When Elijah is describing how Joe confronted Spunk (the week before their final confrontation), he uses a simile and a hyperbole, as seen in the following passage:
Lena looked up at him with her eyes so full of love that they wuz runnin’ over an’ Spunk seen it an’ Joe seen it too, and his lip started to tremblin’ and his Adam’s apple was galloping up and down his neck like a race horse. Ah bet he’s wore out half a dozen Adam’s apples since Spunk’s been on the job with Lena. That’s all he’ll do. He’ll be back heah after while swallowin’ an’ workin’ his lips like he wants to say somethin’ an’ can’t.
The simile Elijah uses—“his Adam’s apple was galloping up and down his neck like a race horse”—helps readers to picture how nervous Joe was to challenge Spunk’s authority. Likewise, the hyperbole—in which Elijah says that Joe has likely “wore out half a dozen Adam’s apples” since Lena and Spunk started their affair—uses exaggerated language in order to communicate the depth of Joe’s anxiety about the situation. On the one hand, Joe feels he must stand up to Spunk in order to prove his power and masculinity (as well as his “claim” over his wife) and, on the other hand, he knows that Spunk could easily overpower him and wants to avoid such a clash.
In addition to helping readers understand Joe’s fear in the face of Spunk’s masculine authority, these examples of figurative language communicate Elijah’s gift with storytelling. Hurston intentionally has Elijah narrate much of the story while gossiping with the men at the general store in order to legitimize Black oral storytelling as an art form.
