Their Eyes Were Watching God: Movie And Book Comparison

The film Their Eyes Were Watching God, based off of the novel by author Zora Neale Hurston, is a story of a young woman named Janie who spends the film narrating her life story to a friend. Janie’s story is one of self-exploration, empowerment, and the ability to express her freedoms both as a maturing woman and African American, throughout her life experiences. As she navigates through sexism and racism to find herself it becomes more evident that it will be more difficult than she initially thought to reach a point of happiness.

      In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the image of a pear tree reverberates throughout the novel. The pear tree is not only a representation of Janie's life - blossoming, death, metamorphosis, and rebirth - but also the spark of curiosity that sets Janie on her quest for self-discovery. Janie is essentially "rootless" at the beginning of her life, never having known her mother or father and having been raised by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny even says to Janie, "Us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways" (Hurston, 16). Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a naïve

In the book, the peach tree can be said to represent Jane’s identity as a woman and her budding sexuality. She compares her change to that of the pear tree blossoming. Like the tree, she could feel that she was now a grown woman and she was of age. The tree growing and blossoming represents how she transforms into a woman who wants to find and experience love as compared to the innocent girl she was earlier on. This can be seen on Page 10 where Hurston says, ‘It had called her to gaze on a mystery… from barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds… to the snowy virginity of bloom’. As the tree blossoms, she becomes more interested in love and romance, and she even forms views towards these two affairs. Janie gets her first kiss under the pear tree, and the reader can now become aware of her maturing, and she is now a woman who is interested in kissing and romance. From the tree, she experiences sexual desires as seen here ‘…then Janie felt a remorseless pain

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 the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods is a Christ figure for a multitude of reasons. Some of these include him being approximately in his thirties, having lowly forms of transportation, and most importantly, sacrificing himself for the good of someone else. Janie was approximately in her early 40’s as evidenced by “Ah been wid Jody twenty yeahs” (82). She was also significantly older than Tea Cake as shown by “You know how dese young men is wid older women” when Pheoby was warning Janie on the dangers of Tea Cake which puts him at least eight years younger than Janie (113). Tea Cake also has lowly modes of transport as evidenced by “Tea Cake in a borrowed car teaching Janie to drive” as he doesn’t

The authors of the time did have a valid reasoning to believe that the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was such an uninspiring novel. An artificial reading of the novel shows the reader a few small points that came make people mad. Janie the main character lives a sheltered life. Her grandmother, an ex-slave, shelters her from such a world, and she is brought up in a rich environment. All the black people that she do see are fairly well-off. She marries her first husband, Logan, who is not financially stable and she has to do labor, so she leaves him. Her next husband, Jody brings her to an all black city, Eatonville. The city mirrors that of a white city. Jody makes all the rules in the town and soon it becomes prosperous and grows while Jody makes a lot of money. She is unhappy in this rich white society. Thus when Jody dies, she goes off into the Everglades with Tea Cake and works in the fields

In the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” the main character Janie marries three different men, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks (Jody), and Vergible Woods (Teacake). She marries each of these men for different reasons. First, she marries Logan because her grandmother guilted her into marriage with him. In the book, on page 13, it says, “‘Brother Logan Killicks. He’s a good man too.’ ‘Nah, nanny, no ma’am…’” This is saying that Nanny wanted Janie to marry Logan, however Janie didn’t want to marry Logan. Secondly, Janie marries a man named Joe Starks, also known as Jody. She marries Jody because she doesn’t want to be married to Logan. In the book, on page 30, it says, “Janie debated the matter that night in bed.” In summary, this is saying that

In Their Eyes were Watching God, the pear tree is described as Janie's idealized view of nature. In that moment, while Janie watches a perfect moment in nature, interactions between the pear trees’ flowers and bees’. The author uses the pear tree to demonstrate the idealistic vision of love and it made her reflect off of her relationships. The tree gave Janie the knowledge of love which she spends her entire life finding. The pear tree gave her this image of love, “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (12). With the pear tree symbolizing expectation, the author adds in a hurricane at the end of the novel. The hurricane symbolizes the reality, hurricanes are normal in the ecosystem and they help the ecosystem

Educator and literary critic, Keiko Dilbeck claims in her article ‘Symbolic Representation of Identity in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God’ (2015), that Zora Neale Hurston used objects and characters as symbols for identity and qualities of good relationships. She does this first by, citing the example of the Pear Tree symbolizing youth, then by listing Janie’s three husbands and the qualities the represent, then by discussing the all important symbol of the hair. Dilbeck’s purpose in writing this article was to discuss the many symbols in the text in order to enhance reader’s understanding of the novel's themes and symbols. The author creates a reflective tone by discussing the novel's purpose and it’s relationship to Black Woman during

The power of color and class is exposed throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and “Reapers” by Jean Toomer. Although all three pieces of literature tell different stories, they all contain the concept of how race and social hierarchy correspond to each other. Their Eyes Were Watching God contains a character whose name is Ms. Turner. Ms. Turner is a woman that does not accept her blackness, and because of that, she feels that she is ranked higher than the African Americans within her society. Throughout The Bluest Eye, the characters within the novel are constantly dealing with the issues regarding race and class, especially Pecola, the main character. Pecola is part of the low class in society because she is African American and also poor, compared to the African Americans within her

Their eyes were watching God is a story based on a young woman who goes by the name Janie Crawford. She lives in Florida and is searching for love. In the novel she explains her journey of love to her friend Pheoby. Since Janie does not associate with the others she asks Pheoby to delay the message to the other people in the town Eatonville. Janie was raised by her grandmother Nanny after her mother left town. Janie and Nanny live with a white family the Washburns and they take care of the house. When Janie turned sixteen she started to take interest in Johnny Taylor, but Nanny sends her off to marry and live with a much older man in his late 30’s by the name Logan Killicks. Since Mr. Killicks is doing well for himself Nanny feels that Janie

The metaphor of the horizon and the sun follow Janie’s exploration of herself and her search for true love. In the novel, Janie swiftly moves through three marriages, but only finds love in her final marriage to Tea Cake. When Janie is first talking to Jody she is hesitant because “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees" (29). Nature, especially pollen and bloom time, has come to represent love in this novel while the sun represents happiness and cheeriness and that is what Janie is looking for in a relationship. Jody is not a super positive and bubbly guy but he “spoke for far horizon" (29). He spoke about the possibilities that could be if they were together. Possibilities that Janie was hoping would give her a chance to find out

In the excerpt from their eyes were watching god, there is a group of people who become one entity without individual identities. Once a leader in a group is established, that leader often becomes the personality of the group. If you are outside of the group or the group doesn’t know something about you, they will attack you violently and mercilessly. All too often it happens. The same thing happened to Janie. She was outside of the group, and they didn’t know much about her anymore, so they attacked her verbally.

The author uses metaphor of a quote on page 11, which was, “Oh to be a pear tree – any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” This is a metaphor

What is feminism? Well, feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. So with that being said would you say the book “Their Eyes are Watching God” is a feminist novel? If you said no you would be correct. “Their Eyes are Watching God” is not a very feminist novel, I say this because Janie wasn't treated with respect by the men she was with, she never spoke up, and she was always told what to do.