What is the tone of "How it Feels to Be Colored Me"?

The overall tone that Hurston develops in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" is lively, triumphant, and self-assured.  Throughout the essay, Hurston discusses the development of her identity, largely as a person of color, and although she expresses times when she feels hardship, she comes out strong.  For example, Hurston says that she thinks discrimination is ridiculous because it robs other people of the opportunity of her company:

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

Hurston uses the rhetorical question and a note of sarcasm to criticize others for discrimination.  She knows that she is a remarkable individual, and she will not allow herself to be made to feel in any way inferior.  So, throughout the essay, Hurston's use of figurative language and rhetorical techniques pose her as a strong person thereby developing a lively, triumphant, and self-assured tone.

Tone is the emotional attitude a piece of writing conveys. In her essay "How it Feels to Be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston communicates a tone of relentlessly vibrant optimism about the possibilities that come with being a Black woman in the 1920s United States.

Word choices convey feeling and tone. Hurston uses bright, upbeat words, such as "adventure," "thrilling," and "exciting" to describe her view of life. She speaks of "dancing wildly" inside herself at a jazz club and uses the image of "the eternal feminine with its string of beads" to describe how she sees herself. All of this verbiage conveys a sense of upbeat hope and joy about what life has to offer her regardless of the color of her skin.

Hurston also uses humor to convey her optimism and sense of individuality. She begins the essay by making a joke about the number of Black people who also claim Native American ancestry, writing,

I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.

She uses hyperbole or exaggeration to set herself apart from the beginning as her own person. This leads to another technique that Hurston employs to convey feeling: she repeatedly contrasts herself in a positive way to what she calls the "sobbing school of Negrohood." If others are going to take a negative attitude towards being Black or dwell on injustice, she is not. Others can spend time complaining, but she is going to "sharpen" her "oyster knife" and do battle with life. She will enjoy both being a student at all-white Barnard College (today part of Columbia University) and feeling the rhythms of a Black jazz club. A typical upbeat utterance is her response to racial discrimination:

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?

This light-hearted, almost giddy tone conveys energy and allows the reader to sense her confidence.

What figurative language is used in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"?

Because Hurston is writing from her own perspective in "How It Feels to Be Colored Like Me," the characterization in this essay involves Hurston characterizing herself. Hurston presents herself as feisty, vibrant, likable, and upbeat. She is determined not to let her race or the discrimination she might face for it get her down.

Hurston characterizes her younger self as a bright, outgoing child who is glad to meet and perform dances for the Northern white tourists passing through the town. She characterizes her adult self as equally vibrant and engaged with life. She enjoys the fruits of both the white and Black spheres, going to the white women's Barnard College while enjoying the pulsing rhythms of Black jazz music. She is confident and well-dressed, writing,

I set my hat at a certain angle and saunter down Seventh Avenue, Harlem City, feeling as snooty as the lions in front of the Forty-Second Street Library, for instance.

Hurston leaves readers in no doubt that she can conquer life with her sassy attitude and her "sharpened ... oyster knife."

Hurston also presents one-dimensional characters to act as foils to herself. For example, she contrasts her wild, full-bodied, pulsating internal response to jazz music with the measured reaction of an unnamed white companion:

"Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.

She also uses the character of the "sobbing school of Negrohood," those Black people who dwell on injustices, to highlight her own exuberant desire to focus on all that is positive.

In characterizing herself as the upbeat and feisty central character for her essay, Hurston provides inspiration to her readers.

What is the extended metaphor in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"?

A metaphor compares two seemingly unlike things to make a point. An extended metaphor is one that examines an initial metaphor in greater depth. A simile is a form of metaphor that uses the words like or as.

The extended metaphor in Hurston's essay comes at the end. Here, she compares skin color to the outside color of a bag. First, she compares her own skin tone to a brown bag, stating,

I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall.

She then extends this metaphor to include "other bags, white, red and yellow." She goes even further with this idea. She pictures dumping out the contents of all the different bags. Each one, she says, contains a jumble of items, some of great value, others of no value. She asserts that if the items from each bag are all mixed together in one pile and then randomly replaced in the colored bags, it won't make much difference.

By this, she is explaining that beneath the surface of different skin colors, people are fundamentally the same. We are all a mix of good and bad. No one race has a monopoly on value and no one race is worthless. By using this metaphor, Hurston communicates that all people are equal. She does so in a way that is concrete, visual, and easy for readers to understand, making this one of the strongest parts of her essay.

What is a simile used in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"?

In this essay, Hurston offers an upbeat appraisal of being "colored," what we today would call being Black. She asserts that she goes on with her life and doesn't let racism get her down or stop her. At one one point, she uses the following simile (a simile is a comparison that uses the words "like" or "as"):

One simile that Hurston uses in this personal essay occurs when she describes her reaction to jazz in contrast to that of her white companion: "My pulse is throbbing like a war drum." The simile makes a connection between her pulse, increased by her excitement in response to the music, and a musical drum beat. The war drum also coincides with Hurston's vision of herself in Africa, whooping and shaking an "assegai" above her head like a tribal warrior.

Her connection to jazz causes her to temporarily abandon "the veneer we call civilization"—spiritually, anyway—to feel the beat and its roots in African musical tradition. Her companion, on the other hand, has no connection to that tradition and merely taps his fingers—a subtle, unenthusiastic response in contrast to Hurston's "throbbing" war drum feeling.

How does the writer illustrate her point in "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"?

Hurston's point in this essay is summed up in the following statement:

I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it.

Hurston wants to celebrate the good side of being black. Hurston illustrates her point through example and metaphor.

For instance, she use example when she celebrates her ability to enjoy her black heritage when she goes to a jazz club, describing the exciting experience as she listens to the music:

I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum.

She contrasts this to the experience of her white friend, who sits unmoving, smoking a cigarette, seemingly unable to participate in this powerful experience. She says of him,

The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him

Finally, Hurston ends her essay by using a simile to illustrate her point. A simile is a form of metaphor or comparison that uses the words like or as. She compares herself to a brown bag propped against the wall. Beside her are yellow bags, white bags, and red bags, representing the other races. Hurston says that when the bags are dumped, they all hold a mix of items, some very valuable and some of very little worth. In other words, she feels equal to a person of any other race, because all humans are a jumble of good and bad inside. As she puts it,

the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied... might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter.

In other words, people are people, so Hurston does not bother feeling inferior.