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Their Eyes Were Watching God Voice Analysis

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Her Story, Her Voice The unique story that is Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story of voices collected together to create one big voice. Hurston uses many characters’ voices to help Janie find her own, actual voice and tell her story by the end of the novel. The story by Zora Neale Hurston is a frame story which is a story within a story. Hurston, like many other authors, uses the frame narrative to help the story come full circle and create a sense that the reader is part of the story. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses multiple voices throughout the story to show all the parts that come together to fully understand Janie’s story. It seems important to acknowledge that there are two narrators: Janie and the anonymous speaker that helps Janie tell her story. Although Janie is the main narrator, the anonymous narrator speaks every now and then about Janie. The main example is at the very beginning of the story when the anonymous narrator is telling of Janie walking back into Eatonville and describing the scene. The anonymous narrator passes the torch to Janie for most of the story so that she can tell Pheoby what happened in her own words. The anonymous narrator is important because he or she gives Janie a chance to catch her breath and describes Janie to the reader in a way Janie might …show more content…

Although some readers might argue that the characters do not contribute to Janie’s voice, it is clear through the details that Hurston places in the novel that they very much do help create Janie’s voice. They play an important part in Hurston’s novel because they are Janie’s story. The characters in the novel make up who Janie becomes and contribute to making her the way she is and therefore contribute to her voice. Through telling the story to Phoeby, Janie finds her voice with the help of the others in the story, which make up the frame

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Analyze the structure of Their Eyes Were Watching God, paying particular attention to way Hurston begins and ends each chapter. Sometimes in life you don’t just think about your future you think about things that happened in the pass. In the first chapter I read it off different from all the other chapters. It was basically just the narrator talking for the main character which was Janie.

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b) Key Characters 1. Janie Crawford • Janie Crawford, the main character of the book, is a woman of both black and white ancestry, a woman with long hair, and most importantly, a woman with a lot of relationship experience. Janie first is with Logan Killicks, a man that her

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The protagonist in the story, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston is a mixed race woman named Janie who desires true love, yet is timid and overpowered by her husbands, which results in her complexity. The hardships she experiences along with a strong desire in finding love give Janie a voice, and connect with the community. Over the course of thirty years and three marriages, Janie succeeds in finding her own voice, as well as respect in her community. Janie is an idealist who believes in true love.

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Some difficulties include racism, religious discrimination, and dealing with others’ cruelness or kindness. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character Janie returns back to her hometown Eatonville, Florida after being away for some time. All the townspeople gossip about what might have happened to Janie when she moved away. Janie clears up all the gossip and shares her story with the curious group.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, each and every male character feels the need to assert their dominance over Janie. In her first relationship, Logan Killicks asserted his dominance by always talking don on Janie. Rather than being thankful for what she would do for him, he would respond with answers such as, "Come help me move dis manure pile befo’ de sun gits hot. You don’t take a bit of interest in dis place. ‘Tain’t no use in foolin’ round in dat kitchen all day long…”

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses speech as a tool to show the progression of the story. Janie Crawford, the main character of the novel, finds her true identity and ability to control her voice through many hardships. When Janie’s grandmother dies she is married off, to be taken care of. In each marriage that follows, she learns what it is to be a woman with a will and a voice. Throughout the book, Janie finds herself struggling against intimidating men who attempt to victimize her into a powerless role.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie suffers from hardship in two relationships before she can find her true love. Janie explains to her best friend, Pheoby, how she searches for love. Therefore Pheoby wants to hear the true story, rather than listening to the porch sitters. Throughout the book Janie experiences different types of love with three different men; Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. At 16 Janie marries Logan Killicks.

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Hurston tells the story of Janie, a black woman who because of her grandmother experiences and beliefs was forced to marry into a loveless marriage with Logan Killicks, a hard-working farmer who had 60 acres of land and could provide for Janie. This marriage ended when Janie ran away with Joe Stark, a man that she fell in love with and thought could give her the love absent between her and Logan. But Janie soon realized that her second marriage wouldn’t turn out better than her first. Joe was just as controlling and degrading as Logan. He hardly expressed his love for Janie and spoke to her like an incompetent child.

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Conclusion Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston’s document to explain the impact of the history which is represented by the legacy of slavery on the present dilemma of her female protagonist Janie. As Janie’s grandmother was abused physically and exploited sexually and her mother was also raped ,Janie develops her past history within the era of post- Emancipation and attempt to find the real concept of her identity and self-fulfilment. Janie tries to put an end to the African –American women’s thoughts which are influenced by the white culture.

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The book is narrated in third person allowing the reader to see into the thoughts of each character, but Hurston mainly constructed it so that Janie is looking back on a series of events that have already occurred. Essentially, the book begins with the ending of a story and ends with the beginning of a new life, which Hurston may have been intending to convey to the reader. Though Hurston uses a narrative writing style, she uses a descriptive style as well. The reader is able to picture what the characters look like as well as what the different sceneries look like. There is plenty of dialogue used in the text and the characters are always communicating with each other.

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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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The second most important character is the murder victim himself, Patrick Maloney. Mary seems to have a quite inaccurate perception of her husband. She perhaps loves the idea of him and having a normal life more than she actually has affection for him. Patrick, while he is alive which is mostly in the beginning of the story, is withdrawn and mellow, due to the stress caused by having to tell Mary the bad news. This news was most likely asking to divorce her, but the exact reason is never stated up front.

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