Confusion

     I'll admit the first thing I thought when I read the first page was, "What?" That confusion lasted until class and we had a chance to talk about what happened and clarified who the characters were. While the readings have started making more and more sense to me as we go on there are still some things that trip me up or have tripped me up. So I thought I'd write about what I found to be most confusing about Beloved.
     The part that was the most confusing was definitely the beginning. I think the main reason that it was so confusing is that the book expects the reader to instantly understand the rules of the world within the book. That would be okay if the rules were the same as the real world. But they're not. So you're entered into a world where it is accepted that ghosts are a real thing. Reading a ghost story that you don't know is a ghost story is confusing because you look for a logical explanation for things even if there isn't one. Combine that sense of not knowing what's going on with the confusing names Toni Morrison uses and that makes for a really confusing first chapter.
     After learning that ghosts were real within the context of the novel everything started to make more sense. However, there are still some things that confuse me while I'm reading. The two things that still get me every now and then are whose perspective the book is being told from and what time is the story taking place. The way Morrison writes it, the transition between both the points of view and between the past and the present is hard to notice. This has caused me to have to reread on multiple occasions because I wasn't sure who was talking or when what was going on was going on. A perfect example of this is when Sethe is heading to the place where Baby Suggs used to preach and it keeps switching back and forth between the past and the present. 

Authentic Voice

      While reading Their Eyes Were Watching God something that really stood out to me was the use of African-American vernacular throughout the novel. The characters used in when they were talking and the narrator even slipped into at times. I found this to be one of my favorite aspects of the book and felt as though it added another layer to the book as well.  However, to be honest, I also found it to be one of the most challenging things about the book. I would often have to reread sections of dialogue to make sure I understood what was being said. I would also sometimes read the words as they were written but try to connect them to the "proper words". I felt like that took away from the novel.
      As a result, I was thinking about ways to deal with that problem. The first thing that jumped into my head was an audiobook. I thought it would be awesome to actually hear the dialogue as opposed to just hearing it in your head. So I went and found an audiobook version of Their Eyes Were Watching God and listened to the part of the book where Janie is in the store listening to people on the porch. I must say that I really liked it. The dialogue just seemed so much more natural when I was just listening to it as opposed to reading it. The only problem I had with it was that all of the characters had a similar voice. Even though the reader was changing her voice a little it was just a little off and I thought that having each character have their own unique voice would be even better.
      That made me remember listening to a radio play a few years ago and how each character had their own voice actor. I think that that would be the best way to listen to Their Eyes Were Watching God. Imagine how awesome it would be for each character to have their own recognizable voice. Because of that, I think that a radio play would be one of the best mediums to experience the story through.