According To Novelist Alice Walker Say That She Identifies With Janie. '?

An anonymous person once said, “silence is the most powerful scream.” Silence has an incredible role in society. One can trace this role and how it changes within both the real world and literature. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a literary masterpiece in which speech is used as both a mechanism of control and a vehicle of liberation.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story that follows protagonist Janie Crawford, through many hardships, relationships, and adventures. As Janie Returns to her hometown in Florida after a long absence the novel is a recollection of her experiences and adventures to her friend Pheoby Watson. Janie struggles throughout the entirety of the novel to find freedom and peace with herself. She experiences relationships with a few different kinds of people all of which help her to eventually find that

The film Their Eyes Were Watching God, based off of the novel by author Zora Neale Hurston, is a story of a young woman named Janie who spends the film narrating her life story to a friend. Janie’s story is one of self-exploration, empowerment, and the ability to express her freedoms both as a maturing woman and African American, throughout her life experiences. As she navigates through sexism and racism to find herself it becomes more evident that it will be more difficult than she initially thought to reach a point of happiness.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie Crawford has experienced and had interactions with the nature around her. These interactions symbolised Janie’s quest for love, her own independence and personal freedom through each endeavor. Janie’s quest for her womanhood was directly influenced by the natural environment around her. For instance, the novel states that Janie “Saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a blossom” (11).

Janie Crawford is surrounded by outward influences that contradict her independence and personal development. These outward influences from society, her grandma, and even significant others contribute to her curiosity. Tension builds between outward conformity and inward questioning, allowing Zora Neal Hurston to illustrate the challenge of choice and accountability that Janie faces throughout the novel.

Wright argues that Their Eyes Were Watching God has no central theme or significance, which is interesting considering it is now looked at as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century. The greatest, most revolutionary artists throughout history, think Van Gogh, have always been deemed lazy or untalented due primarily to social conventions of their time refusing to budge. However, what is truly unintelligent and lazy is Wright’s unwillingness to admit the abundance of important, ground breaking them throughout this novel. Their Eyes Were Watching God combats issues of racism, sexism, classism, and

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, a young woman travels through difficult life experiences in order to find herself. Hurston portrays the protagonist as an adventurous soul trapped in the binds of suppressing marriages. Janie experiences three different types of marriage learning from each one what she values most. From these marriages she learned she values love and respect, finally achieving them in her last marriage. Each new marriage brought something new to the table for Janie and no matter the situation or the outcome of the relationship Janie grew into her own independent individual because of it.

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

“She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How?” (Hurston 11). This quote exemplifies Janie’s desire for answers throughout her three relationships, displaying what she is longingly seeking for in life. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, follows the life of protagonist Janie Crawford, a confident, middle-aged black woman who goes throughout life discovering her quest for spiritual enlightenment and self-discovery. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explains the hardships as ideas of maturity, sexism, and social class.

Janie's quest is for self-discovery and self-definition, but she encounters many obstacles while trying to win this quest.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston a young girl named Janie begins her life unknown to herself. She searches for the horizon as it illustrates the distance one must travel in order to distinguish between illusion and reality, dream and truth, role and self? (Hemenway 75). She is unaware of life?s two most precious gifts: love and the truth. Janie is raised by her suppressive grandmother who diminishes her view of life. Janie?s quest for true identity emerges from her paths in life and ultimatly ends when her mind is freed from mistaken reality.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel about a woman and the trials and tribulations that she goes through while trying to find the true meaning of love and loss. In the novel Janie struggles to find someone that honestly loves her and she has to deal with the lost she felt when the she realized that the love that she received is forever lost. Some major themes in the novel would be work, sexuality, freedom and love. All of these themes are important in understanding the novel. There are numerous patterns in Their Eyes Were Watching God that connects to other works in its genre. While analyzing the novel you are able to tell by the structure of the novel that the novel belongs in the genre of a romantic drama because there are a numerous amounts of exciting, surprising and unexpected events and the story focuses on the love that TeaCake and Janie has in the novel.

Janie strives to live the life of her imagination by attempting to achieve the dreams of her own. Their Eyes Were Watching God reveals Janie Crawford as a sixteen year old girl who aims to discover new adventures and find love within her marriages. Janie’s grandmother demands she settles down with a decent man that could bring her a bright future. As a matter of fact, Janie originally marries Logan Killicks in order to fulfill her grandmother’s demands. With their marriage progressing without love, Janie runs off with Joe Starks. It was not until she meets Tea Cake, a younger man with a poor background, does she experience true love and adventurous journeys. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston uses the symbols of the horizon

     Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.