In this passage, death is personified. Hurston personifies death in order to give the readers a picture of death based on what it does. Also, she does this to show the control that death has; she refers to it as "The great one" (pg. 129).
Towards the end of the passage, the people of the town "squatted under the trees and waited" (pg. 130). This is another example of the tree motif. Throughout the book, trees have been used as a representation of the emotions being felt by the characters. When Janie was feeling unimportant, she "watched the shadow of herself" (pg. 119) working, but she really wasn't doing anything. To show this feeling, she was sitting under a shady tree. When Joe and Janie had just arrived at the town, everybody was very exited to see the town be built. When the supplies were brought in, the were "piled under the big live oak tree" (pg. 65). The tree was big and live because it represented the excitement of the people and the promise of a prospering town.
In the last sentence, a wingless bird is used as a symbol for rumor. This is because a wingless bird can not fly or do anything that a bird should do; it's useless. This is like a rumor because rumors mean absolutely nothing, even though they are taken seriously frequently in this book.
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