Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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

Companionship is a fundamental necessity for human beings to function. People thrive off of social interactions and without companionship, loneliness and alienation would prevail. Everyone wants the same things in life which are love, social acceptance and companionship, in the hope that once these things are obtained one will feel complete. In the novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, readers witness the characters struggle to find their identity while also trying to meet the need for partnership. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, readers see the main character Janie, grow as a women while showing that marriage does not always mean love and that until

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.

Throughout life, everybody makes sacrifices that may become more beneficial to him or in ways they could not foresee. A sacrifice may be simply giving up an object or giving up something deeper in meaning. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a prime example of a book that reflects this theme. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, struggles to figure out her identity and what she desires in life. As she matures in her relationships and in life, she learns to make sacrifices in order to seek what she really needs. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston illuminates Janie’s values and the text’s emphasis on self-actualization is demonstrated through Janie leaving stability with Logan to marry Joe,

The pear tree experience, along with her Grandmother’s words to her, help Janie determine her expectations for her future relationships. The pear tree experience establishes the feeling she seeks for the rest of her life, as she wants just as intimate of a relationship as the bee and the flower. Janie’s grandmother’s initial goals for Janie are inscribed in Janie’s original ideals, even though she denies it. Her grandmother’s original intent by marrying her off to Logan, besides for her safety, was to find her a way out of the working life, and into one where she would be allowed to relax, and escape the life of toil that both Leafy and Nanny suffered through. While Janie

Janie’s relationship with Nanny provides Janie with her first views on her role in society and the assertion of men’s power over women. After Janie’s sexual awakening with the pear tree and her kiss with Johnny Taylor, Nanny warns Janie that “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world” (Hurston 14). In Nanny’s prospective, the Negro woman is especially subservient to others, and when Janie goes to Nanny to ask how to love Logan, Nanny dissolves Janie’s notion of love and affirms that love only complicates things. Nanny is seen as Janie’s mother figure and she “dismisses Janie’s romantic ideal of love, feeling that marriage serves a strictly pragmatic purpose, on in which the woman is passive and taken

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

     In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader is given a particular glimpse into Janie's life with reference to the men she has known.  Janie's three men are all very different, yet they were all Janie's husband at one point in her life.  Although they all behaved differently, in lifestyle as well as their relationship with Janie, they all shared certain similarities.

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

Nanny makes Janie believe that marriage makes love and forces her to wed a much older man, Logan Killicks. Jones believes that Janie?s first efforts at marriage show her as an ?enslaved and semi-literate? figure restrained to Nanny?s traditional beliefs about money, happiness and love (372). Unfortunately Janie?s dream of escasty does not involve Killicks. Her first dream is dead. Janie utters, ?Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think? (Hurston 23). Logan began to slap Janie for control over

In order for an individual to effectively rebel against an established society, he or she must maintain some degree of power. If leaders or majority groups intend to revolt against an aspect of society, they simply speak or act against their issue. A member of marginalized group does not have the liberty of rebelling so directly, as he or she would be immediately isolated. In addition, taking a stand through an unappreciated aspect of one’s status in society would be futile. Therefore, an individual must find his or her value to society and utilize it as their method for rebellion. This is exemplified in both Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, as women rebel against society without using their voices. The main characters, Janie and Hester, defy gender roles through external appearances, maintaining silence, and accepting sexuality. Both Hawthorne and Hurston reveal society’s value of women’s external persona through female characters’ nonverbal rebellion.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written by Zora Neale Hurston and published in 1937. Hurston's book guides us through character Janie Crawford’s hectic journey while taking place in the 1900s. The story starts out with Janie, a middle-aged black woman, returning to her hometown in Eatonville, Florida. Her surprise visit gets the town talking. They wonder where she had gone, what she was doing, and why she was gone so long. Janie’s friend, Pheoby Watson, visits Janie to find out what happened. The conversation that they share frames the rest of the entire book.

Book summary Their Eyes Were Watching God is written by Zora Neal Hurston an African American woman in 1937. This story is about Janie Crawford, whose lifelong quest is to find true love. Janie narrates the story of her three marriages and her search for love to her friend Phoeby. When Janie is young, her grandmother arranges her marriage with a man named Logan Killicks, who becomes Janie's first husband.

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.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.