Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

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.

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 Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she focuses on the life of the main character, Janie Crawford. The novel takes place in a small town down south called Eatonville in the 1930’s. Janie is on a quest to find her true identity or in other words, her horizon. Along Janie’s quest for true happiness, she faces numerous obstacles that continue to hinder her from finding her true identity and a man she can truly love. As the expectations of others control her life, Janie keeps pushing and is determined to find a true inner happiness. Janie has to fight the expectations of others all throughout the novel until she reaches a point

She had finally found the one who she loved and not long after, he died. When Tea Cake died she was devastated. “Commenced to sing,commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the windows and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace” (Hurston 192). From that time on the when she saw the sun it reminded her of Tea Cake. Janie knew that he would always be with her. She has found the peace she has desired her entire

The fourth and final section of the novel focuses on Janie's marriage to Tea Cake. Finally, Janie met someone who provided the love she longed for her whole life. Janie experiences true happiness for the first time. The framework of the novel ends as Janie's story is complete and Pheoby returns home to her husband. The reader understands the story through Janie's eyes while a narrator tells the story in third person to allow the reader to know more about the other characters and their perspectives.

Tea Cake comes into the store in Eatonville where Janie worked at, and she is automatically interested his charm: “She was in favor of the story that was making him laugh before she even heard it” (Hurston 90). They quickly fall in love with each other as Tea Cake treats her like a real woman. Tea Cake respected her and made her feel better about herself, something Logan and Jody had never done: ”... she found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play… she looked over and got little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 92). Tea Cake lets her play checkers and didn’t treat her as an object or lesser than himself. Soon enough, Tea Cake and Janie fall in love, move to Jacksonville then to the Everglades. Tea Cake gives Janie everything she’s ever wanted. He teaches her to shoot a gun, and doesn’t care Janie has a better shot; he does not care for the power over Janie that Jody did. Tea Cake drives Janie to find security in herself and find her own independence. Janie is finally herself with Tea Cake; however, the novel quickly proves the critical lens when a rabid dog bites Tea Cake. Tea Cake was trying to save Janie from drowning a river after a hurricane hit the Everglades. He had to fight away a mad dog, and he was bitten in the face. His health quickly declines within a mouth. He begins going mad and accuses Janie of not loving him and cheating on him. Before

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.

“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 Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she presents the audience with a message of how women are treated like property. In the beginning of the book Janie, the main character, is forced into a marriage by her grandmother. Janie wanted to find love in that marriage but couldn't so she ranned off with a man named Joe Starks. She thought she loved Joe because he saved her from her previous marriage and was nice to her. Then one day, Joe physically abused Janie and she fell out of love with him. After Joe died, Janie finally found love with Tea Cake and he loved her back. Tea Cake died from a gunshot wound and it broke Janie's heart. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses literary devices to represent the theme which was how Janie was treated like property because she did not stand up for herself.

Zora Neal Hurston uses symbols to bring together aspects throughout Janie’s journey to find love. The pear tree and the horizon

to love. Under a pear tree, she watches a bee pollinate a flower and associates it with what she believes to be the concept of love and yearns to experience it herself. She marries, expecting to love her betrothed simply because they are husband and wife, and is disappointed when she can find no affection in her heart for the man. This is not the life that Janie had hoped for, and so when Joe Starks came around and promised Janie the world, she was swept away by hope for something new— a “far horizon”. (Chapter 4, page 29)

"Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly" (Quick). Although this viewpoint may seem a bit harsh, in reality, the world, and the people living in it, are not perfect. At some point in every person's life, hardships can occur. Many parents try desperately to shelter their children from reality, and in turn, leave them at risk to be a victim of serious issues such as domestic abuse, both mentally and physically, poor life choices, and difficulty in forming healthy relationships. These issues are common topics in literature, and although they may sometimes be explicitly described, they are realistic and teach children and adults necessary life lessons. However, some parents are offended by the use of

Through the ‘death’ of Janie’s dream, Hurston argues that one cannot move forward until she has accepted the truth. Janie’s Nanny had constantly reminded her that she needed a husband to one day rely on when Nanny was not around anymore. Nanny claimed that if Janie were to get married to a financially stable husband, she would be prosperous. Therefore, Janie believed marriage automatically results in love. Correspondingly, Hurston writes,