Information about the author and the book
I chose the book ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ from the Big Read Program. According to the Big Read’s webpage, the Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, Managed by Arts Midwest. This program established in order to restore reading to the American culture center. The Big Read programs aims to support creative reading in specific communities. As literary reading started to decline among people especially the young, the Big read aims to support American literary reading by giving the readers the opportunity to read and discuss their reading within their communities (“The Big Read” n.d,)
The book ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ was written by Zora Neale Hurston. According to Bush (1988), Hurston was born and raised in a black town of Eatonville, Florida. In Hurston’s time racism was rampant, but Hurston was able to escaped from the hurt of racism that many black children were suffered from in that time.
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However, new language learners most face some difficulty and boredom in reading, so teacher should try to give students books that can attract students interest and curiosity. Reading stories and novels can create great interest and suspense that ELL student’s need. Through my reading to this book ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ I strongly recommend it as one of these book that can benefit ELS students. According to Krashen (1993) reading is an effective way to increasing and improving improve spelling, grammar, and writing for ELL students, especially reading for pleasure. Krashen also said that students who read for pleasure have better reading comprehension, writing style, and increasing vocabulary. The author also emphasized that the best way to develop Vocabulary is through real encounters words with in context (Krashen,
In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her
Topic 2: Compare/contrast Janie in Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God & Edna in Chopin 's The Awakening in terms of conformity within a male-dominated society. (four page minimum)
Richard Wright and Alain Locke’s critique on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God reveal the common notion held by many of the time, and still today, that there is a right and wrong way for a black person to talk and to act. Wright’s point of view of clearly racially charged and coming from a place of ignorance and intolerance. While, Locke’s point is simply due to a lack of an ability to think out of the box and observe deeper meaning, perhaps due to internalized oppression and a fearful desire to talk and act just like a white man in order to be taken seriously. Wright’s argument that the novel has no central theme and is parallel to minstrel shows, and Locke’s belief that Hurston uses relatable language to avoid diving into mature writing, are inherently wrong and fueled by the very issues Hurston was trying to combat: racism and sexism.
The United States is a notoriously patriarchal society in which men view women as objects and their own possessions. Through history, men consistently constrained the rights women have to equality and self-expression because they deemed women as inferior. As a result, feminist movements erupted and propelled the importance of self-identity in victims of oppression, not just in females. One element of these movements was the use of literature as social protest. Zora Neale Hurston is an author who predominantly wrote through the Great Depression to advocate for equality, specifically for African American women. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston employs the symbolization of hair and the motif of speech to substantiate that one must be confident in making decisions to have individual power.
Love can be perceived as the feeling one feels under the sweetness of a blossoming pear tree, but through an unexpected path, such loving feelings are demolished.When an individual wants the perfect relationship such desires are forsaken by their way of life.Many individuals want to reach the "Horizon" where is not completely seen by the human eye but exists.In the novel "Their eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston", protagonist Janie Crawford seeks for that "horizon" through her relationship with logan, Joe and tea cake.Just like the "horizon" love wasn 't attained during her relationship with logan and joe but that love existed in her relationship with Tea cake.
Many people believe in marrying for love and they spend most of their life searching for it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Nora Zeal Hurston, Janie Crawford goes through three marriages, and as a result, she learns who she wants to be and how to become that woman. Janie has her idealized view of marriage that depicts that you marry for love, and everything is like a fairytale. Through Janie’s three marriages, she learns what she truly desires in life and finds herself along the way. As each marriage comes to a close, Janie becomes stronger and surer of herself.
Folklorist, anthropologist, playwright, and novelist, Zora Neale Hurston 's career took off after publishing, what is, today, her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Unlike any other work at the time, the dialect in her novels portrayed how African-Americans speak in the deep south. Set in Southern Florida, the heroine Janie, is thought to have been modeled after Hurston, herself, if she had chose to stay in her hometown of Eatonville instead of going to college. In the novel, Janie is unable to develop a life as a New Woman through much of her adulthood due to the geographical area she lived in, basic education, financial state, grandmother 's values, history of slavery, and her marriage to Joe Sparks. Hurston, on the other hand, was able to develop her life as a New Woman due to her access to higher education, financial state, and support from her mother.
In the re-designed cover of Their Eyes Were Watching God I used a road as a symbol of dreams. The road helps show that there are better things ahead with the possibility of change and improvement. “Ships have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail on forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in the resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. that is the life of men” (Hurston 1). People rely on their dreams to get them to where they want to go just as Janie relies on men to get her to where she wants to go.
“Difficult times often bring out the best in people.”by Bernie Sanders.”Beasts Of the Southern Wild” is a film directed by Benh Zeitlin and released in June 27,2012.The book “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was written by Zora Neale Hurston and was published in September 18,1937.The film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and the novel “Their eyes were watching god” have some critical similarities.These include the characteristics of the protagonists,each protagonist’s relationship to nature, the fate of each protagonist’s mother,and the climax of a destructive storm.
In Catholic doctrine, the seven cardinal sins are the basis from which all the “sins” of humanity stem. In this system, any moral infraction a person may commit would be categorized under one of these seven sins (also known colloquially as the “seven deadly sins”). This system has been widely adapted throughout culture over the centuries, and is a common tool utilized to examine the actions of humans. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, enters into three marriages, two of which fail based on the failings of her husbands, and the third of which succeeds in spite of the failings of her husband. Each of these husbands, in fact, displays traits which fall under the cardinal sins, and the sin of pride in particular; even the third husband, Tea Cake, displays the very same sin, leading to the downfall of their marriage.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, endures two marriages before finding true love. In each of Janie’s marriages, a particular article of clothing is used to symbolically reflect, not only her attitude at different phases in her life, but how she is treated in each relationship.
Racism is defined as the belief that members of one race, based on their physical appearances, are superior to another race of people who do not match their appearances. The common conception of racism is viewed as Caucasians against African Americans, but contrary to popular belief, racism can be committed against members of one's same race. The issue of same-race discrimination that is based on the complexion one's skin color, is hardly, if ever discussed in literature before Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. In the novel, the mixed-race Janie begins her journey of finding a loving relationship and in the progress, encounters several instances of racism ignored by people such as Richard Wright, who believes that Hurston's
In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.
I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, copyright in 1937 and has a total of 193 pages.
“Their eyes were watching god” a novel that looked how societies view on women, written by Zora Neale Hurston, portrays a society where “nigger women” are considered a “mule”. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Janie Crawford, strives to find her own voice but struggle to find it because of the expectation in the African American community. Each one of her husbands play a big role in her life long search for independence and her own voice.