The Protagonist In 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

Though it is not one of the main themes in the novel, poverty and its effects on people can be seen abundantly in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The demonstration of poverty that I chose to discuss is how wealth causes a person to act toward others. The most notable examples are Janie’s three husbands, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake, and the way they treat Janie. In the novel, the wealthier a man is, the more power he has over people and the more entitled he feels.

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

"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.

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.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is written with a narrative frame. The story begins and ends with two people, Janie and Pheoby, sitting on the porch of Janie's house. Janie is telling her story to Pheoby during the course of an evening, that evening becoming the entire novel. The point of view changes from a first person narrative to a third person omniscient within the first chapter so the reader can experience the story through Janie's eyes while also understanding the other characters and their perspectives.

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.

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

Plot: Within the first 6 chapters of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we are introduced to the main character Janie Crawford, who is returning to her hometown after many years of being absent. As she is talking with Pheoby Watson, she begins to talk about her life while she was away and is very descriptive about it. She talks about her struggles in life and her marriage with Logan Killicks and how she didn’t love him at all. She then speaks of her marriage with Joe Starks and how they find a town where they can happily live together. She speaks of how Joe made her a lot happier than Logan and she was more content where she was living.

The authors of the time did have a valid reasoning to believe that the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was such an uninspiring novel. An artificial reading of the novel shows the reader a few small points that came make people mad. Janie the main character lives a sheltered life. Her grandmother, an ex-slave, shelters her from such a world, and she is brought up in a rich environment. All the black people that she do see are fairly well-off. She marries her first husband, Logan, who is not financially stable and she has to do labor, so she leaves him. Her next husband, Jody brings her to an all black city, Eatonville. The city mirrors that of a white city. Jody makes all the rules in the town and soon it becomes prosperous and grows while Jody makes a lot of money. She is unhappy in this rich white society. Thus when Jody dies, she goes off into the Everglades with Tea Cake and works in the fields

Janie Mae Crawford, a lady of mixed black and white that came from her ancestry. Janie is an attractive, middle aged woman from Eatonville, Florida. Janie is very unfortunate with love. She’s been married 3 times and been hurt 3 times. All she wanted is a man that will take care of her and love her. Janie was first married with Logan kellick, second is Jody Starks, and last one is Tea Cake.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie goes through three main romantic relationships that are impacted by her surroundings. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Angela and Bayardo are in a very short relationship that is impacted by society’s rules. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there is a very specific zoom on relationships that demonstrate how a community or a culture can influence a person’s actions. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the first relationship that Janie has is with Logan Killicks.

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

Principle is a complicated matter; while many choose to act upon it, others see to defy it, for some it is their base, for others their crutch, but for however unintelligible it maybe it is unique, undefinable, irregular and variable. So is rare the case where one’s deeply held principles, their ideology and their inner self remain static chiefly in times of crisis and change. Many a mortal let alone metaphysical is immune to the treacheries of time and lapse which is why Janie’s case is so unique; in the framework of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is born a black woman in a time where neither measure meant much. Yet in defiance of this even from the times of her youth Janie remains defiant, jovial, and content throughout her marriages and the hardships endured in each of her marriages.