Point Of View In Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks On A Road

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As children, we often view the world through innocent and impeccable eyes. Not a care in the world, not a worried thought in our heads. As we grow older, the realization of the real world slowly makes its way into our lives. We begin to feel fear and doubt, there is judgment and assumptions. We begin to “not feel so hopeful” (Hurston). In Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography, Hurston traps the vision of life and how we live it through both a child’s eyes and an adult’s. Using repetitive diction, Zora Neale Hurston illustrates her childhood by manipulating the point of view from the positive innocence of her childhood to the negative maturity of adulthood. Hurston opens with descriptions on her childhood home. She reminisces…show more content…
Fairly quickly the idea of playing outside went from “boisterous games” to being “too poor to sit in the house.” With this sentence the manipulation of Hurston’s point of view begins. Through the eyes of a child playing outside is a wonderful privilege. Through the eyes of Hurston’s mother, it was the only way to experience “any pleasure.” To Hurston’s parents, life was a test and they were trying to get themselves, and Hurston, through it. Hurston’s father had a negative point of view on life and always seemed to be putting Hurston down (for her own good perhaps?) he often threatened to break her spirit or “kill [her] in the attempt.” In a perhaps less blunt way, Hurston’s mother showed that she too, had a fearful and negative outlook on the world. She knew that Hurston was impudent and prideful, but she didn’t want to hurt Hurston too badly in fear that she “would turn out to be a mealy-mouthed rag doll.” Hurston’s father had no problem pointing out the worst and bringing the future with a negative point of view. He often told Hurston of the events she was to encounter in the years to come. He would threaten her with the thought that “posses with ropes and guns were going to drag [her] out sooner or later” for her sassy tongue. Or that her “mama was going to suck sorrow for not beating [her] temper out” before it was too

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