Their Eyes Were Watching God Symbol

Contrary to when Janie lived with Tea Cake, the neighborhood would “Hold big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch. Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to.” (Hurston 134) Tea Cake was able to offer the opportunity to be relaxed around each other and have fun. He allowed Janie to be herself completely as he had suggested beforehand.

Zora Neale Hurston effectively used the symbol of the gate to display to the readers the beginning of a new outlook or change in Janie’s life. This symbol helped develop the character of Janie and clarifies the meaning of the story of Their Eyes Were Watching God which is about the self-discovery of women in the 1920s and

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston describes the horizon as possibilities and opportunities. When the story starts out Janie’s perception of the horizon changes first from desire for love to the need of love, and ultimately the feeling of contentment towards love to show Janie maturing throughout the novel.

Many literary works embody the concept and elements of symbolism. It can evoke striking feelings and communicate prominent ideas through its symbolic language. A profound author, Zora Neale Hurston, known for her use of symbolism in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, conveys symbols to communicate the experiences of a beautiful yet determined, black woman named Janie Crawford. Janie endeavors to find her euphoria and her perception of self-recognition and love. What comes with her journey of her womanhood is her undying struggle in discovering her aspirations from many marriages to realize her true love that completes her. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the horizon, the pear tree, and the bee and blossom as symbols

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)

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, symbols are implemented to help the readers Identify and understand the leitmotif of the novel. One commonly found symbol is Janie’s hair, which represents her personality, individuality, and character. The state of her hair changes as the novel progresses and Jamie goes through different stages of life, struggling to find true love. Using Jamie’s hair to express her feelings and emotions throughout the novel, Hurston highlights the theme that finding true love and happiness requires one to be free and adventurous in life without letting any obstacles or events alter one’s character.

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.

After Janie is done telling her story to Pheoby she states that “Tea Cake, With the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking” (193). Tea Cake’s sun shawl is a visual image of a being of light, almost like an angel. Hurston relates Tea Cake to this sun being to illustrate how he illuminated Janie’s life, in other words, Hurston illustrates how he is the light of her life.

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.

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.

In this novel Janie searches for fulfillment and independence in her relationships to find the life she dreamed for herself, not the one someone else thought she ought to have. The beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God details

During the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans experience a cultural exposure in literature art. It was a period of great achievement in African-American art and literature during the 1920s and 1930s. This surge gave birth to several authors, playwrights and dramatists, such as Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston is now considered among the foremost authors of that period, having published four novels, three nonfiction works, and numerous short stories and essays. She is also acknowledged as the first black American to collect and publish Afro-American folklore. Her fiction novels, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God, depicts relationships among black residents in her native Southern Florida, was largely unconcerned with racial prejudice (Matuz 207 Vol. 30). Zora 's daily journey through life influenced the central theme of Their Eyes Were Watching God which is a woman 's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women were objects to be used for physical burden and pleasure. Personal experiences such as being in two marriages and having an affair with a younger man, explains her tone towards the journey of a young woman 's search for her own identity and also explains why she uses specific rhetoric modes to convey the idea that the journey of a young woman 's search for her own identity is a hard one.

Janie’s journey sets off when her grandmother, Nanny, insists she marries Logan Killicks, a man twice her age. Because Nanny’s experience with slavery, her worldview has been about financial security for Janie. Like all elders they hope that their children and grandchildren have protection and stability so they can ease. “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection… (Hurston 15)”. With Janie rebellious young age, she does not realize what her grandmother went through. Janie knew she had to obey her grandmother so she can give her Nanny assurance that she would be taken care of before she dies. But not long after the Nanny’s death, Logan Killicks starts to treat her like a “mule” a free work of labor. Because of Janie status she ought to speak for herself.

Who we are can be impacted by who raised us and the people that we choose to surround ourselves with. Depending on who we are with it can bring out different sides of ourselves that we never thought we had or could have. This is what happened with Janie from “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. All throughout the book she has met new people and cut others out of her life. As a result of this change, the readers are able to see Janie’s character evolve over the