Zora Hurston's How It Feels to Be Colored Me

In Zora Hurston's “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”, she developed her essay through juxtaposition and extended metaphors. Hurston establishes her essay upon a juxtaposition of burden vs strength. She introduces the juxtaposition through a rhetorical shift --“But I am not tragically colored” (Hurston) -- immediately drawing a line between being colored as a burden or as nothing at all. She describes later, “there is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. [. . .] Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more of less.” (Hurston). Hurston is aware the environment she is in makes life harder for her as a black women, but she believes that strength and determination overcome any obstacle or burden. Hurston feels as though that no person discriminated upon should “weep at the world” and fell victim to circumstances. Instead, she believes that having strength and perseverance through discrimination is the better alternative

Hurston uses extended metaphors to highlight important concepts in the text to which the metaphor catches the reader's eye and making he or she think upon the concept. In one instance Hurston describes herself as “a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.” (Hurston) Explaining her view through an extended metaphor draws an importance to how she feels like an heavy anchor overwhelmed by the flood of racially different people to which she stays who she is. Her use of extended metaphors explain key concepts that the reader can more easily see. At the end of the essay Hursten compares herself to a “brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall [. . .] in company with other bags, white, red and yellow”(Hurston). Summarizing the entire essay, she describes how even though she is colored she feels different from everyone else. She compares her personality to miscellaneous trash and treasures. This miscellany is tied to the color of the bags, the color of skin, but she untaggles the two by pouring out the content of each bag into a pile to which she refills the bags not varying the contents of the bags greatly. She uses this metaphor to strengthen her argument, thus developing her essay. By comparing our character to miscellaneous trash and treasures and our skin