Character Analysis: Their Eyes Watching God By Zora Hurston

Improved Essays
“The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream.”- Cornelia Funke. In literature the story Their Eyes Watching God by Zora Hurston is a perfect display of love, heartache, and cruelty. This story showcases the prominent character Janie. As the cruelty of the world spirals around Janie involving her love life is shown throughout. As the story unfolds through Janie's recollection you see how the world's cruelty reveals Janie's inner strength. Cruelty forces Janie to rely on faith and the strength that she never knew she had and shape her into the person that she was meant to be.

Janie begins to recall the how the cruelty the world propelled at her starting at when she was a child. Janie grew up without her mother or father.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston broke up with the love of her life, a charming man 25-years younger than her, she ended the relationship to continuing living her life on her own uncompromising terms. The same year she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. The story of Janie Crawford, a black deep-thinking, deep-feeling black woman, who is in search for her own self. In Janie´s life, we can find many similarities to Hurston´s own life. Hurston, born in 1891, was the child of ex-slaves who were liberated after The American Civil War.…

    • 736 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Janie did not know her parents so she was raised by her grandmother. Due to her grandmother working with white people, Janie was raised alongside white children for most of her childhood. When she was sixteen her grandmother woke from a nap to find Janie kissing a guy named Johnny Taylor. It was there that her grandmother…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The selected passage is from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God which was published in 1937. The passage describes the struggles of Tea Cake, Motor Boat, Janie, and other unidentified characters as they attempt to escape from a violent and terrifying hurricane. The purpose of the passage is to emphasize the power and strength of the hurricane in comparison to the helplessness of the people. The use of structure and personification emphasizes the power of the storm, while the use of dialogue stresses the powerlessness of the people who are are witnessing the storm.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nanny, Janie's grandmother restrained her decisions to who she wanted to get married to. Janie did not have a choice and had to marry Logan Kellicks her first of her husbands. "She knew now that marriage did not make love Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman". (Ch ) 3 Janie was controlled by all the men in her life, however with her courageous personality she was able to stand up for her life.…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Janie is very saddened by her memories, especially of Tea Cake and what happened to him. In this quote, “...out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing”(Hurston 183), Hurston uses diction and personification to describe how memories can send illusions and create emotions in a person’s mind. Janie’s memories are depicted as having voices, able to "sing," "sob and sigh."…

    • 362 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    We also recognize that Janie’s willingness to even provide the exterior life demanded by others is slowly coming to an end. This becomes apparent during a conversation between Janie and Phoeby regarding the attitude Janie should be displaying as a mourning wife. In response to Phoeby telling her she should act more upset in front of the townspeople, Janie says: Let 'em say whut dey wants tuh, Phoeby. To my thinking mourning oughtn 't tuh last no longer than grief" (93). Thus during the transition between Joe and her next husband, Janie emerges as a new woman, ready to dictate which life she lives.…

    • 1919 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    ‘Things are easier said than done’ is an extremely cliche term that could not hold more symbolism in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel follows the journey of Janie through her various struggles and relationships. Janie, although highly obsessed with falling in love, is an individualist who is not afraid of showing the world who she really is. Throughout Their Eyes Are Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston creates an enriched and in depth story of a great, strong woman who is able to find herself while enduring the cruel ridicule of the superior male.…

    • 1322 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand” (Karl Marks). This quote explains how society is connected, how people are bound together by everyone else. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, which takes place takes place in the south, the characters explore the relations that connect society and along the way discover that some of their individuality is not accepted by societal standards. In Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God the characters responses to social standards support the authors’ purpose by revealing a society built on alienation, hidden motives, and hollow values.…

    • 1045 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As an author of the time in being, was a time many writers wrote about their opinions or ideas into their stories about the society. In the story of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, is trying to find herself as one whole person and what she truly wants to be. She is awaking as a women but stumbles over the men that try to silence her. When she was young she married a man named Logan Killicks, who treats her poorly as if she was a mule. Soon she leaves Killicks and runs away with a man named Jody (Joe) Starks.…

    • 1406 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    True Love

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages

    People’s personal experiences often shape how they see the world. This can be said for people’s views of love and what love is to them. In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie looks for her love and what true love is to her ever since she first got married. As Janie lives her life, she experiences marriage with three men, each of them she initially believes she loves.…

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Character development in literature can be extremely well illustrated through literary techniques. One novel in particular, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, is written in such a way that literary devices accomplish this purpose. Because of her use of various literary techniques, Hurston is able to develop Janie as a character and free her from the judgement that she experiences throughout the novel. The novel opens with the conclusion of Janie’s struggles.…

    • 1563 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout Janie’s life, she attempts to find love through three…

    • 1373 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Throughout their relationship, she is continuously oppressed and controlled by Joe which confuses Janie into believing that this is how love is supposed to be. When Jody finally dies, Janie is liberated from his oppression and finally feels free. It is because of this relationship that Janie feels the biggest need for independence and spending time finding herself instead of worrying about making others happy or finding “love” as she did before. The relationships in Janie’s life have, undoubtedly, shaped her character over the course of the novel, and contributed to the overall theme of Janie’s journey, which is finding her independence and…

    • 1242 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Response Paper #2: Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston is considered by some as a woman little worth noting and by others, as one of the most influential writers in the Harlem Renaissance era. Her whimsical and fictional novels have touched many readers and explore themes such as racism, sexism, poverty, and empowerment. In Norton’s Anthology of African American Literature, Hurston’s background sets up for her later success as an author and for the excerpt of “How it Feels to be Colored Me”. Zora grew up in an “all-colored” town called Eatonville, Florida where her father was the mayor.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston revolves around one woman, Janie, on her journey to self-discovery. Janie loses herself amidst the chaos that is society and must struggle through difficult circumstances and through many long years before she finds what she is looking for. Janie is not only searching for herself, she is on that universal quest all people must make in order to understand life. She says, “Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves”(Hurston 192).…

    • 2245 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays