Essay On Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Long, luscious locks cascade down Janie’s brown back, spilling over her shoulders and tickling the tops of her thighs. Her face is buried in the thick curtain that ripples slightly in the sweet, warm summer wind. This is Janie’s freedom and her femininity embodied in such a commonplace object. Janie’s hair represents her inner self: the part of her that was smothered and buried in her previous marriages. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s hair symbolizes much; throughout the novel, her hair represents youth, attraction, and freedom.

In the crossroads between love and culture, politics and tradition, lies what it means to be human. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford desperately tries to find romance under the championed social realism of husband and wife at the time. At the beginning Janie’s Nanny, arranges for her to marry Logan killicks. An old farmer he owned a large sixty acres of land and was looking for someone to fill the place of his previous wife. However, Janie is not interested in Logan or marriage, her grandmother prescribed the life she wanted Janie to live, a stable life that was financially secure. The life Nanny and her daughter never had. Janie’s youthful notions about relationships leads her to strongly believe that marriage must involve love, and that Logan wants a helper on the farm not a lover or partner. Feeling miserable and lonely, she runs off with Joe Starks to Eatonville. After being spoiled with many fine items, and a distinct position in town, Janie realizes that he wants her as a trophy wife, to reassert his dominance over the townspeople. He treats her as a valuable possession, dictating what she says, wears, and restricting her social life. Once he dies she for once gains total freedom to do as she pleases, becoming financially independent and toppled by suitors. She then meets fun-loving young Vergible Woods who goes by the nickname “Tea Cake”. At first Janie is uncertain of his intentions, as she is wealthy and older, but

Hurston details Janie’s search for love to show her as a symbol of a hopeless romantic. In Janie’s first marriage with Logan Killicks, she clings to a

Here Hurston directly highlights the conflicts between male and female figures to show that Janie’s abusive relationship with Jody is used to build up strength and independence within herself. When she finally found this hidden strength within her, she no longer struggled to find her own voice. Janie’s assertion of her control and power marks the beginning of her awakened reassurance. When Jody loses his ability to exert his dominance and she takes control of their relationship, she starts heading towards the directions of her dreams. The conflicts between Janie and her marriages are ultimately used to demonstrate the growth of Janie’s emotional maturity and strength, as she finds the voice that was suppressed for so long by Jody and Logan. The strong sentiment that Hurston establishes in her relationship with Logan and Jody serves as the fuel for Janie to decide that personal growth and development as a woman will only occur when she breaks free from the mold that her marriages has put her in. The tension between male and female figures that Hurston highlights provide defining obstacles in Janie’s life that prompted her inner independence and

Jannie’s quest to find her childhood ambitions of love helps her discover her true identity throughout the journey. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were watching God Jannie is a stranger to her true self because she is being suppressed by the society and the people around her. Then she meets Tea Cake and he helps her find her way to who she really is. Mary Elizabeth Frye’s “Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep” helps the reader perceives why Jannie is not upset that she killed “Tea Cake”. Jannie’s search for love and her identity ultimately leads her to live a full life and find peace with her soul.

In the novel, Their Eyes Are Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston lays bare the many faces of feminism and patriarchal ideology. Janie’s relationships show how feminism ideals and patriarchy thinking were normal within the African American culture in the slavery era. In many instances, Janie worked against the very ideas that an oppressive patriarchal society represents. The life dreamed of does not become a reality for most women. Although Janie saw a different future for herself. Those closest to Janie influenced her decisions and actions as she succumb to the patriarchal thinking. She was also empowered by those same influences.

Hurston’s introduction depicts how Janie came back to Eatonville, Florida and many neighbors are talking amongst each other to see where she was for a long time. Her close friend Pheoby visits her and tries to figure out what has happened. Janie started to explain to her how she had felt from her experiences in the very beginning. She begins to tell how her grandmother raised her, and how she wanted to marry Logan Killicks, who owns 60 acres of land, which can provide an economic status for Janie. She was miserable, and ended up running away with a man named Joe Starks. They traveled to Eatonville, and they expanded the land. She wished she was part of the social life, but Jody wouldn’t let her talk with the people of the town. 20 years later,

Hurston Voicing Out The American voice(AV) is unique because there is no definitive way of explaining it. However, after doing research on her and reading Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, my thoughts are that the AV speaks out for those that feel they have no voice. I have found that the ones who contribute to the AV are the ones who know what it is like to face many adversities; amongst facing these times, they have found a way to learn and better themselves from it. Hurston had such a deep background that she was able to express hope for others by writing about the struggles women had faced with help and inspiration from other authors.

