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Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

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The 1800’s were one of the most revolutionary times in the history of the United States. The slaves were recently emancipated, and there was a great amount of confusion regarding racial tension, and the reconstruction. Blacks were still struggling to find their place in the their newly found free society. The 14’th and 15’th amendments supported the freedom and citizenship, of blacks, but they still were treated as lesser beings. Anti-Black groups, such as the KKK, made everyday life for a black citizen a dangerous journey. Zora Neale Hurston had to experience all of these daily traumas and in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, almost all of the characters symbolize a modern day problem in Hurston’s life, while also attempting …show more content…

In the Everglades a new lady arrives to the town, Mrs.Turner, and immediately befriends Janie. She seems friendly at first but as she and Janie get deeper into conversation Janie soon discovers what Mrs.Turner believes in. She is very racist, which is ironic because she is not even fully white herself. In a conversation with Janie she says, “Mis’ Woods, Ah have often said to my husband, Ah don’t see how a lady like Mis’ Woods can stand all them common niggers around her place all de time”(Hurston 140). Mrs.Turner has a deep hatred for blacks, and praises Janie, for her light skin. This is very similar to groups like the KKK, and also everyday racism that Zora Neale Hurston had to experience. One document states, “Klansmen sought to frustrate reconstruction and keep the freedmen in subjection with nighttime harrassments, whippings, beatings, rapes and murders”(Reconstruction 423). Hurston had to live her entire life in fear of these beatings and murders that the KKK distributed at will,. Mrs.Turner perfectly exhibits the mind set, and opinion the white people had African Americans. In the book Mrs.Turner is portrayed as very ignorant, which is what Hurston thought of the racist white

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How are the events from the Harlem Renaissance portrayed in the book, Their Eyes were watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston, compare to the real events that took place during the Harlem Renaissance? Hurston was an anthropologist and novelist during the 1900s and had published the book Their Eyes were watching God, in 1937 during a trip to Haiti. In her book, we are introduced to some either important or main characters like Janie, Vergible ‘Tea Cake’ Woods, Joe, Mr. Killicks and Janie’s Grandmother. Hurston’s book, Their Eyes were watching God, is set in the early 1900s around 1915 and 1935, in which the experience of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s begins and ends just as the Great Depression had began to start around 1929. In the many events depicted in Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s writing is both a reflection of and departure from the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance.

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