Analysis Of Gender Differences By Zora Neale Hurston

The author Zora Neale Hurston illustrated many of her passages by painting a picture that would display a deeper and more beautiful meaning to each word. In each passage, she also made each painting flow better by choosing the right symbols to get her point across. In the first two paragraphs of the book Hurston uses her gift in expression to convey the contrasting ways dreams and ambitions are achieved by both a man and a woman. The use of word choice and imagery in the paragraphs are used to depict a meaning of gender differences.
For a man, his ambitions and goals seem to be always out of reach. The only way a man can obtain what he desires is if it is handed to him. If the circumstances of the man being given what he wants does not present
itself, he will never obtain it. In the passage Hurston states, “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon” (Hurston 1). Hurston used a ship specifically to connect a man’s goals and ambition to a ship at sea, because the man is only observing what he wants and has no ways of controlling the ship. For some the ship may come in, but since a man can not control the tide, his desires were given to him by the sea (figuratively) and not by his pursuit of reaching for what he, as a man, wants. Overall, Hurston is trying to paint a picture of how a man’s dreams can be either given to him or he gives up and his dreams are mocked by time.