In the 1930s, Alabama author, anthropologist, and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "home town" of Eatonville, Florida, to record stories oral histories, sermons and songs dating back to the days of slavery. that she remembered hearing as a child. Hurston's love of African-American folklore and her work as an anthropologist are reflected in her novels and short stories – where she uses the rich indigenous dialects of her native rural Florida as well as the African tradition of oral storytelling. While Hurston's deep interest in the folk practices of Southern blacks became the basis of his novels, a close reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God reveals that folklore permeates every major level of the novel—history passed down by mouth by ear, the characters are stereotypes and the plot is repetitive in nature. To begin, the practice of passing history through generations through word of mouth is an important folkloric trait that the novel embodies. Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by American folklorist Hurston, represented the options and dynamism of the culture and folklore of the black people of the South, given the form of "textualization of oral traditions" of the novel. This method simply involves translating essentially oral folklore into fictionalized written text and, although it challenges the tradition of oral storytelling; however, this did not detract from the authenticity of the folkloric embodiment throughout the book. For now, the novel's story setting, brought about by Janie's oral sharing with her friend Phoebe, is actually based on the oral tradition of storytelling. Additionally, although Janie has not shared her story with the town, given her complicated status within the community; yet, te...... middle of paper ......trusty, or more effective than other things...A series of three often creates a progression in which tension is created, built and ultimately released.” (Reynolds, Storytelling In Jazz: The Rule of Three). In the novel, the repetition of the three in folklore is found twice in content, the first being in Janie's three marriages, the second being her departure from the rural community of Nanny – the grandmother and her first husband, to the city where she keeps a store with Joe Starks, and finally to the "mud" of the Everglades where she experiences joy and mourning thanks to Tea Cake, her third husband. These repetitions, the three marriages and three communities in which Janie moves, ultimately represented the female protagonist's ever-widening circles of experience of opportunities for expression of personal choice and self-determination...