Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

In the excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author uses personification to bring the scenery surrounding Janie to life in a surreal way. By using personification through the passage, the author helps put a vivid imagine in the reader's head.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the horizon, the pear tree, and the bee and blossom as symbols of Janie’s ideas and dreams. In this paper, there will be the analysis of these symbols in the book and how they fit in the belief system and needs of Janie.

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.

Richard Wright and Alain Locke’s critique on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God reveal the common notion held by many of the time, and still today, that there is a right and wrong way for a black person to talk and to act. Wright’s point of view of clearly racially charged and coming from a place of ignorance and intolerance. While, Locke’s point is simply due to a lack of an ability to think out of the box and observe deeper meaning, perhaps due to internalized oppression and a fearful desire to talk and act just like a white man in order to be taken seriously. Wright’s argument that the novel has no central theme and is parallel to minstrel shows, and Locke’s belief that Hurston uses relatable language to avoid diving into mature writing, are inherently wrong and fueled by the very issues Hurston was trying to combat: racism and sexism.

Published in 1937 by author Zora Neale Hurston, the novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ chronicles an African American woman's journey to find true love in the Deep South. On one hand, an equal balance of power in a relationship leads to equality, fulfilment, and happiness for both partners - as observed in Janie’s relationship with Vergible Woods (Tea Cake). On the other hand, an unequal distribution of power in a marriage with a dominant partner leads to an overall sense of discontent and unhappiness in the relationship, as observed in Janie’s first two marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks respectively. Thus, an equal balance of power in a relationship built on mutual respect and desire is a vital to a stable and healthy relationship.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

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, the reader is taken on an expedition through the life and love of Janie, which provides the reader different levels of imagery and symbolism. “Hurston… use the journey motif to structure and enhance their heroines‘quests as well as lyrical image patterns to evoke and communicate the processes of growth, regeneration and intimations of the Divine within each character.” (Sullivan 1364) Through this expedition Janie strives to achieve her principles about what love was and how she should be living her life. Hurston chose to introduce the reader to the return of Janie as the opening of the book. “Janie’s existence will become a continuous struggle to bring her own experience into harmony with her initial vision of the pear tree” (Maroto 72) Janie was not focusing on what is wrong in her single life, but what was good in it. “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and

In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she focuses on the life of the main character, Janie Crawford. The novel takes place in a small town down south called Eatonville in the 1930’s. Janie is on a quest to find her true identity or in other words, her horizon. Along Janie’s quest for true happiness, she faces numerous obstacles that continue to hinder her from finding her true identity and a man she can truly love. As the expectations of others control her life, Janie keeps pushing and is determined to find a true inner happiness. Janie has to fight the expectations of others all throughout the novel until she reaches a point

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.

I think by creating this as the title, Hurston is revealing her argument that people are often seeking answers and action from God

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

      Human beings love inertia. It is human nature to fear the unknown and to desire stability in life. This need for stability leads to the concept of possessing things, because possession is a measurable and definite idea that all society has agreed upon. Of course, when people begin to rely on what they know to be true, they stop moving forward and simply stand still. Zora Neal Hurston addresses these general human problems in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston, however, does not present the reader with the nihilistic hopelessness of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but rather offers an understanding of the basic human aspect that causes us to fear emptiness. Janie, the

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

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