How Does Zora Use Direct Characterization In Their Eyes Were Watching God

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.

Their Eyes Were Watching God In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the life of Janie, an African American woman, who is struggling with identity and social issues. Even though Hurston wrote during the modernist movement era, it’s quite evident that the realism literary movement influence her writing. Even though there are aspect of Romanticism in the novel, Realism influences Hurston writing more, because it explores the everyday lives of the people, and the harsh reality of life for women.

Author Zora Neale Hurston weaves many powerful symbols into her acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s use of symbols enhances the reader’s understanding of the trials and tribulations along the road of self discovery for the story’s main character, Janie. Of the many symbols used throughout the novel, one in particular - Janie’s hair - is subtle yet striking as it gives us insight into Janie’s perceived social status, oppression, self identity, and her eventual independence through her self identity as a woman despite the social norms of the time period.

Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.

Janie's attraction to Joe Starks' charisma quickly diminishes when his overdose of ambition and controlling personality get the best of him. Although he is a big voice in the town, Janie only sees him as a big voice. All his money and power have no effect on her when all he does is ridicule and control her. He makes it clear where Janie belongs: "Ah never married her for nothin' lak dat. She's uh woman and her place is in de home" (Hurston 43). This is ironic because when she is with Logan, she wants to be in the house doing her own thing, but Joe is making it sound like confinement. It's as if she has no choice in the matter and Joe intends to make his power over her known. People have different desires and sometimes when we get caught up in our success, we can end up hurting others. Joe's reply to Janie is a great example of the insensitivity that can form from the pride we can possibly inherit when we achieve success: "Ah told you in de first beginnin' dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice.

Those living in today’s world are constantly bombarded with the stereotypes and distorted images of a consumerist society. As a result, they often struggle with a loss of identity because mass media try to dictate what they should want to be and do. Zora Neale Hurston tackles this age-old search for self-discovery in her fictional frame story Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie Crawford tells her best friend, Pheoby, about her quest for her own voice, despite setbacks in the form of relatives, two husbands, and entire towns that attempt to silence her. From a young age, Janie yearns for enlightenment; however, the roles Nanny, Logan Killicks, and Joe Starks force upon her prevent her from reaching selfhood until she meets and falls in love

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.

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

Zora Neale Hurston was an influential African-American novelist who emerged during the Harlem Renaissance. (Tow 1) During the Harlem Renaissance Hurston’s novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in southern dialect so that the African American audience can relate, mainly because Hurston could only write about what she knew. “In the case of Hurston, dialect, as a regional vernacular, can and does contain subject, experience emotion and revelation.” (Jones 4) when Hurston's novel first was released many people didn't not accept the writing for what it really was. “When Their Eyes Were Watching God first appeared in 1937, it was well-received by white critics as an intimate portrait of southern blacks, but African-American reviewers rejected the novel. (Telgen, Hile 1) In this modern day the novel is well accepted and has been called "a classic of black literature, one of the best novels of the period" (Howard 7) In "Their Eyes Were Watching God", Janie takes on a journey in search of her own identity where each of her three husbands plays an important role in her discovery of who she is.

In conclusion, In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, the audience watches Janie enter a period of self-discovery. When Janie gains this power of freedom, she realizes she craves something different from what society had told her she would want; What we feel inwardly to be true, society seeks to take that truth away. With this experience an internal and external

janie is going through her teen years and how she sees the world differently.zora Neale Hurston's novel "their eyes were watching God".when zora uses the rhetorical devices, she is showing how Janie has "woken up" and is curious to see the world. at the outset of the passage,"it had called her to come and gaze on a mystery". Zora uses personification to say that the pear tree wanted to get attention from Janie. she is becoming a young woman with a curiosity in the new world. in another sentence,Zora uses simile in "it was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again".

Throughout Janie’s three marriages in Their Eyes Were Watching God, she has a different set of clothes that she describes wearing in each marriage. These outfits represent the type of relationship she is in. Throughout the book, they also show how she evolves into a strong, self confident woman. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, clothing symbolizes where Janie is in her life and the type of relationship she is part of. When Janie finds out that her grandmother wants her to marry Logan Killicks, she is horrified because she is not attracted to him.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she presents the audience with a message of how women are treated like property. In the beginning of the book Janie, the main character, is forced into a marriage by her grandmother. Janie wanted to find love in that marriage but couldn't so she ranned off with a man named Joe Starks. She thought she loved Joe because he saved her from her previous marriage and was nice to her. Then one day, Joe physically abused Janie and she fell out of love with him. After Joe died, Janie finally found love with Tea Cake and he loved her back. Tea Cake died from a gunshot wound and it broke Janie's heart. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses literary devices to represent the theme which was how Janie was treated like property because she did not stand up for herself.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novella, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the use of many powerful symbols are incorporated. All of the various images used by Hurston drastically improves readers’ comprehension of the hardships that are along the road of self-revelation for the novel’s principal character, Janie. In specific, of the various images used throughout the novel, Janie’s hair - which is unobtrusive yet striking- gives readers a glimpse into Janie’s apparent social status, abuse, self-view, and eventual independence as a lady who disregards the high-set social standards of her day and age.

Although Janie doesn’t mind mingling with all the townspeople and making up tall tales about the infamous mule, Joe considers the people "trashy" and "gum-grease." He thinks Janie’s position as mayor’s wife automatically makes her morally superior and he does not want her associating with them. This is, of course, hypocrisy since Joe himself, the mayor of the town, associates and