Book Report On Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

The Truth Behind Fiction Have you ever read a fictional book and wondered if it has some truth to it? Even though a story is fictional, it can still be based on real events and people. There is a difference between a complete fantasy and realistic fiction. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, even though the book is fiction, it is very autobiographical. Initially, I had not assumed that the book had any connection to the author’s life, but eventually I started to wonder if it did after some events happened. For example, Janie is at the store wondering about Tea Cake and thinks to herself that he “Must be around twenty-five and here she was forty” (Hurston 100). Janie’s situation is a practical one. People often wonder if

Similarly, Janie did what Tea Cake wanted her to do to please him. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie submits to men because of her lack of voice. Historically, women felt like they hardly had a voice with the men in their lives because of the time period. Additionally, Boyd talks about the 1928 Lake Okeechobee hurricane that killed about two thousand people; she says, “Though Hurston was not in Florida during that storm, she later interviewed many of its survivors; she also was able to re-create the hurricane in vivid detail because she herself had survived a 1929 hurricane in the Bahamas”(Boyd 12). Because Hurston was not there to witness the hurricane in her home state, she recreated it in a fictional

Abusive relationships are very common in real life. Also, people often express traumatic experiences in some form of art. In addition, I found out from another secondary source, “A Profeminist Postcard from Haiti”, that her husband, Punter slapped her, and she admits that she is shocked she did not hate him. Much like Hurston, Janie does not hate Joe for slapping her. However, neither does she like being slapped. Ultimately, when Janie takes a room at the boarding house, she overhears some men say, “Well, you know whut dey say ‘uh white man and uh nigger woman is the freest thing on the earth” (Hurston 189). Hurston purposely uses Eatonville’s Ebonics to reach the accuracy of expression that was astonishing to her. Even though, some readers might find this use of language off putting, the language helps to capture the essence of Eatonville. By capturing the essence of the town, Hurston is making Their Eyes Were Watching God seem more