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In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Janie is held back from growing to her full potential. Janie is married three times and in each marriage there is one item that restrains her. In her marriage with Joe she was forced to wear a head rag to cover her hair because it is so long and beautiful. The red rag resembled the restraint Joe put on Janie.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a tragic love story. The main character, Janie, experiences three different kinds of love. Throughout her life she soon learns that true, unconditional love comes on its own time. She finds that out when she meets the love of her life.
In the story “their eyes were watching god” by Zora Neale Hurston, A feminist lens portrays that Joe’s greedy lifestyle limited his wife’s opportunities, thus defining him as a man who is selfishly obsessed with Money and power, clearly seen through the Marxist lens. The porch sitters were enjoying their daily routine when they heard Matt Bonner’s mule braying at the edge of the woods. They decided to catch the mule and have some fun. Joe then tells someone to go tell Matt that the wants to speak with him. While they go tell Matt to come talk to Joe, Janie was sent by Joe to fetch his “old black gaiters” because his tan shoes set his “feet on fire” (57).
The Harlem Renaissance was a period of time in history where African Americans revived their cultural and intellectual self. Key ways African Americans achieved this was through self determination, destroying outdated racial stereotypes, being racially conscious, group expression, modern ideas, and through political and civil rights. In literature there has been a major debate about books marked as Harlem Renaissance reads and whether or not the book meets the criteria of the Harlem Renaissance. One book in particular that has been criticized for not meeting the Harlem Renaissance Ideals is “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. After reading this book, I determined that it should still be considered a Harlem Renaissance book.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s happiness and self-fulfillment greatly depended on the man whom she was in a relationship with. From, the beginning of the novel, Janie never followed the path that had the utmost value to herself; She always settled for what other people thought was best for her. This made Janie never quite content with her situation and caused her happiness and self-fulfillment to be hindered by her circumstances. The horizon, a motif representing dreams, wishes, the possibility of change, and improvement of ones’ self, is the point in which Janie’s journey of self-discovery is illustrated by.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses her characters to challenge the gender roles of that time. In her book, women are the submissive and weaker gender. They cannot gain power without a influential or wealthy man backing her up which is usually connected by marriage. Considering since women have no powers in society, in marriages they also don’t have much power, therefore the husband suppresses their wives and doesn’t give them any freedom. Because the females are scared of the males, they don't fight back and just keep it in.
The black culture is very diverse in different parts of the world-even in different parts of the state. Janie as moved throughout Florida to places such as West Florida, Eatonville, and the Everglades. Residing in these different places helps develop and define the character of Janie. Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie experiences many variations of black culture that helps build her character as she travels through Florida.
In the short novel “Their Eyes were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford is a young, mixed-colored girl in search for love, happiness, her hopes, dreams. Blacks are often discouraged to become successful and go their own route because they are treated differently by their community. In 1937, it was challenging for women to find themselves and blossom as human beings. The story had nothing to do with the black versus white disputation, but someone dealing with their own personal problems, such as love, abuse, and loss. In addition, the African-American experience included things like cultural, spiritual, social, and political issues (Cite) in which they attempt to succeed in society and find acceptance from others.
“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.
The “Rock Pile” by James Baldwin and “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston are two stories that examined black male resistance to emasculation. The men in these stories lived in patriarchal societies, and they reaped the benefits of a structure that favored men. In both of these stories, the male characters are dominant figures in their households, and when they felt like their manhood was being attacked, they retaliate viciously. In “Their eyes were watching god”
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston can be characterized as an African-American novel; at least, according to Toni Morrison’s criteria for this genre of novel, it can be. Morrison claims that for a novel to be categorized as African-American, it must contain three things: a “community commenting on or responding to the action,” “the presence of an ancestor” who provides insight and wisdom to the main character, and “an oral quality.” This novel contains all three of these criteria in the forms of characters like Nanny Crawford and the porch-sitters, and in Janie’s oral telling of her story to her friend Pheoby Watson. Through these characteristics, Their Eyes Were Watching God makes a connection to traditional African storytelling
In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Zora Neale Hurston writes about the struggles of true love between Janie and her three husbands. As the story progresses, Janie believes she has found love, but then she gets disappointed after she is treated wrong. At the beginning of the story, Janie is forced to marry Logan Killicks after her Nanny convinces her that it is for her protection. Janie then tells herself that she will someday grow to love Logan.
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.
The author uses figurative language and imagery to bring her expressions to life. Throughout the novel, Hurston creatively expresses how women perceive love and marriage through the main character, Janie, and her experiences. A scene written in the novel describes Janie being introduced to womanhood and how it is she welcomes it. It is described as a pure welcoming when she was, “beneath the pear tree” simply enjoying her life as it is. The imagery and sensory language describe how, “the gold of the sun” and “the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” to represent womanhood as a discovery for Janie’s character (Hurston, Pg 11).
It is not surprising, that Hurston’s still burgeoning knowledge of Voodoo is a major influence in the novel, particularly on her conception of human relationships with nature. Hurston employs this Voodoo-influenced view of nature in the novel in order to challenge and revise the traditionally limited and static gender and racial roles of the early twentieth-century south. Nature/woman is subordinated to culture/man in the traditional pastoral equation, and this opposition installs males as the protectors of both the improved garden and the women of the plantation. Hurston’s Voodoo-influenced conception of nature contributes to her revision of the male-dominated pastoral tradition in Southern literature by identifying her female protagonist
