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.

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

Compare and contrast the presentation of self-fulfilment in these two texts (Their Eyes Were Watching God and She stoops to conquer)

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,

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

In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford had a host of marriages that didn’t go how she planned. She was married a total of three times, two of her husband's happen to pass away. Which makes me think to myself that Janie was probably getting fed up with the pain and suffering made her feel that love was not the things for her due to all the problems that occurred in the past relationships. Real love doesn’t come easy nor it comes and go. Real love is solid and stays with you forever.

Journal 3 In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie creates an idea of real love during her sexual awakening. Her idea of real love centers around two people working together, loving each other, and being happy in marriage. This idea drives Janie to search for this love. In the process of her search, Janie encounters relationships that are abusive and oppressive.

The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, explores a young woman’s quest to analyze her relationships by looking deeper than the surface. Characteristics such as wealth and status no longer hold a strong value for Janie by the end of the novel, because the challenges she faces show how these frivolous attributes can strain relationships between people. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford embarks on a journey in which she becomes aware that trivial characteristics are temporary and do not justify love, whereas the ability to rely on oneself can withstand even the most intense struggles.

Self-knowledge is an understanding or knowledge of one's own capabilities, feelings, or motivations. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie goes on a quest to discover self-knowledge by undergoing three marriages and facing multiple challenges. Through this quest, Janie is able to learn that one must not live for others, but for herself and for God.

The main character, Janie Woods, is unlike any other character throughout the novel, being 75% white and 25% black. For this she was not only looked up to but also looked down upon. She was an outsider within her own community while from the male perspective, she was a prized possession to anyone that could gain her affection. It is important that Hurston told the story about how Janie reached her full potential because it clearly demonstrates how anyone can gain happiness if they simply try. The women on the porch who judge her have hopes and dreams like anyone else. However, Janie is different than them by the way she risks everything she has to chase after her dreams. She encountered many difficulties with this approach at first, involving her marriages with Logan and Joe. Although, she overcame such challenges stronger than ever. Her ending may seem melancholy with the death of Tea Cake, but it is actually tragically perfect. Everything Janie dreamed of as a child was true love and this is exactly what she ended up with. She gained a voice in her life which was masked in her previous relationships. At the end of the novel, Janie is quite content with where her life stands and it is clear to the reader that the problems she endured were actually quite necessary. Although it was sorrowful to see Janie grappling for her dreams, Hurston uses each obstacle to

First published in 1937, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a novel by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was a critical African-American literary figure, rising into fame during the gap between the World Wars. She was a proficient writer with a tad bit of humor and an effective power of imagination. This novel is about a young Janie Crawford, a girl of African American descent and grew up with her grandma. After a disastrous relationship with her first husband, Logan Killicks, she runs away with young Joe Starks. Even though she is happy initially, the love fades away, and the 20-year relation comes to an end with Joe’s death. Julie again falls in love with another young man, Tea Cake. Julie and Tea get married and move to Everglade. But the happiness does not last long, as they get victimized by a hurricane, and Tea gets rabies. During her defense, Julie shots Tea dead and gets arrested. The jury, consisting of all white men finds Julie innocent, and she moves back to Eatonville. So, the central theme of the story is Janie’s search for true and satisfying love. In this novel, Herston has made a significant use of metaphor, imagination and simile, along with the dialogues in southern dialect.