Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston: An Analysis

In a nation where freedom of speech is advertised and protected, is it right or even ethical to banned certain books from schools? To be honest, there are two main things that should be taken accounted in, the audience for the book and the books purpose. It's silly it believe that everything can be solved by censorship, but it's even sillier to not take note of parents concerns when it comes to what their children learn at school. Take the book "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, a very controversial book about a black woman and her experience of romance. The book has been banned in schools not only in the United States but also in many places around the world, because of parents claiming that the books contains "sexual

Parents are known to shelter their kids from the things they fear might be bad, after all it is totally normal to want one's child to stay innocent as long as possible. However, at some point one must acknowledged that children grow up and should be allow to start learning about the world they live in. "Their Eyes are Watching God", is a beautiful book that talks about women empowerment and teaches women how materialistic things lead to an empty life. Yet the book has always faced many controversy, since adults are always blinded by the things they fear, like ratio slurs, sexual content, and a realistic depiction of how life as a black woman was like in the past. An article, explaining how Neale Hurston helped her readers understand the world around them, stated, "in North and South alike, the critic posited, people hesitated to confront the harshest realities of what life was like for their non-white neighbors. Southerners would “disregard” the truth they knew too well and Northerners would find it “embarrassing” and “indigestible”" (Rothman 1). Current American society faces the same fears that occurred in older times. From not wanting to expose our children to things that may shame us or that may cause an uproar of thoughts. Fear in the end limits our ability to learn from the past, but classes are meant to be a safe environment where students are able to voice their thoughts. Even when it's a topic that haunts the mind of Americas, students should not be limited in the ability to learn from past mistakes that a nation has made. Instead of focusing on one section that has noting to do with the story, but instead with the times the book was written in, the main focus should be the journey a young woman went through to find herself and her