Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

     One of the most fascinating and unique novels in African American literature is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, not so much for it's story but for it's beautifully written language. The novel is about the main character, Janie, trying to find herself and the meaning of love. Both Standard English and a southern black dialect, and poetry are seamlessly integrated into the story which reveals symbols and hidden meanings.

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.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

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

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, 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 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.

Every person has a different story. Some individuals grow up with both parents, others grow up with seperated parents or they could have none at all. Having a parental figure in your life as a young adult is very important to help build an individual's character and help them shape their life. The novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston helps demonstrate how a person’s life can be greatly impacted by their guardian. Janie Crawford, the main character in this book learned early in her life how unfair and confusing life can be.

As shown in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, By starching and ironing her face during Jody’s funeral, Janie masks her true feelings behind the “wall of stone and steel” she built around her. Janie’s life has been miserable in her marriage with Jody. Believing that Jody would treat her as a real lady with wealth and respect, Janie decided to run away with him away from the horrible marriage she had with Logan Killicks. Janie saw Jody as her new chance for the idealized love she sought dearly for throughout the novel. Upon meeting one another for the first time, Jody seemed both passionate and graceful to Janie. He would call Janie beautiful and say that she deserved better than Logan. But as the two spend more time together

In the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie, the main character, struggles to find what the true meaning the word “love” is until her last marriage. Janie marries three times throughout the novel. With three different men at three different ages, she encounters three new perspectives. Janie suffered two unhappy marriages before she could find her true love.

One of the primary themes in Their Eyes Were Watching God is the concept of dreams; how we try to reach them, and how we react when they cannot be reached. Not everyone is able to reach their dreams, so in the face of crushing disappointment, they must find a way to cope with desiring the unattainable. One of the possible ways to deal with this, and the method that Hurston develops, is the fashioning of words into weapons in order to handle cruel reality. However, as a long term solution words will only worsen the problem. Janie And Jody’s confrontation in the store reveals how words are weapons and coping mechanisms that prevent people from achieving their dreams.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is set in the South during the early 1900s. Being shortly after the Civil War and yet before the Civil Rights movement, racism and prejudice run rampant throughout the countryside. Although slaves have been free for years, black people are still struggling to find their own place. They want to have a voice where they live, yet whites won’t let that happen. Women are still second-class citizens, with black women being the absolute lowest. At the same time, though, white and black men alike lust after black and mixed women for their features and the feeling of absolute control they experience being with them.

Tea Cake’s demeanor about janie working differentiates from Joe or Logan because he gives her the choice to work with him and doesn't dictate her, his intellections for wanting her to work are so they can spend more time together, by doing this he sees her as his accomplice and helper. unfortunately, Tea Cake gets bit by a vicious dog while saving Janie resulting in him getting rabies. Teacakes death contrast with Joe's his courageousness on the land while they try to outrun the hurricane eventually led to his misfortune. Joe, however, encountered a slow, tormenting death. Hurston presents Tea Cake as a hero in order to be more sympathized at the time of his