Sunday, May 15, 2016
Prologue
Dear
Reader
During the cultural, social, and
artistic movement that is the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston wrote her
most famous and revolutionary book Their
Eyes Were Watching God. This coming
of age story follows the endurance of mulatto woman and tells her influential
and inspiring story about her love and life.
Similarly, the classic, Lord of
the Flies, written in 1954 by William Golding, was a coming of age story
that explored the survival of a group of boys on a deserted island.
In the beginning of Hurston’s novel
we open in a gossip–filled southern town where our protagonist, Janie, returns wearing
overalls from her life from amenity with a braid down her back. One of her old friends, Phoebe, listens to
her story starting with her childhood all the way to the reason why she returns
from her prosperous life. We follow
Janie’s life starting a couple years before her first unsuccessful marriage,
set up by her grandmother, to an older, wealthy, and powerful man. This story focuses on Janie as she grows up
in racially segregated time where she realizes that love is not the dreamy
fairytale that she expected. Lord of the Flies opens during a war
crisis as a plane crashes, leaving a group of British school-boys stranded on
an uninhabited island with no adult supervision, thus forcing the boys to make
decisions about what is morally right and what is wrong.
I enjoyed reading both of these two inspiring and
empowering books, especially Their Eyes were
Watching God after living so close to the Baltimore riots, however, I
really love reading Lord of the Flies because
it is the survival situation that all young boys daydream about. Both of these books keep the reader engaged, making
them always wanting to know what will happen next to the main characters. All throughout this multi-genre research
paper I tried to reiterate the idea of surviving through puberty growing up. After all Janie had to grow up with her
childhood dream of true love being shattered, as well as having to survive in a
society that forces her to be “the mule” of society. The boys’, in Lord of the Flies, story throughout the entire story revolved
around their survival as young teenagers.
This project consists of creative works that I feel capture the essence
of both of the books, through the themes of survival and coming of age, themes
that would be in the Harlem Renaissance and in Lord of the Flies.
Genre explanations and Citations
NOTES
- I selected to write two poems about my theme, the first being about maturity and the second about survival, to elevate the idea of creative writing that would have been in the Harlem Renaissance, the time where Their Eyes Were Watching God would have been written. Each of the Poems explore the theme in each of the books. Each of the sides have the opposite colors of the other, including text, highlight of the text, text background, and the paper color to represent segregation in Their Eyes Were Watching God. I chose to choose the background as blue and green to represent the two most natural colors that would be in the scenery of the island in Lord of the Flies, the water and the plants. The chose this text to invoke and older looking theme. I was hoping to have this genre to invoke the theme in the books to the reader of the project.
- I chose to create a modern twist of an illustration of a plane primarily for the survival for the boys in Lord of the Flies. I placed words throughout infrastructure of the plane that relate with the topic of survival such as fire, rope, knives, and water. In the background I put a representation of the island that the surviving boys would have been on, including the beach, the forest, and the pinkish colored mountain, all featured in Lord of the Flies. I chose to draw a plane because in the beginning of the book the surviving boys crashed from a plane.
- I chose to write this sample newspaper article to emphasize the chapter of Janie’s life where she starts to question her marriage to Jody. The article starts out with Mr. Bonner’s mule’s life throughout the chapters it lives, the paper alters into when Jody buys the mule and Janie’s feelings for it and what it stands for to her. It also explores the controlling nature of Joe, showing him denying the press access to talk to Janie. At the end the paper moves back to the mule, focusing on the mule’s funeral. In the paper there is two photographs, one being a picture of a mule and the other being a vulture. The vulture is representing the reminder that people are not in control and that God is.
- I chose to create this visual representation of Tea Cake’s death certificate from Their Eyes were Watching God to help showcase Tea Cake’s character as well as his lack of survival. Being that my theme is about survival I found it appropriate to create something that shows the opposite of survival, and what can go wrong when trying to survive in the harshness of the world. I referenced an actual government death certificate, showing what would actually be on a certificate of death, such as marital status and method of disposition.
- In this genre I chose to make a journal entry that Janie may have written during her first marriage with Logan Killicks, her arrival at Eatonville, her arguments with Jody, and the arrival of Tea Cake. During the entry first entry I try to capture Janie’s emotions as Logan went into town to get a mule so that Janie could work in the fields. I tried to capture Janie’s frustration by showing her disapproval and by her no doing what Logan asked her to do. In the next couple of entries for Janie’s journal Janie is writing about her marriage to Jody, including the time after his death. I tried to show how love is relentless and that this is not exception for Janie.
- In my last and extra genre I chose to create a recipe for survival, referencing Piggy’s aunt. Piggy mentions his aunt many times in the beginning of the book so I thought is interesting to create something that Piggy had to so, survive, by a less involved character in the plot. I chose some major themes that have to do with surviving, both mental and physical, as well as some actions or qualities one might find useful in a situation like the boys had in Lord of the Flies.
Works Cited
Walker Thompson, Karen, Age of Miracles, NY: Random House, 2012.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)