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Their Eyes Were Watching God Cultural Analysis

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Culture defines us and how we are as we get older, it plays a big role growing up. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character Janie goes through many different challenges to find herself and others. No matter how difficult things got, she always had a positive attitude, or stood up for herself. That's how she was raised. The people around her too, had positive outlooks. The story conveys the idea that Zora Neale Hurston sees things in a positive way through explaining Janie and how she was raised and her culture. Janie may see things differently than others do. This could come off as strange at first. Everyone’s culture is different so her positivity wouldn’t be normal to some people anyways. “To Janie’s strange …show more content…

She spends a lot of time standing up for herself with herself when it comes to relationships also. One of her husbands, Logan, was very kind in the beginning, but after a while he began to threaten her and it affected her in a negative way. “Ah’ll take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh! You better dry up in dere! Ah’m too honest and hard-workin’ for anybody in yo’ family, dat’s de reason you don’t want me”(Hurston 32). Hearing this from someone that you thought you loved can hurt you in many ways. Janie never threatened back, or did anything to harm anyone. She left, but she never did anything negative towards anyone in the process. Both men and women play huge roles in domestic violence and cultural experiences. The way he treats her shows how he was raised, and the way Janie handles it shows how she was raised. “Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store”(Hurtston 80). After Janie finally took a stand for herself, it was taken out on her. It can be inferred that Zora Neale Hurston was raised around people that taught her to control what she can control and move on. After Janie was abused, she left Joe. Again, she never did anything negative towards any of her husbands no matter how much they deserved it. All Janie could use were her words and it still cost her. This shows Zora Neale Husrton’s culture because

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Janie felt,“This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But [Joe] was set on it. Her hair was NOT going to show in the store. It didn’t seem sensible at all. That was because Joe never told Janie how jealous he was.”

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separated from her historical context. It could be viewed as one who was living invisibly finally uses her voice and becomes seen, or one who started to speak up, but became silent again (48). As Bollobás argues, the question in this matter is Janie’s outbreak of her situation, her female subjectivity out of the realm of oppression, by killing the abusive Joe’s pride by applying hate speech as well (48-49).

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more’n you kin say… When you pull down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life” (Hurston 79). Janie stands up for herself and verbally attacks her husband, which was unusual for the time

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(Hurston 8-9).” This really starts the search for identity within her. It fuels the fire to her wanting to know who she is, where she came from, and where she is going to go. Hurston is using this message to convey the theme of Identity. She uses Janie as the main representation of that theme.

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