Zora Neale Hurston Transformation

Zora Neale Hurston’s Southern love story, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is a beautiful novel filled to the brim with culture, introspection, and redemption. With use of Southern diction, Hurston describes the transformation of Janie Crawford as she goes through hardships of her three marriages to find her true self and real love. The 1937 classic itself is a reflection of actual events that happened in Hurston’s life where Janie mirrors many strong aspects of her character. A close reading of the text reveals what Janie has to go through, not only as a woman, but an African American, to find her singular path to self-revelation and enlightenment. Even though published at the end of the period, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is considered to be part …show more content…
Janie, however was full of dreams of love as sweet as a pear from a freshly picked tree in the warm months of summer, but this dream was eventually shattered by her grandmother who could not perceive Janie’s needs because of her own blinding goal of securing Janie a middle-class life. Her very first dream was “ridiculed by Time” and so Janie becomes a woman facing a repeating cycle of which she is confined by those around her. In retrospect, the trunk of the tree of life represents the strength that Janie obtains through her three marriages; the first was with Logan Killicks, the second was with Joe Starks, and the final was with Tea Cake, her true love. Logan Killicks, an older man secured by 60 acres of land, wanted to turn Janie into a workhorse and did not actually care for her individuality, but what she could do for him. This is very much like how Nanny, despite her unmistakable love, had used Janie to succeed her own goal and overlooked Janie’s