Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, tells the story of her ascension to adulthood and several of the lessons she learned along the way. Though married three times, her second marriage to Joe Starks had the most formative impact on her transition to maturity. Given that Joe played such a crucial role in this affair, we can classify him as a type of parent to Janie. Later, after her final marriage, Janie reflects on her life and is at peace. By that point, she came to realize how to be truly happy.

Janie recollects her image on love when she leaves with Joe which signifies that she values love over the stable life that she had already possessed.

During the hurricane Tea Cake asks Janie if she regrets leaving Eatonville to which she replies, “Naw, We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all.” At daybreak there is a horizon- this connects to the situation as Janie implies that she has seen and captured her horizon, she has obtained her dream. Dusk happens after sunset, it’s the coming of darkness. Janie does not care if she has to die in the terrible hurricane. Janie notes that there are people who never “seen the light”- meaning they’ve never seen or captured their own horizon and dreams. Just by being with Tea Cake Janie believes she has a part of her horizon. This is expressed as a point that Tea Cake is expressed as “the sun of the Evening Sun.” During sunset in the evening, the evening sun is part of the horizon. This symbolizes that Tea Cake is part of the dream of Janie in becoming free and being able to love. After trial, Janie thinks “The sun was almost down and Janie had seen the sun rise on her troubled love and then she had shot Tea Cake and had been in jail and had been tried for her life and now she was free. Nothing to do with the little that was left of the day but to visit the kind white friends who had realized her feelings and thank them. So the sun went down.” This quote represents more than that given day- it represents the life of Janie. In the end, Janie had gone through 2 marriages as the sun rose on her “troubled love”, Janie had to kill her lover and be tried in court. Now, the sun would go down and the horizon would arise. This shows how Janie had to go through all her struggles and sacrifices in order to reach her horizon. Now Janie is free- she is free from having to be in pursuit of her

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.

These chapters show Janie's initial happiness with Joe, followed by her dissatisfaction with Joe as he starts to treat her like his property, because of her gender. Janie feels defeated by her search for love as she is trapped in a loveless relationship. Joe's control over Janie actually makes her a stronger and more independent woman.

As a young woman, Janie wanted love, true love. In the beginning of the novel and Janie 's journey, she is under a blossoming pear tree where she spends most of her days. She is watching the bees fly to the blossoms, when she has an epiphany. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then

In the novel "Their Eyes were Watching God," the main character, Janie, faces an inner battle in her three marriages, to speak or not to speak, which manifests itself differently with Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake. In her first marriage to Logan Killicks, Janie has her idea of what a marriage should look like shattered, as she failed to fall into the romantic idea of love that she held dear (Myth and Violence in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God). In her second marriage, to Joe “Jody” Starks, Janie buried her fight and spirit within herself, as she attempted to fit into the mold of the “perfect wife” Joe imagined (In Search Of Janie). Finally, in her marriage to Tea Cake, she feels the love she has longed for, and is accepted as the strong, independent woman she is (Janie Crawford Character Analysis). In every marriage, Janie feels the various effects of each man, as they either encourage or diminish her voice and inner spark.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a 1937 novel which follows the life of a woman named Janie who, on her journey of finding her identity, marries three men in hopes of discovering her purpose. This novel is about a woman on her expedition to self-realization and fulfilment or perhaps it’s about the importance of the rabies vaccine. For the sake of simplicity, I will argue the former. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a deeply feminist text. Hurston provides us with a plethora of themes that can be viewed through feminist perspective such as Voice, Identity and Divergence from the Norm.

In both the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, young girls are lectured on who they should be in life and how they should act.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, experiences relief at the end of the novel. The novel begins at the end, emphasizing the importance of her moral reconciliation. Though at the beginning, it appears she returns home defeated, it is contrary. She returns home triumphant in finding her peace and fulfillment. When Janie starts to take things into her own hands instead of relying on her faith of others, she finally finds herself and joy. She needed to experience love in her own way to find what she was missing and what she needed in her love and her life.

Tea Cake allowed Janie to involve herself in community activities while Starks tried to isolate Janie as much as possible. Janie and Tea Cake moved to the Everglades where there were “big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything” (127). The luscious, thriving nature symbolizes the new and growing profound love Janie and Tea Cake have for one another. Soon, Janie “got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake” (133) because “its mo’ nicer than settin’ round dese quarters” (133). Therefore, Janie now doesn’t mind partaking in manual labor because it’s out of her personal choice and love for Tea Cake whereas, before with Logan she was forced into it causing no enjoyment. Janie “learned what it felt like to be jealous” (136) with Tea Cake involving Nunkie and “cut [Tea Cake] short with a blow” (137). Instead of fighting back, “Tea Cake kept holding Janie’s wrists” (137), “hurled her to the floor” (137), and “kissed [Janie] until she arched her body to meet him” (138). The resistance Tea Cake displays to use physical contact upon Janie reveals Tea Cake’s patient character. Also, it adds onto the motif of love where Janie and Tea Cake have equally passionate feelings toward one another such that Janie is demonstrating jealously which was absent in her previous marriages. Moreover, with the threat of the oncoming hurricane and the turned down invite from one of the Bahman workers, Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship heightens. The soon appearance of the violent hurricane caused “crashing” (159), “hurdling” (159), and “questioning God” (159). The hurricane brings the theme of religion where God is mentioned throughout the text as a sense of hope and faith. However, Tea Cake and Janie realize they needed to escape “before worse things happened” (160) causing Janie to soon approach a near death experience. While fighting for her life by holding onto “the tail of the cow” (166) in the aggressive waters, Tea Cake “split the water” (166)

He makes her forget about her two previous marriages. “Janie awoke next morning by feeling Tea Cake almost kissing her breath away” (Hurston 108).Tea Cake and Janie practice intercourse and Janie feels extreme joy and bliss. She finally feels complete. After he dies, she feels like she doesn’t have to

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.

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

Death, an imperative theme in Their Eyes Were Watching God, plays a massive role in Janie’s role to fulfillment. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a coming-of-age spiritual novel, written by Zora Neale Hurston. Set in the early twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God is told through Janie, an African American woman who the readers get to see mature as the novel progresses. Through the deaths of Nanny, Jody, and Tea Cake, Janie realizes what her losses of key figures in her life mean to her on different levels.