Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

Everyone has a goal, a mission, a dream. Many dreams of people are far away and in many cases are perceived to be mysterious and merely out of reach. In the story Their Eyes were Watching God, this notion is expressed by the symbol of a horizon. The horizon is a faraway horizontal line between the earth and the sky; between human life and the beyond. This mid point between the possible and impossible is where dreams, wishes, and desires lay. The horizon symbolizes dreams that are seemingly out of reach. In the beginning of the story, this is the state of the dreams of Janie, her horizon. Through chapters 1-9, readers understand through the two failed marriages of Janie, that she dreams to love and be free. Janie wants to love another person

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly." These dream quotes came from the one and only "Their eyes were watching God," book by Zora Neale Hurston. Mrs. Zora Neale Hurston was an expert in writing in dialect. This unique literary form creates differences between other novels or storybooks. In this book, various events (to be specific, a death) seem to illuminate the meaning of life as a whole.

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

Often in stories of self-realization and self-love, there is an incident that is often overlooked. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, such is the case. While many people tend to believe that Janie’s relationship with Teacake was the central time when she realized who she was, Her marriage with Joe Starks is often ignored in the big picture. Janie realized what she didn’t want and not to settle and that helped her accept Teacake later on in the book. Jody’s ideals did not mesh with a Janie and caused a lot of conflict. Throughout their twenty-year marriage, three events symbolized the rift between Jody and Janie; The first was his refusing to allow Janie to speak at the towns opening ceremony,

Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston deviates from the conventions of harlem renaissance by adding personality to the novel, utilizing factual accounts to tell the fictional events of a story, and compiling a story about suffrage rather than race.

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.

“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

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”

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.

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.

In a marriage, the two people involved are supposed to trust each other and each bring something equal to the table. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, a southern black woman living in the early 20th century and protagonist of the story, has trouble finding her perfect person throughout her life and her whopping three marriages for her time. Janie was first forced into marrying Logan Killicks by her grandmother. Soon after marrying Logan, she ran away with a stranger titled Joe Starks, her marriage to Joe being the longest of the three. After Joe died, an older Janie started to see, and eventually married, a younger man, Vergible Woods who was most commonly referred to as Tea Cake.

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 are Watching God”, Janie looks up at the pear tree and admires the bee sinking into the bloom and how “ the thousand sister- calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight” (Hurston 28). She views this as her ideal marriage and throughout the book she is trying to find her “bee” that will give her that same fondness as the interaction of the bee and the bloom.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a Southern black love novel about a woman’s marriage experiences. Janie Crawford who is forced by her grandmother, into a marriage with a guy named Logan. Janie is forced to love Logan, but her love never is there for him so she leaves. She meets a wicked man named Joe, soon after they are married. Joe was sweet at first, then his real feelings about her come out and Janie loses her love for him. After their separation, he shortly dies. Janie then falls in love with a man named Tea Cake. Tea Cake is the one person Janie truthly loves and feels comfortable around. First impressions can be deceiving.