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Zora Neale Hurston's Journey

819 Words4 Pages

People of all differences can dream for the enrichment of their lives. Hopes and dreams are prevalent in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God whether they are eradicated or achieved. The protagonist of the novel, Janie Crawford, longs for a passionate, loving marriage despite all other oppositions for her to marry for security. However, Janie is constantly mocked by her dreams which appear just out of reach. Hurston divulges in the deception of hopes and dreams through the recurrent symbol of the horizon. What one hopes for on the horizon is ultimately what deceives one. In Janie’s adolescence, she presumes that she loves Nanny, her grandmother and legal guardian, and that Nanny knew better for Janie’s welfare. However, during Janie’s newfound independence and self-discovery after a controlling marriage, she discovers her true feelings of Nanny: hate. She abominates Nanny because, “Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon… and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it around her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her” (Hurston 89). Janie falsely believed Nanny’s actions were to protect her, but now recognizes that Nanny …show more content…

At the end of her journey, Janie finishes chasing after the horizon since she finally reached it but is set back by Tea Cake’s death. She is wearied, tired, and finally at the end of her long expedition after the horizon. Janie metaphorically, “[pulls] in her horizon like a great fish-net… over her shoulder” (Hurston 193). In any case, Janie is satisfied with her accomplishments achieved along the way and has finds peace with nature that she longed for. Although she does not forever attain the horizon, she is in harmony and accepts the truth that hopes and dreams are always in sight but never fully feasible. Through this Hurston proves the absolute rule of insurmountable longings and wishes with eventual acceptance of defeat against

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351 Words | 2 Pages

In the novel How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas Foster discusses the importance of Geography in literature, particularly the idea that “ when writers send characters south, it’s so they could run amok” (Foster 179). This idea emerges in Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God as Janie travels to discover her identity. Janie feels tied down by the people in her life, particularly her husband Joe in Eatonville. She comments that he “wanted me tuh sit wid folded hands and sit dere.

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1030 Words | 5 Pages

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we follow our protagonist, Janie, through a journey of self-discovery. We watch Janie from when she was a child to her adulthood, slowly watching her ideals change while other dreams of hers unfortunately die. This is shown when Jane first formulates her idea of love, marriage, and intimacy by comparing it to a pear tree; erotic, beautiful, and full of life. After Janie gets married to her first spouse, Logan Killicks, she doesn’t see her love fantasy happening, but she waits because her Nanny tells her that love comes after marriage. Janie, thinking that Nanny is wise beyond her years, decides to wait.

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660 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie, is influenced by others to change her ideals. Hurston vividly portrays Janie’s outward struggle while emphasising her inward struggle by expressing Janie’s thoughts and emotions. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening the protagonist is concisely characterized as having “that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions,” as Janie does. Janie conforms outwardly to her life but questions inwardly to her marriages with Logan Killicks, her first husband, and Joe Starks, her second husband; Janie also questions her grandmother's influence on what love and marriage is.

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746 Words | 3 Pages

In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston portrays the story of a black heroine named Janie who seeks to find confirmation of herself through vision and voice. Janie struggles with the visions not only Nanny have, but also by the three different men in whom she marries of how she should live her life. During the 1930’s, women were not able to have their own voice and had to submit to the restrictions of being a woman at the time. Even though she toils with having to find her own vision and voice, Janie finds herself through her mangled relationships and is, therefore, able to gain control over her own vision and voice.

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175 Words | 1 Pages

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.

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1287 Words | 6 Pages

Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston Despite their meticulous uniqueness, spiderwebs are commonplace. The dense connections made between each contingent strand occur in various environments all over the world and at all times. Imagining these threads illuminated alternately by moon and sunlight, however, their contexts only seem to glow more brightly.

