Their Eyes Were Watching God, By Zora Neale Hurston Essay

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or other. Grandma’s worship of Jesus and the “Good Lawd,” Joe Starks’ worship of himself, Mrs. Turner’s worship of white characteristics, and Janie’s worship of love, all stem from a lack of jurisdiction in the society they inhabit. All these Gods represent a need for something to believe in and work for: an ideal, which they wish to achieve, to aspire to. Each individual character is thus

Throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, there is an ongoing story of how Janie, the main character, grows up and deals with the many challenges life throws at her in her quest for her “Horizons”. A horizon is a metaphor for one’s ambitions, hopes and dreams. To be truly happy, one must conceive their own horizons, explore them and embrace them. Janie’s “horizons” evolve throughout the novel, starting as limited and socially determined, moving towards being expansive, individualized, and fully realized.

It’s amazing that one state can have within it places that differ greatly in all aspects—people, surrounding, weather, and feeling. Zora Neale Hurston exemplifies this phenomenon in Their Eyes Were Watching God. There are a multitude of differences between Eatonville, FL and the Everglades; each place represents a certain theme or feeling to Janie (the main character) and their differences each contribute to the meaning of the novel as a whole.

“Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves.” (Hurston 226) The book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is told from Janie’s point of view and she is telling her story to her friend Pheoby. She grows throughout three marriages and the hardships she faces. She learns what she wants from life and how to become an independent individual. Throughout the story of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie is on a quest for self-fulfillment and individuality. This is shown through the changes she endures in her relationships and can cause the readers to take control of their own lives.

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.

During the 1930s there was a time period known as the Harlem Renaissance, during this time African Americans sought a newfound cultural freedom and advancements in social classes. In the novel, Their Eyes Are Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays both similarities and departures from the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston uses the main character Janie to illustrate these ideals such as the struggle to find oneself and fight against the opinions of others. In addition Hurston also depicts issues and similarities like African Americans who achieved high social classes and discriminated those below them, racial segregation, but also a new found African American confidence. She also demonstrates departures from the Harlem Renaissance

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).

The struggle for women to have their own voice has been an ongoing battle. However, the struggle for African American women to have their own voice and independence has been an ongoing conflict. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie struggles a majority of her life discovering her own voice by challenging many traditional roles that are set by society during this time. Hongzhi Wu, the author of “Mules and Women: Identify and Rebel—Janie’s Identity Quest in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’” recognizes the trend of African American women being suppressed by making a comparison between animals throughout the novel and Janie. Wu argues that there are ultimately two depictions of the mule that the reader remembers and compares both of these interpretations to Janie’s transformation throughout the novel. While Wu’s argument is sound in the fact that it recognizes certain stereotypes African American women faced during this time, Wu fails to recognize Janie’s sexuality in depth as her major push away from the animalistic pressures she has faced.

     “’…but she don’t seem to mind at all. Reckon dey understand one ‘nother.’” A woman’s search for her own free will to escape the chains of other people in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Love is different for each and every person. For some, it comes easy and happens early in life. For others, such as Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, it happened much later in life after two unsuccessful marriages. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny raised Janie to be attracted to financial security and physical protection instead of seeking love. Nanny continually emphasized that love was something that was bound to happen after those needs were met; even though Nanny never married. Janie formulates her ideal of love while sitting under a pear tree as a teenager; one that fulfilled her intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically. She was then informed that she was to have an arranged marriage to an older

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel about a woman and the trials and tribulations that she goes through while trying to find the true meaning of love and loss. In the novel Janie struggles to find someone that honestly loves her and she has to deal with the lost she felt when the she realized that the love that she received is forever lost. Some major themes in the novel would be work, sexuality, freedom and love. All of these themes are important in understanding the novel. There are numerous patterns in Their Eyes Were Watching God that connects to other works in its genre. While analyzing the novel you are able to tell by the structure of the novel that the novel belongs in the genre of a romantic drama because there are a numerous amounts of exciting, surprising and unexpected events and the story focuses on the love that TeaCake and Janie has in the novel.

For this lesson, I have chosen the book Their Eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The main character in my book Janie has just buried her husband the former mayor and a man that verbally abused Janie. Janie never really spoke to people unless it was her close friend Phoebe, and even them speaking was not often because of Janie’s husband Joe. However, now that Joe is dead, Janie has been speaking more often to the porch sisters, and people in the town. Furthermore, in chapter ten we are introduced to the character Tea Cake. Janie feels like she has known Tea Cake her whole life, even though, she has just met this man. Janie and Tea Cake grow closer through the chapters ten-twelve, Janie communicates well with Phoebe and Tea Cake the

Subsequent to their years of coerced silence, the African-American community in America attained a voice by creating their own arts and new ideals, this was known as the Harlem Renaissance. This time period, from the years of the 1910s to the 1930s, was also known as the New Negro Movement because it was a renewal of life for African-Americans, such as being independent and free from the ideals of society. The time frame played a major role in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, which is a novel that explains the story of Janie Crawford’s journey of self-awareness and freedom to be herself through love and relationships, in which she desires a fulfillment of emotional connection and passion with her significant other. Specifically

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was published in 1937 and is based loosely on Hurston’s own experiences, similarly to Chopin’s The Awakening. The story is a told in a circular conversation. It begins with a conversation between an African American woman named Janie Crawford and her friend, Pheoby Watson. Janie tells Pheoby her story, which revolves mainly around three men that Janie has loved and how loving them affected her, both positively and negatively. Through thick southern African American dialect, Janie explains her journey, as she searches for herself. Throughout the journey, Janie experiences much hardship, unhappiness, and inferiority. This leads to the main question of the novel: what does it take for Janie to

Throughout chapters 6-10 of the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the author utilizes symbolism as a way of presenting Janie’s development concerning her freedom in her marriages. Although Janie’s development regarding her freedom is clearly identified by the reader through her feelings, Hurston purposely utilizes a series of symbols to showcase her freedom in a much more subtle way. In a desire to exhibit Janie’s freedom in marriage within these chapters, Hurston utilizes symbols such as Janie’s head rags and the porch she sits on as a way of amplifying her development in freedom within her relationship with Joe. In previous chapters of the book, Hurston describes the many boundaries Janie faces within her relationship