Themes In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Kneal Hurton

Annabelle Spruill
Dr. Hipp
AP Literature
23 February 2023
In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel, play or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing what that act of cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim and how that act of cruelty develops the meaning of the work as a whole. In Zora Kneal Hurton’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurtson identifies the generational difference between Nanny and Janie in the second chapter when Nanny slaps Janie for criticizing Logan Killicks: the man whom nanny has set Janie out to marry. Nanny’s act of cruelty against Janie reveals both nanny’s sincere

Through the second half of the second chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Nanny’s story of being born into slavery and later her brutal assault, rape, and birth of her daughter Leafy -- Janie’s mother -- as a product of the assault of her white master is revealed. Nanny hoped for her daughter Leafy to live a life of freedom and become a successful school teacher, however she is raped at her won school and succumbed to alcoholism. Because of Nanny’s past trauma, an everlasting mark and instinct is left in her worldview which accounts for why she feels the need to have a plan set out for Janie’s life. Nanny strives to provide Janie with protection from a world full of racism and mistreatment of black men and women in which Nanny experienced first hand. Nanny hits Janie not from a place of hate or hollowness of heart, but rather from a place of fear: fear that Janie will grow up to experience the racism and hatefulness of the world that Nanny experienced. Nanny’s love for Janie is loyal and strong based on a sense of responsibility and control: to give Janie Logan Killicks who should satisfy Nanny’s idea of a dream life for Janie in which she would never experience for

Janie dreams of a love full of shared passion sexually and romantically that is equal and united through marriage. When Nanny slaps Janie only a few pages later, newfound womanhood was declared in Janie. Her planned marriage to Logan would only derail her search for a love that would fulfill all aspects of what she felt underneath the pear tree. Her submissiveness to Nanny invited a sense of reality into her outlook on marrying Logan, but not enough to keep her with him. Janie will go on to leave him after Nanny’s death with the newfound realization that her innocent outlook on the unification of love, marriage, and sex is not the reality of her life with Logan, and although a life with Logan promises security and comfortability, this does not satisfy Janie and her ambitious dreams. Although Nanny’s act of cruelty brought a new sense of womanhood and tradition to Janie’s outlook on marriage, sex, and love, Janie’s character allows her to continue seeking out new possibilities and experiences that will lead her to finding her true