Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston: Literary Analysis

Their Eyes Were Watching God book is written by Zora Neale Hurston, a respected African American author in the later 1900s. The setting is an African American community during that time period, specifically about a young woman named Janie. Janie is an independent woman, who found that she wasn’t happy with how women in general were treated, as well as the reasons many people founded their relationships. She always valued love, and throughout her life, she found that marriage wasn’t all that made it. Hurston’s writing was mainly for entertainment, not a motivational writer, but she had a major influence on how the African American community was viewed. An important theme throughout the book is Janie’s search for both self-awareness and identity. As she goes through three marriages, she will begin to discover who she really is, and what it is that she wants. Janie’s first marriage …show more content…
This marriage was arranged by her grandmother, and Janie found that she wasn’t happy with it. When she was younger, Janie believed that a marriage could make love. Her ideals were to have a happy, exciting marriage. She compares her first ideals to “A dust-bearing bee sink in the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to the tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight” (p. 11). She had a fairytale, and was excited to discover what womanhood would be like. However, Logan was an older man, who she found she wasn’t attracted to. Her grandmother arranged the marriage because she didn’t want to worry about Janie, and just wanted to be at peace knowing that Janie would be well-off and tied down. She holds Janie as she cries, telling her “Ah don’t want yo’ feathers always crumpled by folks