Analysis Of The Book ' The Eyes Were Watching God '

Everyone has a goal, a mission, a dream. Many dreams of people are far away and in many cases are perceived to be mysterious and merely out of reach. In the story Their Eyes were Watching God, this notion is expressed by the symbol of a horizon. The horizon is a faraway horizontal line between the earth and the sky; between human life and the beyond. This mid point between the possible and impossible is where dreams, wishes, and desires lay. The horizon symbolizes dreams that are seemingly out of reach. In the beginning of the story, this is the state of the dreams of Janie, her horizon. Through chapters 1-9, readers understand through the two failed marriages of Janie, that she dreams to love and be free. Janie wants to love another person

Zora Neale Hurston’s highly acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God demonstrates many of the writing techniques described in How to Read Literature like a Professor by Tomas C. Foster. In Foster’s book, he describes multiple reading and writing techniques that are often used in literature and allow the reader to better understand the deeper meaning of a text. These of which are very prevalent in Hurston’s novel. Her book follows the story of an African American woman named Janie as she grows in her search for love. Hurston is able to tell Janie’s great quest for love with the use of a vampiric character, detailed geography, and sexual symbolism; all of which are described in Foster’s book.

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly." These dream quotes came from the one and only "Their eyes were watching God," book by Zora Neale Hurston. Mrs. Zora Neale Hurston was an expert in writing in dialect. This unique literary form creates differences between other novels or storybooks. In this book, various events (to be specific, a death) seem to illuminate the meaning of life as a whole.

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," the main character, Janie, faces an inner battle in her three marriages, to speak or not to speak, which manifests itself differently with Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake. In her first marriage to Logan Killicks, Janie has her idea of what a marriage should look like shattered, as she failed to fall into the romantic idea of love that she held dear (Myth and Violence in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God). In her second marriage, to Joe “Jody” Starks, Janie buried her fight and spirit within herself, as she attempted to fit into the mold of the “perfect wife” Joe imagined (In Search Of Janie). Finally, in her marriage to Tea Cake, she feels the love she has longed for, and is accepted as the strong, independent woman she is (Janie Crawford Character Analysis). In every marriage, Janie feels the various effects of each man, as they either encourage or diminish her voice and inner spark.

Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston deviates from the conventions of harlem renaissance by adding personality to the novel, utilizing factual accounts to tell the fictional events of a story, and compiling a story about suffrage rather than race.

In both the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, young girls are lectured on who they should be in life and how they should act.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God symbolism, diction, and narration, guide through 1900’s America’s rustic south and helps to understand Janie’s journey from being a sheltered, naive, hopeful but unhappy bride to an independent, grown, experienced, and mature woman by facing a life of poverty, trials and cruelty as she searches for the one thing that gives her life meaning, love. She experienced different kinds of love throughout her life with the men in her life, but it was not the unconditional, true, and fulfilling love she kept searching for. Janie gains her own independence and personal freedom as a result of her quest for this love, which she finally finds in Tea Cake. Janie strives for her own independence and daring

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

Traditional view of women in society leads to the male domination. In her book Their eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston discusses the idea of gender identity where society had power over women that lead to oppression of females. Although the use of a third person narration shows the power over Janie, however Hurston's use of symbolism and diction actually empowers her.

Janie's discovers this love through Teacake her first love. The first signs of this love appear when Teacake goes ‘missing’ for a few days on a trip, Hurston demonstrates how much Janie cares for Teacake through her actions while he is away“It was always going to be dark to Janie if Tea Cake didn’t soon come back. She dwindled down on the floor with her head in a rocking chair”(Hurston 120). The idea of never seeing Teacake again is so devastating to Janie that she sinks to the floor in grief. To Janie, Teacake is her world and if he didn’t come back she would never be able to find light. Because Janie feels as if she needs Teacake in order to continue to live on , this demonstrates that she found the love she wanted when she was a

A major theme in Their Eyes Were Watching God is the search for real love. Janie Crawford goes on a journey in order to find her true love and what true love really means. If Janie didn’t have that desire, all the marriages she was in would not have a point. Men don’t always treat her right so when she meets Tea Cake things are different. The search for love is a hard search and only some people are lucky enough to find it in their lifetime.

The topic of racism is a very intriguing one for me. Other authors criticized Zora Neal Hurtson that she, being a black woman during the black liberation movement in the 1910’s, should be writing about black people being set free and how they are being suppressed by the world around them. Instead, Zora mainly deals with the issues of the women being suppressed and not allowed to be free. This idea itself mirrors that of freeing black people, but yet authors of the time were not able to see that, they called her book artificial and did not help them in their quest for freedom.

Throughout history, the aspiration to accomplish one’s dreams and gain self-fulfillment has been and continues to be prevalent. Consequently, one’s reactions to the obstacles propelled at them may define how they will move forward in search of achieving their goals. Reaching one’s full potential is certainly not an easy conquest. Zora Neale Hurston, an especially noteworthy African American author, uses her astounding piece of literature, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to illuminate the path to discovering what is truly valuable in life. She uses the character, Janie Woods, who endures some of the greatest hardship imagined to elucidate the ways in which hindrance, although discouraging, only makes one stronger. Accordingly, Hurston argues