Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Contemporary novels have imposed upon the love tribulations of women, throughout the exploration of genre and the romantic quest. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their eyes were watching God (1978) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (2000) interplay on the various tribulations of women, throughout the conventions of the romantic quest and the search for identity. The protagonists of both texts are women and experience tribulations of their own, however, unique from the conventional romantic novels of their predecessors. Such tribulations include the submission of women and the male desire for dominance when they explore the romantic quest and furthermore, the inner struggles of women. Both texts display graphic imagery of the women’s inner experiences through confronting and engaging literary techniques, which enhance the audiences’ reading experience. Hurston’s reconstructions of the genre are demonstrated through a Southern context, which is the exploration of womanhood and innocence. Whilst Woolf’s interpretation of the romantic quest is shown through modernity and an intimate connection with the persona Clarissa Dalloway, within a patriarchal society.

Companionship is a fundamental necessity for human beings to function. People thrive off of social interactions and without companionship, loneliness and alienation would prevail. Everyone wants the same things in life which are love, social acceptance and companionship, in the hope that once these things are obtained one will feel complete. In the novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, readers witness the characters struggle to find their identity while also trying to meet the need for partnership. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, readers see the main character Janie, grow as a women while showing that marriage does not always mean love and that until

Throughout life, everybody makes sacrifices that may become more beneficial to him or in ways they could not foresee. A sacrifice may be simply giving up an object or giving up something deeper in meaning. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a prime example of a book that reflects this theme. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, struggles to figure out her identity and what she desires in life. As she matures in her relationships and in life, she learns to make sacrifices in order to seek what she really needs. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston illuminates Janie’s values and the text’s emphasis on self-actualization is demonstrated through Janie leaving stability with Logan to marry Joe,

Feminism and gender equality is one of the most important issues of society today, and the debate dates back much farther than Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. To analyze Janie’s existence as a feminist or anti-feminist character requires a potential critic to look at her relationships and her reactions to those relationships throughout the novel. Trudier Harris claims that Janie is “questing after a kind of worship.” This statement is accurate only up until a certain point in her life, until Janie’s “quest” becomes her seeking equality with her partner. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s main goal pertaining to her romantic relationships undergoes multiple changes from her original goal of a type of worship to a goal to maintain an equal relationship with her husband.

In the late nineteenth century, the New Woman time period emerged after World War I. Women began to cast away the domestic stereotypes and they became “independent [women] who [sought] achievement and self-fulfillment beyond the realm of marriage and family” (Miller 1). Straying away from the typical image of women staying and maintaining the home, women started attending universities, receiving professional jobs, and becoming involved in politics (1). The transition of women from the domestic sphere to the public sphere is a notion Zora Neale Hurston uses in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston’s use of dominant characters in society reveals her theme that experiences and relationships are the roots of finding independence and identity despite the obscurity caused by sexism.

Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God recounts the life and loves of a bi-racial woman in the racially charged South during the 1900s. After the death of her third husband, Janie returns to Eatonville amid judgment and gossip, prompting her to share her life’s lessons with dear friend Phoeby. As Hurston’s protagonist relives her turbulent loves, she embarks of a journey of self-discovery, her voice transforming from suppressed to empowered over the course of her marriages.

In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).

     In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader is given a particular glimpse into Janie's life with reference to the men she has known.  Janie's three men are all very different, yet they were all Janie's husband at one point in her life.  Although they all behaved differently, in lifestyle as well as their relationship with Janie, they all shared certain similarities.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston a young girl named Janie begins her life unknown to herself. She searches for the horizon as it illustrates the distance one must travel in order to distinguish between illusion and reality, dream and truth, role and self? (Hemenway 75). She is unaware of life?s two most precious gifts: love and the truth. Janie is raised by her suppressive grandmother who diminishes her view of life. Janie?s quest for true identity emerges from her paths in life and ultimatly ends when her mind is freed from mistaken reality.

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

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

How would a person feel like if they were to be abandoned by their parents, their grandma took care of them, lived with people with different skin color, got married to please their grandma, then ran off with someone else to get married, have that person die and ran off with someone younger than them and get married, go through an awful hurricane, watched their loved one die by getting bit by a dog, and going back to the place where their second husband die, and this person did all this because they were trying to find out what love truly is? Well in the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie had to go through all that because she wanted someone to love her, to be compassionate with her since she doesn’t know what love is. Janie comes back to the town full of coloreds;after she buried Tea cake and as she enters, people whisper about her but she keeps on walking. Phoeby , Janie’s closest friend , follows her and brings her some food; Phoeby then asks why Janie came back. Janie then begins to tell her whole life story and Phoeby listens. Janie begins telling her how she grew up with white kids and went with them to school, then she starts to tell Janie how her grandma caught her and Johnny Taylor kissing. Janie told her how her grandma wanted her to marry someone since her grandma is already old enough and is worried about who will take care of Janie when she’s long gone. Her grandma then starts to talk about how Logan Killicks is perfect and Janie

It has lived with us for a long time. It hides in our subconscious and human nature. There is no way to eliminated racism. Racism has exists throughout human history until now. Racism is hated someone that are not as good as the members of your own or the belief that someone is less human than another by discriminate their skin’s color,language, place of birth or even just a custom. According to Zora Neale Hurston work’s name Their eyes were watching god also mention about this social issue. Zora Neale Hurston is an African-American novelist who is the most accomplish woman in Harlem Renaissance. She were experience racism before so she try to present racism in her story. Even if Racism is not a central theme but it’s still important and widespread

Janie Crawford-Killicks-Starks-Woods, the main character and protagonist in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston has many different experiences with love over the course of the novel. In the beginning of the novel Janie was curious about love and all Janie wanted to do was experience it, then when she had the opportunity to fall in love she found out it was hard than she first imagined. It was not the fairy tale she had been imagining, She was forced into a relationship unlike in her fantasies where the man of her dreams comes and takes her away and they live happily ever after. We’ll discuss that transformation Janie has went through, throughout the book from being young and curious not knowing anything about love and just wanting to experience love, figuring out love is not like her young and and naive fantasies and not loving a man who she thought was the one for her, to finally becoming a mature woman who finds true love with a man they call Tea Cake.

In the society and world we live in we all want to be accepted and feel like we belong. Zora Neale Hurston goes through trials and tribulations as being a twenty-century African American such as slavery and feeling like she belongs. Imagine every time you think you are finally happy with whom you are and it turns out that wasn’t the case. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie embarks on journey in search for her own identity where each of her three husbands plays an important role in her discovery of who she is.