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869 Words | 4 Pages

When Nanny convinced Janie to marry Logan, their marriage went downhill; forcing herself to be in love with him. Once, she realized what she told herself wasn’t true; it showed she

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1550 Words | 7 Pages

Often in literature, the author sets the main character on a physical journey to divert attention away from the main character’s spiritual journey. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, goes on a physical journey that not only challenges her sense of self, but also is vital in her life-long spiritual journey to personal liberation and self-empowerment. Janie’s relationships mark Janie’s migration toward fulfilling Hurston’s purpose of the piece: Janie becoming empowered and finds personal liberation. Hurston proves Janie’s physical journey plays a central role as Janie completes her spiritual quest to personal liberation and self-empowerment. Through the loss of her grandmother and movement

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824 Words | 4 Pages

The pursuit of dreams has played a big role in self-fulfillment and internal development and in many ways, an individual 's reactions to the perceived and real obstacles blocking the path to a dream define the very character of that person. This theme is evident in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, which is about the search for identity. A woman of a mixed ethnicity resides in several communities, each playing an important role and serve as crucial influences on her life. During the story, she endures two failed relationships and one good relationship, dealing with disappointment, death, the wrath of nature and life’s unpredictability.

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1584 Words | 7 Pages

Liberation and self-fulfillment within Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God By Wael Fadhil Hasobi PhD Scholar English Dept Acharya Nagarjuna University Waelfadhil38@gmail.com 4-16-25E,Bahertpetha,Guntur,Andrah Pradesh Mobile:9676703836

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1992 Words | 8 Pages

Hurston and Janie both endured oppression during their lives based upon their race and gender however, their strong wills propelled them threw unforeseen obstacle. Zora Neale Hurston was a phenomenal African American woman whom despite her rough childhood would become one of the most profound authors of the century. Throughout her lifetime she was the, “Recipient of two Guggenheims and the author of four novels, a dozen short stories, two musicals, two books on black mythology, dozens of essays, and a prizewinning autobiography” (Gates 4). Hurston had to overcome numerous obstacles because of her gender, economic status, and racial identity. Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama but grew up in Eatonville, Florida.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1800’s, the societal niche of married women was clearly defined: they were meant to devote every aspect of their lives to their husbands and children. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, struggles to adhere to these standards, and eventually rebels against them. The harsh standards placed on Edna and other women in the novel are like the cages around the metaphorical birds Chopin uses to represent them. Edna's unhappiness in her societal role is realized in the ocean, which symbolizes this awakening and her attempt to escape the gender roles of the nineteenth century.

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1918 Words | 8 Pages

On a bright Sunday morning, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, a young girl lounges in the pew of a church when a missal catches her eye, and she begins to flip through the pages revealing the compilation of the religious texts. As this young girl grows older and presumably pursues a higher education, she will begin studying texts of the same complexity of those contained in the missal, which will challenge traditional beliefs and contrast religious literature with literature that happens to contain religious themes. When analyzing these pieces of work, the girl will propose many questions that readers prior may have considered at an earlier time. In American literature, specifically through the examples of "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman and Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin the Sun, religion, once thought of as a unification of all people, paradoxically acts as a source of the development of an identity, rebellion from a community, and a factor of discrimination.

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713 Words | 3 Pages

Zora Neale Hurston’s writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects the Harlem Renaissance through Janie 's individuality, and departs from the Harlem Renaissance with the common recurrence of black woman empowerment. In the novel, Hurston reflects the ideas of the Harlem renaissance with the ways in which Janie rebels and goes against norms for women.

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1719 Words | 7 Pages

The horizon, the undefinable point at which the sea appears to meet the sky, features rolling waves gently kissing soft, wispy clouds. Each individual defines the exact point of the horizon for himself, and this point changes indefinitely from whichever shore, or perspective, the person views it from. Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie views her horizon, or ultimate objectives, from a myriad of viewpoints, and finally “pull[ed] in her horizon like a great fish-net,” and defined her individuality as a woman who rejects living passively and harnesses life’s opportunities. Initially, Hurston defines a woman as a watcher of ships and dreams on a horizon, and a realist on the shores of life. She writes “[for

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