Dog Sees God Analysis

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston revolves around the struggles of Janie Starks to find a certain form of love in a still much divided time in society. This essential theme of love is not actually brought out in full effect until the death of Janie’s second husband, Joe Starks. This death brings about the discovery of Tea Cake, a man who fulfills Janie’s views on love, via the compositions of springtime: bright skies, sunny days, and bugs flying around. It took Janie a constant search for this type of love, and after the death of Joe, she finally found it.

Janie is beginning to realize who she truly is and has been awakened through the scenic vision of the nature around her, presenting her womanhood in front of her eyes.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel about an African American woman named Janie, and how her relationships with family and friends affect her life. Two of the most obvious themes throughout the story is Janie’s search for love, and through the process, her finding her independence as a woman.

In many novels, authors have implemented social constructs in order to shape the mood of the books. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston alludes to social class, especially race, subtly. Hurston’s background of anthropology and growing up as an African-American woman clearly plays a role in the social makeup of the novel. The main character of the novel, Janie, has various experiences in which readers can discover the social structures in her life. Through Janie’s story of self-discovery, Hurston reveals social constructs of the time, especially race and wealth, by including anecdotes, complex characters, and thought-provoking scenes that highlight controversial issues.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford searches for self-knowledge and grows through her relationships with men, family, and society. As Janie progresses in the novel, she takes strides towards black culture, not away from it. Although Janie is the first female in African American fiction to embark on such a journey of self-realization and independence, she is caught in her innocence many times throughout the novel. Janie realizes she must find out who she is as a person before she becomes the subject of others. Janie innocently remarks, “Dey useter call me Alphabet ‘cause so many people had done named me different names.” The name Alphabet suits Janie as a character because she is indefinable

Kartikeya Sharma COM 1102 - 04 Mrs. Joy Patterson 11/21/2014 Their Eyes Were Watching God This novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' is written by 'Zora Neale Hurston', and the story takes place in the city Eatonville, Florida in the twentieth century. The first chapter of this story is written in a third person which is omniscient, and Janie is the narrator in the remaining chapters. The third person (omniscient) narrator tells the story of Janie as a flashback.

The story “There Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston, is a story that takes place in Florida in the early 1900s. The book is about the struggle of a woman to find true love in life. This woman is named Jane, she is a mixed race of both black and white, she is the protagonist of the story. Her goal in life was to find satisfying love with a man. The story uses race to show people's role, or importance in society. In the early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon to think black people were inferior to white people and held a lower standard of life. This led to many people being segregated and treated differently due to their skin color. The book “There Eyes Were Watching God”, is dominated by race driven thoughts, race in the story measures a person's superiority, leads to people being in different social classes, and shows how people are racist for no justifiable reason.

Albena Azmanova writes  about what the struggles for the new and old feminist movement were this about the feminist movement:

“She had waited all her life for something.” This quote is significant because it epitomizes the struggle of a woman to reach self-actualization. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston juxtaposes opposing places to emphasize the experience gained by the novel’s protagonist, Janie, in each respective location, and to emphasize the effect of that environment on Janie’s journey to attain her dreams. Through this comparison, the author explores the idea of living and experiencing life as a means of self-discovery. Moreover, Hurston expresses another theme central to the novel’s understanding. This particular theme denounces the belief that achieving life experience should always involve

I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, copyright in 1937 and has a total of 193 pages.

Their Eyes are Watching God is globally viewed from many different angles, such as feminist consciousness; the racial suppression; and the Black accrete of this novel. It contains love, murder, hate, gossip, politics, and death. The novel itself contains positive messages, but the overriding inappropriate language and sexism negates that. Mrs. Tasharofi explain that “Under racism, black women have been programed to believe in white standards of beauty and this later is called internalized racism”.

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.

Love and Marriage      Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel about a Southern black woman and her experiences through life. Janie, the main character, is forced at a young age by her grandmother, into an arranged marriage with a man named Logan. Janie is told to learn to love Logan, but the love never comes for Logan in Janie's heart so she leaves him. She meets a man named Joe. Soon after they are married.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s esteemed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Nanny Crawford says, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” When I read this bold statement in my 11th grade literature class it struck me. I carried these words with me for a long time contemplating their meaning. Does this comparison of black women to a lowly animal such as a mule hold true? It certainly did in the early twentieth century time period of the novel in which black women were nothing more than the property of white men. However, despite all the milestones and barriers African American women have broken since then, to an extent Nanny’s words hold true even in today’s society. Women of color still remain objects of exploitation and misrepresentation. As an African American woman, I would use my time enrolled in Grady College to prepare and mold myself into a positive representation of black women in mainstream media.

Hurston's “Their Eyes Were Watching God” presents several themes such as speech and silence, love and marriage, and finally gender roles. Zora Neale Hurston does an outstanding job of instituting what men such as Joe Starks believed were the standard roles for the African American female. Hurston pertinently described Janie through her relationship with Joe, the metaphoric value of the mule, and her dialogue as a woman of strength, not concerned with the ideals of her white female counterparts, sitting up on a high chair and overlooking the world. Janie desired a greater purpose.