Zora Neale Hurston; A figures of the Harlem Renaissance

At the beginning of the novel, Janie has no public figure when she comes to Eatonville. Hurston (1978) describes Janie as "so the beginning of this was a adult female" (9). Janie is finally named by the townspeople on the porch, itself symbolical of an doorway into an enclosed home or community. However, she is incorrectly named as "Janie Starks", patronage the fact that she has married three times (Hurston 1978, 12). The power of duty assignment as a symbolic act is referenced by Hurston (1978), with respect to the actions of the townspeople sitting on their porch: "They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations by dint of their mouths. They sat in judgment" (10).

Janie eventually realizes the negative kind that occurs between her neighbor's sense of power and identification. Speaking to Phoeby, she calls them the collective "Mouth-Almighty" (Hurston 1978, 16). The symbolic power of naming is further reinforced by Phoeby, who tells Janie that "so long as they get a name to chew on they don't care whose it is and what about, ?specially if they can make it soun

like evil" (Hurston 1978, 17). The process of naming dilutes identity is Hurston's point. Baker (1987) underscores the significant of naming and reports that Janie is "known to her puerility cohorts as ?alphabet' because she has been given so many ?different names'" (37).

She has been marginalized indoors American culture because she does not have a single, determinate name that embodies within her all the possibility of naming. The only rule Janie has of shaping a positive and expressive identity is to fall apart herself into distinct public and private personas, a further dilution of identity.

Baker, H. A. (1987). political theory and narrative form. In Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were ceremony God. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 35-39.

Hurston (1978) alludes to this split persona when she ultimately identifies Janie as follows: "She had an at heart and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them" (68). It is Janie's recognition that her grandmother's best intentions have contributed to her divided self. Acquiring her own name necessitates the rejection of protection and security which Nanny Logan and Jody al
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