectation is evident in both essays. In Mariam’s essay, there is the evidence of Mennonite's cultural shunning where people were expelled from church or community leading to an increase in the rate of depression among the people. She attributes this as one of the reasons for her father’s illness. This cultural and religious belief play a significant role in shaping people’s way of life, and those practices which intimidate or tamper with a person’s life should be stopped. Despite this, her father can live his own life and, she help him. For Zora, the story is almost similar. As Jenny Whitaker explain Being raised in a period when slavery has just ended, she does not let it “depress her” and states that slavery is passed https://reviewingtheharlemrenaissance.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/zora-neale-hurstons-how-it-feels-to-be-colored-me-by-jenny-whitaker/ . She concludes by saying that the current condition of the white people was more difficult by stating https://reviewingtheharlemrenaissance.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/zora-neale-hurstons-how-it-feels-to-be-colored-me-by-jenny-whitaker/ “the game of keeping what one has is never as exciting as the game of getting.” By this, she removes herself from an artistic tradition of tragic styles and a history of oppression” https://reviewingtheharlemrenaissance.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/zora-neale-hurstons-how-it-feels-to-be-colored-me-by-jenny-whitaker/ . She prepared to take what she wants from the world by sharpening her oyster and is not defined by the past.

From the two essay, the theme of self-realization is portrayed. From colored me, which was written in a time when oppression was undoubting (change this word )and racism relentless, Zora gives an autobiographical evidence of the day when she became colored. Zora uses this to describe the process of her self-realization vividly. During that period, white people were different from the colored to Zora only in that they rode through the town and never lived there. From her childhood, skin color was not significant. This is clearly depicted from the imagery of her sitting on the post of the fence and being the first to welcome the white people to the state of Florida and also entertain those who pass through https://reviewingtheharlemrenaissance.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/zora-neale-hurstons-how-it-feels-to-be-colored-me-by-jenny-whitaker/ . She is unaware of the racial division that existed outside her world. However, after realizing she is in fact of color, she does not place a significant emphasis on the issue. In A father’s faith, Miriam illustrates how she loved her stay in Steinbach and the stage playing. However, as she grows older, she started realizing issues that were not pleasant at all to the people and her father. As she continued to discover more about Steinbach, her thoughts grew sour about the negative side. The history of the city was not pleasing at all. Miriam describes it as a town where drinking beer was a serious crime and dancing a sin.

The interplay of culture and individual is present in both settings. In the last half of the colored me, Zora brings out the tension between her individuality and color as she swings between distancing herself and identifying with her race. A powerful depiction of racial unity sense against the ‘sharp white background’ is the vivid description of the Cabaret where her ‘color comes’ or the use of the image ‘beside the waters of the Hudson’ where she portrays herself as the ‘dark rock surged upon.' She asserts that she is not tragically colored hence forming a barrier between herself and the ‘the sobbing school of Negrohood.' She alienates herself from this school which requires her to place claims to past and present injustices continually. She thus sleeps peacefully knowing she has lived a righteous life and never fearing that a ‘dark ghost’ might come to her when she is sleeping. On the other hand, Miriam in A father’s faith recalls her grandmother who used to drink and had borne her dad and contribute this to the depression that her father was suffering from. She recounts the old times when her dad spent most of the time in bed rather than watch TV like the rest of the family. She believes that this depression affected her father’s career and life and blamed their identity as Mennonite living in Steinbach. She is compelled to believe that that society is not the best and has hope for a better world.

In conclusion, two essays bring out various themes such as culture, self-realization, individuality and hope, and styles such use of flashback, imagery, and metaphor. Colored me explores Zora’s strained relationship with identity and race and delivers a great and powerful message that challenges the mind-sets of our time. On the other hand, a father’s faith relates the role of cultural and religious beliefs in shaping the way of life of a community and teaches that we should always follow our conscious in doing what we believe is right without fear of rejection.

Reference

Hurston, Zora Neale. How it feels to be colored me. American Roots, 2015.

Miriam, Toews. "A Father's Faith." Saturday Night; Mar99 March 1999: 32. Article.