Their Eyes Were Watching God Race Analysis

The difference between Janie’s desire for freedom and her agreement to her transition from marriage to marriage shows a contrast in her attempt to balance multiple identities. The entirety of Their Eyes Were Watching God emphasizes Janie’s struggle to become both a woman and black person in a society that does not allow either to exist at the same time. Janie went through several marriages before she found her ultimate happiness. In her attempt to reject her Nanny’s pairing of herself and Logan Killicks, her Nanny explains that “de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out”

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or other. Grandma’s worship of Jesus and the “Good Lawd,” Joe Starks’ worship of himself, Mrs. Turner’s worship of white characteristics, and Janie’s worship of love, all stem from a lack of jurisdiction in the society they inhabit. All these Gods represent a need for something to believe in and work for: an ideal, which they wish to achieve, to aspire to. Each individual character is thus

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937 was written during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement. The New Negro Movement came about as a rejection of the racial segregation between blacks and whites. The black women felt this effect of racism more acutely than the black man. For centuries, Black women have been called the “mule of the world” and had been giving the status of inferior to white and the black man. Their Eyes Were Watching God encloses many elements of both racism and sexism. It is a story set in central and southern Florida. It follows the novels protagonist Janie in her search for self-awareness as she goes through three marriages. Elizabeth A. Meese has argued that one of

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston follows the main character Janie’s journey to find love on her own terms. The first man she married, she married to appease Nanny, her grandmother. The second man she marries is Jody Starks, who she marries because she failed to find love for her previous husband. After the oppressive Starks dies, Janie remarries Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, the only man she has ever loved. They move to “the muck” where Janie feels more at home than ever before because she is with Tea Cake and because she can choose to indulge in her own relations without anyone telling her what to do or with whom to associate.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.

If a black woman had dark skin she would resemble a man, therefore making her ugly in society’s standards. This pressures black women to constantly be "compatible with the white female standard of beauty" (Ashe 580) in order to be socially accepted in society. Intuitively black women understood that in order to be considered desirable, the less black they had to look. This unfortunate perception of beauty stems from a long pattern of "sociohistorical racial injustices" (Bealer 312) towards darker skinned African Americans. Maria Racine states in her review that since slavery black people who approximated closer to whites were sexually sought after by black slave men and white plantation owners and were considered to live a somewhat "easy coexistence" because of their appearance (Racine 283). Since it’s start, colorism laid the pathway of racial prejudice towards dark skinned individuals. The result of treating dark African Americans as subhuman beings led to the altering of the black psyche by creating a "pervasive hierarchy" of beauty that black woman constantly combated or were forced to accept. (Bealer 312).

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” had Janie face several conflicts throughout the book, conflicts that relate to the real world and real world human rights issues. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” covers human rights issues such as gender inequality, the right to marry the person you love, the right to be an equal within a marriage, and racism. The novel’s ending, where Janie returns back to Eatonville after having to kill Tea Cake, is surprising, to say the least, and creates a sense of shock and slight confusion within the reader. The resolution of the novel shows that the author intended to show each of the aforementioned human rights issues, and how none of the issues are guaranteed to have a happy ending. Zora Neale Hurston also seems to imply,

Janie Crawford is surrounded by outward influences that contradict her independence and personal development. These outward influences from society, her grandma, and even significant others contribute to her curiosity. Tension builds between outward conformity and inward questioning, allowing Zora Neal Hurston to illustrate the challenge of choice and accountability that Janie faces throughout the novel.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about a black woman in the 1930s, Janie’s, quest for real and fulfilling love and freedom. The story begins when her grandmother, Nanny, catches her kissing a boy she doesn’t approve of. Nanny is a former slave who is raising Janie as her own daughter, Janie’s mother, was raped at seventeen, began drinking, and ran away. Countless hardships were faced by Nanny and she was denied opportunities, like marriage, in order to care for Janie and her mother. Therefore, she pressures Janie to marry Logan Killicks before she dies of old age. Despite not wanting to take part in it, Janie obeys, and learns that marriage doesn’t create love as she had thought.

Janie, the main protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a girl mixed with black and white heritage struggling to understand gender roles and happiness. Since she was young, Janie had been denied a voice and also pursing after dreams. When she gets married to an elderly gentleman named Logan, Janie and Logan both express different opinions on gender roles. For example, Logan believes wives exists just to make the lives of men easier and tells Janie she’s spoilt rotten. However, Janie believes the chores she has been assigned to do is jobs just for men. She doesn’t believe chopping and hauling wood, plowing, and planting potatoes is something women are supposed to do.

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

Zora Neale Hurston’s use of language in Their Eyes Were Watching God effectively creates mood, establishes characterization, and develops themes throughout the novel. Ever since Tea Cake, Janie’s third husband was bitten by a rabid dog, his behavior has been threatening towards Janie’s life. When he points a gun at her, attempting to shoot her, Janie is left with no choice. She aims her rifle at her disease-stricken husband and he dies in her arms. As a result of this shooting, Janie finds herself on trial for Tea Cake’s death.

The world of Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of oppression and disappointment. She left the world of her suffocating grandmother to live with a man whom she did not love, and in fact did not even know. She then left him to marry another man who offered her wealth in terms of material possessions but left her in utter spiritual poverty. After her second husband's death, she claims responsibility and control of her own life, and through her shared love with her new husband, Teacake, she is able to overcome her status of oppression. Zora Neale Hurston artfully and effectively shows this victory over oppression throughout the book through her use of

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people” (85). Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities that “represent increasingly wide circles of experience and opportunities for expression of personal choice” (Crabtree). Their Eyes Were Watching God is an important fiction piece that explores relations throughout black communities and families. It also examines different issues such as, gender and class and these issues bring forth the theme of voice. In Janie’s attempt to find herself, she

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Research Paper In Their Eyes Were Watching God, African Americans weren’t treated equally, and were looked at as slaves even though slavery had already been abolished. Women were looking for wealthy men to take care of them. Janie, is seeking to find out what true love is and through her experiences in her three different types of marriages, she eventually attains her goal. She ends up discovering who she is as a person, and what the most important components are that define her and make up her life.