ipl-logo

Allusions In Their Eyes Were Watching God

953 Words4 Pages

Today is a time of equal opportunity and astonishing miracles for the human race as an entirety. Blacks are running the country, and women are discovering the unthinkable. The earth is billions of years old, yet just about one hundred years ago, it was a completely different world. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel by Zora Neale Hurston in which a character Janie yearns to find love in a time of harsh discrimination and violence. In this bitter setting, it seems that the hardest thing for Janie is to find that love. Hurston reflects the struggle of black women in the early 1900s America. However this author's purpose was to describe how in these times anger and societies denial were the recipe for strength and revival. Hurston uses religious allusions, swaying psychological perspectives, and crude gender roles to relocate the readers from our modern day lives to inside Janie’s consciousness and how a black woman overcame and shattered societal expectations. Soon after Janie was forced into a planned marriage, she realized it got in the way of her self quest to find love. Janie ran away with a man who promised to …show more content…

Women keep quiet to show respect to the men. This is because the men made the money and without them the women thought they would be lost. Men knew the fear the women had and took advantage of their power. Any women to disrespect a man was cruel and insane. When Janie insulted Jody, everyone felt sorrow for the hole she burned in his pride. He let it take him down for days until he remembered he was man, “Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store” (80). Jody shows his power through hate. All along Janie had been searching for love when really she had it in her all along. She learned love is more powerful than hate and found self realization of herself as an independent black

Show More
Related
799 Words | 4 Pages

Janie allows men to treat her poorly several times throughout the novel. After Janie and her husband Joe Starks argue in the store about their age, Joe Starks, “struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store” (80). By not retaliating immediately after being beaten, Janie is not portraying a powerful role model for young readers. After Sop-de-Bottom tells Tea Cake how he’s lucky that he gets to beat Janie, Tea Cake responds with, “Ah didn’t whup Janie ‘cause she

Read More
926 Words | 4 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston acknowledges the idea of sexism when she addresses that Janie Starks, the protagonist, never got to fulfill her dreams. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, wanted the best for her granddaughter so she married her off to a man named Logan Killicks, a man who had a small farm and good wealth “Janie and Logan got married in Nanny’s parlor of a Saturday evening with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken,” (Hurston 3). Years has passed within the marriage and Janie never found love for Logan. Logan comparing her to his ex-wife, discriminated Janie’s place of position, “Mah fust wife never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow. She’d grab dat ax and sling chips lak

Read More
1254 Words | 6 Pages

People come into our lives for different reasons. Some leave a positive impact, while others bring negativity. Readers and critics alike have treasured Zora Neale Hurston’s 20th century novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, for generations particularly for its complex portrayal of the different main characters. The people a person meet and the experiences that person many go through in their lifetime can alter a person significantly. Through the tyrannical words of Joe Starks and the inconsiderate actions of Nanny, Janie in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is negatively influenced as her actions and thoughts alter her life.

Read More
616 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a main character whose outward existence conforms, and her inward life questions. This tension helps to evolve the author’s theme of the importance of individuality and how individuality creates happiness. Janie experiences most of her life in trying to conform, and grows to despise it. Once free, she becomes herself and becomes happy. Early in the novel, Janie marries Logan Killicks.

Read More
633 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the course of the book, Janie experiences oppression as a woman, revealing the hidden gender roles in American society that help form the American

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie suffers from hardship in two relationships before she can find her true love. Janie explains to her best friend, Pheoby, how she searches for love. Therefore Pheoby wants to hear the true story, rather than listening to the porch sitters. Throughout the book Janie experiences different types of love with three different men; Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. At 16 Janie marries Logan Killicks.

Read More
722 Words | 3 Pages

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. The novel portrays Janie, a middle aged black woman who tells her friend Pheoby Watson what has happened to her husband Tea Cake and her adventure. The resulting telling of her story portrays most of the novel. Throughout the novel, Zora Neale Hurston presents the theme of love, or being in a relationship versus freedom and independence, that being in a relationship may hinder one’s freedom and independence. Janie loves to be outgoing and to be able to do what she wants, but throughout the book the relationships that she is in with Logan,Jody and Tea Cake, does not allow her to do that.

Read More
976 Words | 4 Pages

When Janie first meet Joe and married things were great. Then the relationship turned sour when she realized that he also wanted to control and not see her as equal. The final lesson she learned was you have to let people go even when you love them. Janie had to shoot Tea Cake because he had rabies and was about to kill her. Janie knew she had to shoot Tea Cake not only because he was going to kill her but because she had to put him out of his misery.

Read More
1464 Words | 6 Pages

Over time, women have slowly gained more and more rights. They have become more prominent in society, making more decisions that influence their lives, as well as the lives of other people. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston highlights how the gender roles of men and women differ including women being less powerful than men, how Janie had the strength and determination to gain her own happiness, and how stereotypical roles should not play a part in society. Some people view Janie as a woman who should be dependent on her husband, following the traditional roles of women, being satisfied with her life as the less powerful sex.

Read More
1021 Words | 5 Pages

In 1920s Harlem, swing music reigned, great works of art and literature were being created every day, African American creative expression was at its height - The Harlem Renaissance was alive. Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, was one such black expressionist at this time. Several characters in her celebrated novel demonstrate the ideas of the Harlem renaissance, but most notable of these characters is Janie, the strong, Black woman that the novel is based around. The novel tells the story of Janie’s journey for love, and the heartbreak and misfortune that she encounters along the way to the “horizon”. Zora Neale Hurston’s writing is both a reflection and a departure from the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem

Read More
840 Words | 4 Pages

Jody soon becomes sick and after months of not speaking, Janie finally goes to talk to him about the way he treated her on his

Read More
530 Words | 3 Pages

Jody controlled major aspects of Janie’s life, such as her appearance, when he forces her to keep her hair up. Janie does not like that Jody feels the need to control her: “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it... that was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was” (Hurston 55).

Read More
1097 Words | 5 Pages

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel set during the Harlem Renaissance (early 1900s ). The novel is told from the perspective of Janie Mae Crawford, a multiracial (black and a quarter white) woman, as she recalls her search for identity and love within her community. During her search, Janie’s identity emerges through her development from silent to outspoken, exposing her readers to an anthropological critique of African American art and culture, as well as the outer community. The novel is considered a canonical piece of African-American fiction, but to a reviewer like Richard Wright, the novel is unauthentic in its depictions of African American life.

Read More
713 Words | 3 Pages

When tea cake shows up janie 's feels something she has never felt before, she is set free but the townspeople don 't think so. “‘Ain’t you skeered he’s jes after yo’ money him bein’ younger than you?’” (Hurston pg.133)Janie is in love with Tea Cake because he loves her for her youthful young side that was forced into hiding for so long because of her previous husbands. However the rest of the community is discouraging her and trying to keep her in the image as a mayor 's wife. They told Janie that Tea Cake was after her money

Read More
731 Words | 3 Pages

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is an influential book that teaches a simple lesson: life is not perfect, but we can still find our happy ending. Hurston demonstrates this by following the life of Janie Crawford. Janie is a headstrong African American who is caught up in the mess of early 20th century America attempting to get used to living with free African Americans. Additionally she must decide for herself what it means to love another person, discover who she is, and thereby, what she wants. Even though Janie is born after the American Civil War, she lives in a society still learning to come to terms with the reality of civil equality.

Read More

More about Allusions In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Open Document