The protagonist begins such an arduous quest due to a troubled familial history and broken home. Along the journey, Janie is subdued into malicious relationships with dominating males. Despite this, she becomes spiritually independent of her situations and begins to love. Hurston effectively uses southern dialect to give the narration authenticity. Hurston also parallels Janie’s personal growth with the level of her speech throughout the novel. The importance of personal achievement through self- awareness over authority fosters tension between Janie and her husbands. The significance of race as an undertone in Janie’s journey contribute to the persistence of the issue being a prevalent aspect of the era’s

This openness is symbolic of Janie’s acknowledgement and acceptance of the world and her fascination with it. She eagerly soaks in everything that she can in an attempt to be a part of the secrets and passions of the world. At the same time Hurston is using the

The non-stop, brazen, over-lapping gossip is evidenced in Hurston’s dialogue as a constant stream of steady rambling, with an imagined cacophony of bass, tenor, and alto voices that bend and weave in the rhythm of Janie’s stroll. The porch sitters, with all of their individual solos, come together as one collective mind as the narrator says, “When she got to where they were she turned her face on the bander log and spoke….The porch couldn’t talk for looking” (Their Eyes 2). Hurston presents her protagonist as an ordinary woman who rises above the circumstances of her environments to attain an extraordinary wealth of personal autonomy and the discovery of her voice. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Mae Crawford is relegated to and dependent upon finding a man, preferably one of respectable status, who can provide the adequate comforts of home and a good name within the community. All of Janie’s marriages are full of strife and abuse, but eventually she finds one full of reciprocal love that becomes the springboard to self-reclamation and empowerment. However, the evolution to selfhood is not straightforward, requiring the rejection of social propriety and inculcated familial heritage, and the brave journey into the unknown in order for Janie to recover her personal

Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 and was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. She is known for her contribution to African American Literature during the Harlem Renaissance. Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of Hurston’s best well known works was published in 1937 and it revolves around the journey of an African American woman, Janie Crawford. Hurston and her character Janie have a lot in common, they both struggle with their identities as light-skinned African Americans. Zora Neale Hurston’s use of symbolism, irony, and metaphor develops the theme that people typically live unsatisfactory lives as they are unable to liberate themselves from oppression social norms.

And through such character, Hurston effectively channels the essence of all paradigms that plagues a young black woman, Logan represents stability and security through his possessions of a 60-acre potato farm, the “high seat” that her grandmother always yearns for her. When Nanny rigidly declares, “You com heah wid yo ' mouf full of fullishness on uh busy day. Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all yo bown days, and big protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat tuh you and call you Mis ' Killicks, and you come worrying ' me 'bout love.” (23), she breezily cast out the notion of love, and in doing so explores the role of black woman in post-slavery period as they have yet the freedom to pursue other goals than primarily financial survival. As time marches, Janie barren relationship with Logan worsen as she tires of Logan’s disparagingly assigned jobs. When Janie laments, “Maybe if someone was to tell me how” (23), she ponders regretfully of herself but ultimately fails to make a change to her life on her own. Her dream was stomped on by reality’s demands to fulfil other’s wishes and so she saw the world for what it truly is, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie 's first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25); fatigued, an enticing light on the other side of the tunnel calls out to her in the name of Joe Starks which swiftly drove her from an unsatisfying relationship.

Janie is judged harshly by the women of Eatonville for pursuing her horizon and running away with Tea Cake. An aspect in the novel that is still very prevalent today is the portrayal of society’s criticism; although the world has advanced much over the years, society remains as judgmental as in past times. Janie does many things today that would not be considered outrageous; however, during that time it was scandalous. One thing remains the same; when something is seen as wrong a person will be judged harshly for performing

Everyone can struggle with self validation, personal ambitions, and self identity. Hurston establishes that throughout the book, creating characters that test Janie’s development as an individual. Janie knew that “womenfolks” were never given the time of day, but the reasons as to why were invalid to her. She passed through oppressive relationships and harsh criticism in order to make herself what she wanted to be. In Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author gives Janie a feminist mentality to play out the real life struggles of ambitious black women in a society dominated by men, and how they struggle with power and self love.