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Zora Neale's Parallelism

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African Americans thrived in American culture during the 1920’s, as the Harlem Renaissance invigorated and empowered people of color to create artistic and literary works. The expressive movement allowed Africans to gain a new identify in America and prove their worth in a predominantly white society. The African American literary prolificacy soon ended as the Great Depression caused colored people to return back to their pre-established assumptions of artistic inadequacy and incompetence. The decline in the American economy increased political and social tensions, resulting in the return of African American discrimination. Zora Neale Hurston addresses the recurrent African oppression in the 1930’s with her publication, Their Eyes Were Watching …show more content…

The parallelism allows for a comparison of similar descriptions in order to release Janie’s future happiness in life. When Janie first marries Logan, she realizes her discontent him and tries to wait for her marriage to improve. Hurston places a similar phrases together in order to signal Janie’s determination, to mainintin her marriage, fading. Hurston describes Janie’s dwindling resolve by expressing, “So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time,” which displays time deteriorating Janie and Logan’s marriage, as it was destined to fail eventually (25). The structural repetition of different “times” in Janie’s life parallels how quickly Janie’s life passes her by. Hurston symbolizes the seasons passing Janie’s youthful years, indicating the end of another part of Janie’s innocence and faith. As more times passes, Janie’s dream of love becomes shatters and her maturity quickly increases. Janie now experiences personal development which permits her to separate from her unpassionate relationship. The parallelism emphasizes how long Janie had waited to grow into a mature woman and explicates the foundation of future love beliefs. When Tea Cake and Janie become closer, Tea Cake introduces to fun activities that Janie has never been exposed to before, as Joe would not let her participate in leisure activities due to his insane jealousy. Hurston displays a new side of Janie actually enjoying her love life by asserting, “Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and Janie gone to a dance,” demonstrating Janie’s happiness that she has masked away or been forced to repress for years (110). The repetitive phrases of various activities parallel what the couple has already done together in their early relationship,

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In the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster discusses the importance of Geography in literature, particularly the idea that “ when writers send characters south, it’s so they could run amok” (Foster 179). This idea emerges in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as Janie travels to discover her identity. Janie feels tied down by the people in her life, particularly her husband Joe in Eatonville. She comments that he “wanted me tuh sit wid folded hands and sit dere.

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This made Ann keep her thoughts to herself, she can’t complain about John’s love and devotion because all John wanted is the best for Ann. Sinclair Ross used the setting to symbolizes what John and Ann’s marriage is, “in winter, with roads impassable...that from a five the distance was more trebled to seventeen” has a direct connection with their marriage because like the roads being impassable, John and Ann’s

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Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” This realization made by Janie supports one of the biggest themes in this novel, which is that the concept of innocence and womanhood can’t exist at the same time. Because Janie finally lets go of her “childish fantasy”, her innocence is lost and she is now a woman. The theme of lost innocence in exchange for womanhood is also prevalent in Hurston’s story Sweat. This idea is one of the reasons that Sykes and Delia’s relationship begins to fall apart when we meet them.

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Hurston describes Janie’s quest to finding love and to recovering herself, though

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In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” the African American social group is being represented in many ways. The texts have similar ways that African Americans are represented for the time period. The African Americans or “colored people” are represented in an aspect that comes from the author's point of view. The African Americans are represented as being unbothered, growing up in a closed community, playing the game with whites, and optimistic.

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1660 Words | 7 Pages

Next, Janie continues on her determined journey for love when she goes off to marry Tea Cake. In the quote,

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Hurston emphasizes their relationship because Janie's goes against what is expected and finds happiness alongside Tea Cake and still has it when he passes, Janie reveals, “The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Her was peace. She pulled in her horizon…” (Hurston

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1584 Words | 7 Pages

Janie’s relation with Joes till his death is another step to realize the real meaning of domination and liberation. The moment that Janie kills her third husband Tea Cake is a must in the novel. Although Tea Cake liberated Janie from two different kinds of domination for a period of time but he turns to practice another kind of domination through his physical abuse and his jealousy; so his murder is a momentary freedom for Janie. Janie in her development and growth contends to replace the old culture concept that places women’s wishes on material and economic demands by love and affection.

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1746 Words | 7 Pages

In the first instance, Tea Cake is alive and physically sleeping beside Janie. However, at the end of the story, after Tea Cake has died, Janie’s adoring and loving memories of Tea Cake continue to live on and that in itself is enough to make her feel at ease. By paralleling Janie’s soul in these two moments, Hurston highlights the

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1313 Words | 6 Pages

As Janie ages, she has been going through different stages of loves and misloves, which gradually introduced her to reveal her feminnity. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston depictures Janie’s feminism through her growth of life from an innocent and vulnerable 17 years old girl who had not yet experienced love to a true women who forgets “all those things (she doesn’t) want to remember, and remember(s) everything (she doesn’t) want to forget” (1) in various of perspectives: Janie’s education and her grandmother’s instigation about marriage; Janie’s misloves with Logan and Jody; and Janie’s love for Tea Cake. Before Janie even learned the concept of “love”, Hurston showed how Janie was raped when she still had her “womanly”

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African Americans were able to work for their own money now and gain confidence while living in America. They began to publish newspapers which increased the awareness of racial violence and express their freedom from restraint through art (O’Neill). This “negro fad” in the United States influenced art and drama that focused on the depiction of an African American in the 1920’s. African Americans were revolutionizing the way they were perceived in the U.S.. They gained confidence and made efforts to achieve their ultimate goal,

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“The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.” (Chief Joseph) The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, artistic, and social movement of the African American people. Blacks united and grew as one, formed new arts and developed their own culture. Their eyes were watching god is a novel about a young black woman who struggles to find her individuality.

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Through their works, the authors expressed their social and political view on the injustice within America. Famous authors such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois, and Zora Neal Hurston, made their mark within the world with the bold, self- conscious literature. Black writers subliminally provoked and challenged racial inequality to come to a

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In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the long-lasting effects of slavery have taken a toll on Janie Crawford. Janie’s grandmother was raped by her master and had a child named Leafy. Leafy, although not born into slavery, endured a similar fate, which led her to run away, leaving her mother to raise her child, Janie. Janie’s appearance, showing strong European features, was both praised and shamed by society. This double standard was created by racism and was able to remain present due to segregation.

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1719 Words | 7 Pages

After Tea Cake’s death, Hurston wrote “She had come back from burying the dead.... The people all saw her because it was sundown” (Hurston 1). This quote illustrates that the brightness of change died with Tea Cake, but the memories and lessons lived on forever through each new sunrise of every forthcoming morning. Janie learned that although marriage consists of a relationship between two people, marriage must contain individuality to a particular extent. Janie finally experienced satisfaction in a marriage when Tea Cake allowed her personal freedoms and individuality through inviting her to be equal to him in such activities as playing games and hunting with guns.

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