Their Eyes Were Watching God Essays

Literary Analysis First Draft The 1920s were an intriguing, yet oppressed time period that presented cultural movements and a major difference between the high and low end of the economic scale. These ideas were presented through cultures, politics, and american literature. To be specific, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston.

- Zora Neale Hurston, born January 7th, 1891, was an African-American author, widely known for her classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Being raised in Eatonville, Florida, the first black township of the United States, Hurston was indulged in black culture at a very early age. Zora was described to have a fiery, yet bubbly spirit, befriending very influential people, one being American poet, Langston Hughes. With heavy influence from her hometown, along with the achievement of the black women around her, an abundance of motivation came when Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel promotes black power, all while rejecting the stereotypes held against women.

Zora Neale Hurston 's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows Janie, a young mulatto, through her life journey of placement in regard to the men whom she married. Toni Morrison reflects on this placement in her essay Having It All?: "She had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself. " Each man whom Janie marries dictates her "place" in society, however negatively or positively, leaving her ultimately responsible for overcoming the male-domineering personality and for re-inventing herself: Janie 's first husband, Logan Killicks, identifies her as not having a place, and Janie 's second husband, Jody Starks, views her

As once stated by Italio Calvino, “You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” By what they behold, every city offers answers. However, that does not mean these answers are always accurate. Residing in South Florida, Eatonville and the Everglades contrast each other not only by the visual contents, but also the answers given to the self-actualizing questions of the protagonist, Janie Crawford. These answers, defining what the towns represent, utterly differ. Though commonly overlooked, these cities essentially contribute to Janie’s discovering of herself.

In “Their Eyes were Watching God”, Zora Neale Hurston takes the reader through Janie’s journey from her childhood to her marriages to Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake. During her marriages, Janie learns more about herself in each setting to reach self-realization. When Janie was a child living in West Florida she could be seen as being naive. While she was growing up she discovered that she wasn’t like the others. There was a picture that was taken of her and the Washburns’ grandchildren

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the long-lasting effects of slavery have taken a toll on Janie Crawford. Janie’s grandmother was raped by her master and had a child named Leafy. Leafy, although not born into slavery, endured a similar fate, which led her to run away, leaving her mother to raise her child, Janie. Janie’s appearance, showing strong European features, was both praised and shamed by society. This double standard was created by racism and was able to remain present due to segregation.

Jesus Muneton Mr. Ramirez English 3-AP 21 August 2015 Their Eyes Were Watching God Response A picture may be considered to be worth a thousand words, but an experience that one lives cannot be valued in words or in any other currency for that matter. Janie Crawford, the main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God, a fiction novel written by Zora Neale Hurston, expresses the belief that hearing or talking about a certain feature of life can in no way compare to actually experiencing that event. Furthermore, Janie adds to this belief in the novel’s foreword by claiming that, “Yo papa and yo mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh.”

Critical analysis article titled “Sex, Violence, and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Donald R. Marks dissected how organic and mechanistic ideology impact in the following areas of life: relationships, social, personal. The main character, Janie, has a romantic history with four men, each unfolding different experiences and lessons. Unfortunately, as two of the four men develop a controlling manner towards her during their relationships, all of Janie’s lovers sexually violate her. Defining what is disgusting and what is passion become blurry to the character due to her perception of each man. EVALUATE HOW

Picture this: It’s 1937, the Harlem Renaissance is in full swing, while walking down the street in Harlem, one could hear the jazzy music of Louis Armstrong rolling across the streets. It was a time of new ideas, music, art, and literature. All of these radical changes to society, led to tremors that rocked the world in the coming decades. One such of these was the Civil Rights Movement, an effort to raise up the African-American man and all races to be equals. Along with men, women would be elevated.

In the book Their eyes were watching god, Janie 's goal in life is to find true love. Hurston defined Janie 's hopes and dreams in the beginning chapters of the book. Janie was watching a bee pollinate a flower and that is when she comes to the conclusion, that this is love. True love is what Janie seeks for in her life. Throughout her journey for true love, Janie has overcame many obstacles.

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

The question of love is a complicated one. One that Janie thought she had the answer too. She thought the answer to her troubles of finding love was to just marry someone. She later found out that this wasn’t the case from her first two marriages. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” a pivotal point in the novel is when Janie marries Tea Cake.

