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.…
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.…
Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a novel about a woman, Janie, who is searching for her independence. Her Nanny, grandmother, stole her independence by sending her off to marrying Logan Killicks. Joe Starks also took her independence by making her work in a store. Hurston uses the image of Janie’s hair that independence is found when one is no longer controlled by others. when Janie was living with her Nanny, her Nanny would always put her hair in a braids.…
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, struggles between two identities, her exterior life, a life drawn from the white world foisted upon her, and her interior life, a more vigorous free black woman, this being the one she tries to forge for herself throughout the novel. The relationship that Janie has with her Nanny ultimately set’s the stage for the conflict regarding her interior and exterior life. In addition to Nanny, her first two husbands Logan and Joe act as the sole cause that separates Janie’s interior and exterior lives while Janie’s third and final husband, Tea Cake, is what causes her to begin the reconciliation of the conflict regarding these two lives. As the novel begins we come…
Zora Hurston, on the other hand, spoke and wrote and thrived on the good things, the success, the peacefulness of the black experience. In her book, "Their Eyes Where Watching God.", this was clear. She wrote of the drama between black people. How the…
‘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.…
Their Eyes Were Watching God In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston the main character, Janie, struggles with finding her true self. When reading this book I came to realize how different the world is today in comparison to 1937 when the book was published. I took away the meaningful lesson that was taught throughout the book to follow my dreams and never settle for less than you are worth.…
She grew up in a black community in Eatonville, Florida. But as she turned thirteen years old, she moved to a new school located in Jacksonville, where it was predominantly white. That was when Hurston admitted, "I was not Zora of…
A women who was yet any other ordinary women, Zora Neale Hurston, made a difference throughout the world. Hurston was born January 7, 1891 in Notusulg, Alabama. Shortly after she was born, she moved to a small town called Eatonville, which was the town she explains in the story. Many of the people she knew growing up were similar to the people she characterized in the story of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Eatonville was home to her because the black people could live there as they pleased.…
Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an African-American Alabama native born in 1891, a daughter of two slaves (Biography.com). She lived when slavery was still prominent in colonial America, and she gathered many of her ideas from her own experiences growing up- who would later become a writer and anthropologist who fixtured her work on the Harlem Renaissance in the 1900s (Biography.com) Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston there is a misconception amongst male and female characters that affect their everyday lives through the cult of domesticity. At the beginning of the novel, there is a moment of insight into how the social hierarchy works, starting from the Anglo-Saxon male all the…
Although critics such as Richard Wright claim that Hurston uses “minstrel technique that makes 'the white folks ' laugh”, Hurston actually showcases the strength of African Americans in the most realistic way possible. For example, in the beginning of the novel the exchange between Janie and her Nannie shows the progression of African American women and the importance of family in African American culture. Hurston writes, “De woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you”(17). Janie’s Nannie recounts her stories about the racial oppression she faced and wants Janie to be different and have a different life.…
Hurston lived in Eatonville, Florida which was primarily made up of African Americans (1109). She did not know a lot about segregation and how it affected people of color due to the fact that her main contact with white people were when they passed through the town (1109). Hurston says that when she left her town she "was not Zora of Orange County anymore she was now a little colored girl" (1110). It did not matter who she was, any assumption was entirely based on her race. Racial segregation shaped American culture and still does so today.…
Hurston reveals that she once went to a Jazz performance with a white person. While she could deeply feel the music and even imagined herself as a warrior, the white person was just casually wowed by the experience. (1042) Zora was curious as to why she could feel so intensely when others could not—the biography suggests that she received this quality from the number of fairytales told to her as a child and the freedom it allowed her imagination. Having read Their Eyes were Watching God myself, I can now better understand that the plot was to be read with little realism.…
Zora Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama. This is where her father originally grew up as well as her grandfather. At the age of three is when her and her family had moved to Eatonville , Florida; this is one of the first all African American towns where Zora really felt at home. In fact her father was elected mayor in 1897 and he also was a preacher at Macedonia missionary baptist. Zora felt she could have independence of white society here.…
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).…