Their Eyes Were Watching God Figurative Language

Life is beautiful because of the complex nature that it is. There are moments of pure bliss and happiness that one doesn’t want to go away. However, there are also problems and challenges that lay in the journey and it takes great courage to keep. It is a concept that is not easily explained if symbols and metaphors are not used for it. These examples of figurative language often help make the concepts of transitions, positions, and experiences seem clearer.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God uses figurative language to demonstrate that love is not always how it seams. Janie Crawford is a young woman trying to find her voice or the first time but counters many obstacles growing up as a child to an adult. Zora Neale Hurston through a world of mss leading of love as well as sadness. The author uses different types of figurative language to describe Janies fairy tail love is not what it really seems to be.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” had Janie face several conflicts throughout the book, conflicts that relate to the real world and real world human rights issues. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” covers human rights issues such as gender inequality, the right to marry the person you love, the right to be an equal within a marriage, and racism. The novel’s ending, where Janie returns back to Eatonville after having to kill Tea Cake, is surprising, to say the least, and creates a sense of shock and slight confusion within the reader. The resolution of the novel shows that the author intended to show each of the aforementioned human rights issues, and how none of the issues are guaranteed to have a happy ending. Zora Neale Hurston also seems to imply,

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.

The beginning part of a novel is one of the most important parts, as it sets the stage for what’s to come for the remainder of the novel. Thus, it is imperative for authors to address significant aspects in the beginning of their novels, which is an idea that is exemplified by both works by Hurston and Austen. In the two novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Hurston and Pride and Prejudice by Austen, the opening sentences shape meaning to the novels by foreshadowing the eminent events of the novels and using figurative language to emphasize the importance of the polarized views and ideas of men and women that enflame the conflict throughout the novels.

Hurston’s use of personification and simile creates a comparison between the powerfulness of the storm and the powerlessness

The United States is a notoriously patriarchal society in which men view women as objects and their own possessions. Through history, men consistently constrained the rights women have to equality and self-expression because they deemed women as inferior. As a result, feminist movements erupted and propelled the importance of self-identity in victims of oppression, not just in females. One element of these movements was the use of literature as social protest. Zora Neale Hurston is an author who predominantly wrote through the Great Depression to advocate for equality, specifically for African American women. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston employs the symbolization of hair and the motif of speech to substantiate that one must be confident in making decisions to have individual power.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, symbols are implemented to help the readers Identify and understand the leitmotif of the novel. One commonly found symbol is Janie’s hair, which represents her personality, individuality, and character. The state of her hair changes as the novel progresses and Jamie goes through different stages of life, struggling to find true love. Using Jamie’s hair to express her feelings and emotions throughout the novel, Hurston highlights the theme that finding true love and happiness requires one to be free and adventurous in life without letting any obstacles or events alter one’s character.

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows the life of a beautiful female named Janie Crawford. Throughout the story, Janie demonstrates the struggle to escape being shaped into becoming a submissive woman. She encounters three men who each attempt to make her a submissive wife. In each of her relationships with these men, she is either obliged or pressured to follow their orders. Although Janie struggles to hold on to her independence, she manages to persevere every time. Janie is a strong independent woman who does not allow herself to be suppressed.

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.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, a young teenager Janie is lectured by her grandmother, whom she calls Nanny. Nanny teaches Janie to be the best girl she can possibly be. Nanny tells Janie stories about her own personal experiences with men as well as Janie’s mother Leafy’s: “Dat school teacher had done hid her [Leafy] in de woods all night long, and he had done raped mah [Nanny’s] baby and run on off just before day” (Hurston 19). This leaves Janie with the overall message that men can be cruel and that a relationship with them that consists of both love and happiness as well as respect is unrealistic. Despite Nanny’s advice on men, Janie becomes involved with boys very early on- around her mid-teens, which upsets Nanny: “Nanny’s head and face looked like the standing roots of some old tree that had been torn away by storm” (Hurston 12). This ultimately results in Nanny putting Janie into an arranged marriage. While Janie is unhappy with her because of the arrangement, Nanny’s true intentions demonstrate her love and hopes for Janie. Her true intentions for Janie is that she will end up in a relationship with someone who can provide for her, keep her safe and that love, if even possible, will be just a bonus.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston emphasizes that respect empowers. When Janie’s respect for Killicks dwindles, so does Killicks’ power over Janie. Killicks’ lack of power in his and Janie’s relationship is evident in Janie’s fearless refusal to be Killicks’ workhorse. Killicks’ desperate desire to control Janie’s love for him (or lack of love) manifests into verbal abuse, through which he tries to cut down Janie’s sense of security in herself by telling her that there aren’t “no mo’ fools” who would be willing to work and feed Janie, especially after her attractive body loses its youthfulness (30).

After Janie’s relationship with Joe Starks fails and he dies, Janie moves on with her life, being as cautious as ever. Soon after, a man named Tea Cake gets involved with her. At first, Janie wasn’t so sure of Tea Cake and surely didn’t want to make the same mistakes as she had with her previous two relationships, so she was being very skeptical with him, but not too long after, she couldn’t resist the thought of him. As the quote explains, she basically felt that he was irresistible and that this was truly the type of man she was looking for. Readers can tell that Tea Cake is especially different from the other men because of the way that the author describes him. She parallels him to nature, which the reader can tell that Janie loves and

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

This novel is the story of Janie Crawford's quest for love, told, as noted prior, as a casing. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, presents numerous topics, for example, love and marriage, discourse and hush, and gender parts. Zora Neale Hurston makes a radiant showing of making what men like Joe Starks felt the run of the mill parts were for the female African American. In this exposition I will introduce an outline of the love experienced by the real character Janie with her husbands, examination of characters of Janie, Joe, Phoeby and porch sitters, Furthermore I will likewise examine the metaphors, symbols utilized by the Hurston alongside my sentiment about the title of the novel. The thought of Janie about love is extremely exceptional