Within societies, culture plays a huge role in shaping who a person becomes. What values they consent to and what would make them content and satisfied with life, otherwise said, happy. In a patriarchal racist community woman as a double minority suffer twice the burden of proving herself, defining her values, and finding what defines her. Some of these women choose to obey and submit and live life as given to them. Just a few stand up for themselves, speak up, fight toward their freedom and independence against all cultural norms and social constructions including race and patriarchy.

Marriage is usually perceived as a momentous event that finally unites man and wife as equals. However, in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, faces the contrary. Although her second husband, Jody, treated her as an equal during the beginning of their relationship, she eventually is treated as a lesser part of their union as he asserts his dominance over her. After the death of Jody, Janie eventually found Tea Cake, who treated her fairly throughout their relationship, as shown through his natural willingness and patience to teach her how to play checkers. With their relationship, Janie experienced a marriage where she had the right to make her own decisions and express herself.

Julie A. Haurykiewicz addresses the symbol of the mule in Their Eyes Were Watching God by comparing it to the silencing of the main protagonist Janie Crawford. Attention is also brought to the idea of muliebrity or the state or condition of being a woman, throughout the article. Haurykiewicz recognizes that Janie is often unheard or silenced before demonstrating her points, and that during these acts, the mule is often present. The first time the mule is presented in the story is when Janie’s Grandmother states that “the black women is de mule uh de world.” Janie’s Grandmother has first handily experienced the oppressions of blacks before and after the Civil War.

Love, in its original meaning, is an unconditional action of putting someone else’s welfare before one’s own. As the world has grown older, mankind’s definition of love has been warped and has dwindled down to nothing more than a fickle feeling of affection and romantic attraction– into something conditional and usually very temporary. The idea of love has been reduced to an ideal of reciprocity; “love” has become self-serving instead of self-sacrificing. Unfortunately, love often dies because of one or another person’s selfishness and pride. Pride and love engage in war in every relationship and, unless love is in its true form (unconditional), pride strangles it.

In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston brings to light many themes such as gender roles and women’s rights. When the novel was published in September of 1937, it was not welcomed by society which was mainly due to the fact that most citizens of the United States were still very conservative and racist with their social views. With a country such as this, a literary work that rebels against society's ideals of segregation and minimal woman's rights was disrespected after its release. Like the quote above, many excerpts in the novel portray this theme of women’s rights through the use of various literary devices, such as analogies and symbolism. Zora Neale Hurston’s use of analogies in the way she describes both the male and female views on life is beautiful.

Janie the protagonist of the book Their Eyes Were Watching God is introduced as a forty-year-old harlot by the woman on the porch. “They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs” (pg 2). From this porch Janie’s best friend Pheoby comes in to save her rep, Pheoby refutes, saying “You mad ‘cause she didn’t stop and tell us all her business” (pg 3). From this friendship we see that Janie is not a harlot she is just the talk of the neighborhood; she describes it as “Mouth-Almighty … got me up in they mouth now” (pg 5) . She then replies to the gossipers saying “They don’t know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt” (pg 6).

Binish Iqbal Dr. Faiza Zaheer ENG-7201 1 July 2016 Identity is the most poignant and distressing theme in 20th century Afro American Novel. Justify. This does not come as a surprise to those, fairly acquainted with the mores of and motives behind the emergence of Afro American Novel, that it is well-informed and well-stocked with the historical struggles for identification on the part of Afro American community.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston it shows that there was a struggle for the main character Janie and how she was trying to find love but had different views on love through the 3 marriages she has already been through. Janie has been through a lot of things since she was first introduced in the novel as a teenager trying to find love and then suddenly her grandmother sets her up with a farmer ,Logan killicks that’s basically twice her age,When she married him he was treating her well for the first time until they started arguing and threaten to kill her for not obeying him. Then she leaves logan for an ambitious man joe starks and he takes jane to Eatonville where she lives a wonderful life as the wife of the mayor then finds out that he has a rigid definition of women while he refuses to hear others opinion and when joe gets older he puts everyone’s attention on jane because he says she acts to young for her age. With all the criticism going on from joe, jane finally cracks and lashes out on him insulting his manhood and crushing his pride and refuses to see janie on his deathbed so janie still goes to see joe and speaks her mind to him