Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston as a woman and a writer in Harlem Renaissance

Hurston published a surplus of literary works in her lifetime, including “essays, folklore, short stories, novels, plays, articles on anthropology and autobiography”(Aberjhani163), Their Eyes Were Watching God being one of the most widely read. Hurston did not write for the greater political good but rather just for the sake of writing. Many argue her place in the Harlem Renaissance, referring “her flat refusal to politicize her early writings by adopting the prevailing notions driving African-American social reform” (Dawson, Aberjhani, 165). Nevertheless, Hurston wrote influential and powerful works that were broadly read by both races alike.

The

Many of the migrants left their families and homes to escape the danger and violence pledged by white supremacists and typically a universal need to escape a “land soaked in much bad blood” (woolflm), or to find work and opportunities in an increasingly industrialized urban setting. Hurston instead, saw black culture, in all its “geographical incarnations as persistently emerging and reinventing itself” (Robert). Therefore, when Janie spends the majority of Their Eyes Were Watching God trudging through the Florida muck and surrounded by black men and women who would sound a lot like the black “mammies” and “uncles” (Robert), Hurston is intent of conveying these characters into the modern era. We follow Janie’s journey through life as she tries to follow her heart in pursuit of romantic love that is fulfilling to her emotionally and physically. When Janie finally meets Tea Cake, a man at least a decade

This displays Hurston staying true to her Southern roots as portraying her characters in the way they truly are. Hurston writes the narrative in perfect, proper English. Her use of strong metaphors and vivid imagery to depict the life of Janie in the Southern towns of Florida. By writing this way, she also appealed to white audiences. If she had written the narrative with more slang and African American voice, she may not have been as widely read by white people. In spite of the fact that Hurston writes the narrative this way, she uses the vernacular for her dialogue. By doing this, she is remaining true to her southern black roots. Many criticized the novel for using the Southern dialect in her novel. One reviewer said “Her dialect is really sloppy…To let the really important words stand as in Webster and then consistently misspell no more than an aspiration in any tongue…the vernacular reads with about this emphasis: ‘DAT WUZ UH might fine thing FUH you TUH do.’ (Ferguson 78) Ferguson is saying that writing in the vernacular pulls attention away from the importance of the sentence and draws attention to the tedious words. From the time the novel first came out the dialect was a problem with reviewers (Heard 131), but Hurston “Voiced her commitment to represent the language of the Southern black community realistically,” (Heard