Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay example

Janie finds her way out when Joe Starks appears. The first thing Joe does after asking for a drink of water is to name himself: "Joe Starks was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in and through Georgy" (47). Hurston's naming of Starks is ironic for several reasons. The word stark is often used as a synonym for barren, and Joe Starks and Janie never have any children. Hurston hints at sexual problems that develop between the pair because of their separate beds and Janie's eventual verbal "castration" of Joe in the store. Starks's name is also ironic because of his focus on capitalistic pursuits. Starks's wealth gives him a false sense of power because the townspeople resent him and the things he does to gain his wealth. Starks's name could also

Symbols in literary works can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Symbols can appear in a novel as an event, action, or object. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, uses the symbols of the gate to show Janie’s transitions to womanhood, independence from oppression, and realization of what love is to Janie.

In the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" written by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie the protagonist is seen by critics as having no voice. For all women silence knows no boundaries of race or culture, and Janie is no exception. Hurston characterizes Janie with the same silence that women at that time & period were forced into, (complete submission.) "Women were to be seen and not heard." Janie spends forty years of her life, learning to achieve/find, her voice against the over-ruling and dominate men in her life. But in the end Janie comes out the victor, breaking the silence. In her essay "What do Feminist Critics Want?" Gilbert states, "Like Wagner's master singers....men had the power of speech,[but]....women

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.

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

Love is a life-changing event. It is an event that causes you to embrace another person in your life. It can be a positive or a negative experience for a man or woman. It is a cycle of connection then death, however; some people will not last to death due to death of divorce. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie explores the themes of love, beauty, and evolves into the woman that she is at the end of the novel through three different marriages. When Janie gets married to all three men, she loves them progressively as she goes from one marriage to the next;however, in the end she ends up loving Tea Cake more than any of her past husbands.

Janie’s outward appearance and her inward thoughts contrast following Joe’s death. She finally frees herself from his control only after he dies as she, “…tore off the kerchief…and let down her plentiful hair” (87). In freeing her hair, Janie begins to free herself from others’ control and social norms. However, she chooses to keep it tied up until after Jody’s funeral in order to keep appearances that she is grieving his passing in front of the townspeople. However, on the inside, Janie doesn’t really feel any sorrow and “sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world” (88). It is only after Joe’s elaborate funeral that Janie shows her first act of freedom by burning “every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist” (89). She chose to let her hair be free from his domination, thus freeing herself from him overall and allowing herself to move onto the next journey in her life.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.

He wants to run a town and the only way he feels he can look good is to have a pretty woman by his side. In the beginning of their marriage Joe treats he like a queen. He tells her that his woman needs to relax in the shade sipping on molasses water and fanning herself from the hot sun. Janie fell in love with the idea.

Captain Eaton - Captain Eaton was one of the donors of Eatonville's original fifty acres of land. When Jody first arrived in Eatonville, he made a big show paying cash to him for an additional two hundred acres.

The topic of racism is a very intriguing one for me. Other authors criticized Zora Neal Hurtson that she, being a black woman during the black liberation movement in the 1910’s, should be writing about black people being set free and how they are being suppressed by the world around them. Instead, Zora mainly deals with the issues of the women being suppressed and not allowed to be free. This idea itself mirrors that of freeing black people, but yet authors of the time were not able to see that, they called her book artificial and did not help them in their quest for freedom.

For someone to find who they are, they need go through the tough hurdles that life puts in front of them. To find one’s identity, it would take several hardships within their lives until they find who they are. Identity is a complex idea that takes several years and events in someone’s life to discover. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston portrays a protagonist that went through many different, and difficult times in her life that eventually lead her to find her courage to be who she truly was. Despite the criticism this novel may have received, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston portrays a theme of identity and the struggle to find it, with the help of literary devices.

The story “There Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston, is a story that takes place in Florida in the early 1900s. The book is about the struggle of a woman to find true love in life. This woman is named Jane, she is a mixed race of both black and white, she is the protagonist of the story. Her goal in life was to find satisfying love with a man. The story uses race to show people's role, or importance in society. In the early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon to think black people were inferior to white people and held a lower standard of life. This led to many people being segregated and treated differently due to their skin color. The book “There Eyes Were Watching God”, is dominated by race driven thoughts, race in the story measures a person's superiority, leads to people being in different social classes, and shows how people are racist for no justifiable reason.

Within the past hundred years there has been a flood of female authors voicing their opinions on controversial topics regarding female oppression. There is no question that history has not treated women nor Africans very well, leading to the unfortunate double oppression faced, in particular, by black females. The movement began shortly after the Harlem Renaissance when Zora Neale Hurston published her noteworthy novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937. This novel paved in giving black women the tools to liberate themselves in their search for femininity and sexual identity, all while being subjected to racism and domesticity. The novel created such an influence that it inspired Alice Walker to write The Color Purple many years later,

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