Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston revolves around the struggles of Janie Starks to find a certain form of love in a still much divided time in society. This essential theme of love is not actually brought out in full effect until the death of Janie’s second husband, Joe Starks. This death brings about the discovery of Tea Cake, a man who fulfills Janie’s views on love, via the compositions of springtime: bright skies, sunny days, and bugs flying around. It took Janie a constant search for this type of love, and after the death of Joe, she finally found it.

While reading the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, I examined the motif of love and free will in which intertwines with the motif of gender roles. As the book prolongs, Janie is seen continuously searching to fulfill her pursuit of finding the true love she once fanaticized of. Janie first crafted her own representation of love while “stretched on her back beneath the pear tree in the alto chant of the visiting bees” (11). Her young innocence is connected to the intimacy of nature in which the “bee [sank] into the sanctum of a bloom” (11). Janie’s belief on marriage is represented through the usage of a bee and its balanced relationship to the blossom on the pear tree. The scent of the pear blossoms and the “chant”

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston utilizes the image of the horizon to represent the prospect of improvement, and to develop the relationships between Logan Killicks and Janie Crawford, Joe Starks and Janie, and Tea Cake and Janie.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston follows the main character Janie’s journey to find love on her own terms. The first man she married, she married to appease Nanny, her grandmother. The second man she marries is Jody Starks, who she marries because she failed to find love for her previous husband. After the oppressive Starks dies, Janie remarries Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, the only man she has ever loved. They move to “the muck” where Janie feels more at home than ever before because she is with Tea Cake and because she can choose to indulge in her own relations without anyone telling her what to do or with whom to associate.

Numerous women in the world today deal with challenges understanding the importance of self-awareness and love. Janie, the protagonist, defies happiness by searching for love. Behind her defiance are a curiosity and confidence that drive her to experience the world and become conscious of her relation to it. In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Zora Neal Hurston applies symbolism to express the possibility of coexistence between love and a sense of independence. As an illustration, Zora Neale Hurston uses a simile to vividly describe the intensity of love.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist Janie is on a quest throughout the novel because she overcomes difficulties in the form of social prejudice, sexism, and racism in order to achieve self-worth and self-knowledge. This directly corresponds with Foster’s criterion of the five essential components a quest involves.

“Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.” This was said by the author Zora Neale Hurston about love. In the novel Their Eyes watching Janie was a small town girl she was married to an older man because her grandmother made her marry him. Janie did not love him. She soon meet a man named Joe Starks who was a rich man she ran away with him to a town called Eventon vill. Joe Starks loved her but their marriage soon fell apart. Joe Starks died and months latter she meet a man called Tea Cake they got married and moved to ……. (have to find name of town) time after Tea Cake died because of a dog bite and a shot to his chest. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston using metaphors she describes how Janie always searches to feel loved.

The aspiration for love can take people in many directions, but if it's truly wanted, eventually it will be found. In the fiction novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has a realization under a pear tree about what she wants in her life. Janie then has multiple relationships as she tries to get her desires. Since the revelation she experiences under the pear tree, Janie is aware of what she wants in a relationship, and as she grows as a woman through her three marriages, she finally attains her dream vision of love and happiness. Janie’s experience under the pear tree helps her understand the passion she wants in life.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston discusses the topic of women oppressed in marriage by exploring themes of arranged marriage, gender roles, and abuse. In the early 1900’s, marriage was seen as the way to gain protection and a purpose in life. For many young women, marriage meant that they would be seen as a cook, a maid, and a nanny. The protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Starks, is a young African American woman who recounts her marriages and young life to a friend. In her first marriage, we see how she is oppressed by her grandmother and her husband’s inability to love her. Joe, her second husband, resorted to physical violence and emotional abuse to control Janie. After Joe’s death, Janie is finally free to live her life as she chooses, and in that process, she meets Tea Cake, a charming young man whom she eventually marries. In that marriage, Tea Cake and Janie start strong and happy, their lives filled with love and joy. However, eventually, the influence of gender roles and possession that were common at that time took control of Tea Cake. Through reading about these experiences we explore the way she was treated in each of her marriages, how she was oppressed, and how she found freedom.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Mae Crawford, the Protagonist, is involved in three diverse relationships. Zora Neale Hurston, the author, explains how Janie grows into young woman through marriage, integrity, and love and happiness from her relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story that follows protagonist Janie Crawford, through many hardships, relationships, and adventures. As Janie Returns to her hometown in Florida after a long absence the novel is a recollection of her experiences and adventures to her friend Pheoby Watson. Janie struggles throughout the entirety of the novel to find freedom and peace with herself. She experiences relationships with a few different kinds of people all of which help her to eventually find that

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

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.

Love is a mysterious feeling. We can feel it in different situations, at different times, but the “stars will align,” and it will come to us some way, some how. Although sometimes, it takes a little longer than we hope for love to come into our lives. For Janie, from the coming-of-age novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, it took her multiple tries to meet the one that she really, truly loved. His name is Tea Cake, also known as Vergible Woods. Since they loved each other so much, Janie stayed with Tea Cake until his dying breath. Even though their love was incredibly strong, they still had challenges within their marriage. However, because of their firm love, they were able to push through and not be torn apart.

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