In Zora Neal Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie went through a series of metaphorical stages that transformed the way she viewed life; her journey towards independence required her to depart from Logan, battle for her voice with Jody, and finally to achieve individuality with Teacake. Throughout Janie and Jody’s relationship, Janie was constantly silenced by Jody’s dominating personality. Jody treats Janie as if she were an animal that has no mind. For example, Jody silenced Janie by saying “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’.…
CH 9 Commentary on Their Eyes Were Watching God Through the use of a callous yet optimistic tone, simile, descriptive imagery, and a stream of consciousness style, the speaker reveals her deep emotional feelings of repression, her place in society, and ultimately, her realization of a free will. First, Hurston has the speaker reflect on Joe's death and how she is confused on how to react to the death in front of other people. The author shows the struggle the speaker faces over how she is obliged to feel and how she truly feels about the death her tone here suggests that she is indifferent to the death and that she is hopeful about the future. Next, using a stream of consciousness narration, Hurston switches the focus of the speaker's…
Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Namesake - Compare and Contrast Essay Experiences and overcoming conflicts can either help one achieve self realization or hinder their view of himself. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, both Janie and Gogol Ganguli struggle to find their true identity due to a lack of support from their relationships, societal discrimination and negative experiences. Ultimately, both Janie and Gogol are able to overcome these obstacles through determination which helps them achieve self-realization.…
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…
Are men inherently bad? Zora Neale Hurston seems to claim that they are, through her negative depiction of men in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The book narrates the main character, Janie’s early childhood as well as her three marriages. Before her first marriage, the book describes Janie’s early life, talking about her relationship with her grandmother, who decides Janie will marry Logan Killicks, a wealthy man with a farm who can provide Janie with financial security. At first, their marriage goes well, but eventually, Logan begins to treat Janie less like a wife and more like a servant, forcing her to do manual labor.…
In the novel Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston it becomes immediately clear that although the author’s intent was to write a novel supporting the Harlem Renaissance, she was unable to do so without further enforcing stereotypes, and portraying African American’s in an offensive way. Her novel proves to be further damaging to the already negative view of African Americans from white people, and is used as a novel for white people at that time to justify their feelings of superiority. In source A it is evident that Hurston attempts to benefit the Harlem Renaissance by writing her novel, but fails to do so. This novel is unable to help African Americans break away from their negative stereotypes because Hurston further perpetuates…
In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the life of a southern black woman, Janie Crawford whose three marriages of domineering control of men make her acknowledge her independence and self-satisfaction as an African-American woman. Set in the early 1900s, Hurston reveals the dominant role of men in southern society and one woman’s journey toward finding herself and God. Summary: Janie Crawford is a southern African-American woman who grows up under the care of her grandmother.…
There are many motifs in the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston. One motif is the community. Community plays a vast role in the story, as Janie is exposed to new communities in her life. In this essay, I will be writing about one of the motifs in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” First of all, one motif that is related to community in the dark of opening book is the community where she lived with the Washburns, when she was a child.…
Darnell Martin is the director of the film and Zora Neale Hurston is the author of the book Their eyes were watching God. Each portray Janie in many different likes to fit the setting of their own time. This article will do a comparison and contrasted between both the director, author, and the charter Janie. Love, female pride, and social view are a few of the many points that both the director and the author are hitting on but with their own twist. Love through Janie in theory is suppose to come off as a sweet blessed of innocents.…
A select few of pieces of literature like to start off with having a mysterious character -- or characters -- in order to reveal their past and the meaning of the book. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston does exactly this with the main character, Janie who’s origin is unknown from the start. As we learn more about how she’s treated at the beginning before the flashbacks, how her Grandmother affected her view on love, and Janie’s relationships, we learn more about Hurston's message about love and how everyone should have a freedom to express it. The freedom to express love are shown at the start of the book when a lady known as Janie walks home having been mourning.…
SUMMER NOVEL LANGUAGE ANALYSIS Love. The maker and destroyer of life. However, the question that rises in one’s mind is how do they find this beautifully tragic emotion? Do they just wait for Prince Charming to come and love them away into the glowing sunset? Do they make it their only goal in life and pledge to follow it through thick and thin and through rain and shine?…
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.…
Though a person may strive for individuality as well as relationships, the constraints that come with the love may act as a fetter causing the other to lose themselves. The 1991 poem “A Woman is Not a Potted Plant” by Alice Walker and the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston both involve a woman wanting to be loved and free while struggling to find a balance between the two. Since autonomy and constraint conflict, Janie struggles to find herself under Nanny’s authority; her relationships end due to her husband’s insecurities; consequently, her love for Tea Cake makes her reliant on him. Janie, the novel's main character, begins discovering her individuality and sexuality at a young age but is shut down by her grandmother,…
Oftentimes, the best way to appreciate a culture or a tradition is to portray it in the most realistic way possible. In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston writes about the journey of a woman who is trying to find herself in the world. Since the book has been published, it has received criticism for portraying African Americans and their traditions in an unfavorable way. Although it seems that Zora Neale Hurston oversimplifies the lives of African Americans in Their Eyes Were Watching God, the realism seen in her writing actually celebrates African American traditions. Hurston’s specific use of language and her illustrative descriptions of the characters in the novel create the most realistic image of African Americans…
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, tells the story of a woman named Janie Crawford as she lives and grows throughout her life and marriages in Florida. Janie is a young woman around 16 who is being raised by her grandmother, Nanny, who is a former slave. Because of this fact, Nanny values financial security and respectability over anything else, and so she sees fit to marry Janie to a much older, ugly man named Logan Killicks. This newfound leap into womanhood at such a young age begins the real development of Janie’s character in the novel.…