Marriage is not what most people imagine, love is not perfect and neither is a relationship. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston portrays the the story of a young African-American girl named Janie who is married off to someone she does not love. Yearning for true feeling, Janie runs away and remarries to a promising rich man, only to discover that there is once again a lack of love. After almost twenty years of enduring, Janie’s second husband passes away, and by…
were oppressed, objectified, and subjugated to the patriarchal norms of society. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the typical struggles women faced, and the abuses they endured, are brought to life through the flashback of the protagonist, Janie Crawford, a beautiful, young African American woman. In Janie’s early life, her most important relationship is with her grandmother, Nanny (Hurston 10). In the novel, Nanny plays the role of a patriarchal woman (28). Due to…
Their Eyes Were Watching God, author Zora Neale Hurston incorporates the figurative presence of a horizon in her framing of the plot’s beginning in end, as well as the personal development that protagonist Janie Mae Crawford experiences in the form of a journey of self-realization. The concept of a horizon is critical to the work in two aspects. First, it serves as a metaphor to exemplify the distance separating Janie from the genuine happiness she seeks, which Hurston presents at the beginning…
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God details the life story of Janie Crawford, a woman of mixed African American and white lineage in the early 20th century Florida. Raised by her former slave grandmother, Janie struggles to find true love and independence as she progresses through her life. After multiple marriages and relationships, Janie changes over the course of the novel from romantic and disillusioned to independent, thus illustrating the novel’s theme of trying to find…
Independent Women Zora Neale Hurston, one of the leaders of Harlem Renaissance, influenced a lot of women in the late 1930s by writing Their Eyes Were Watching God. In traditional perspective, it had been a common thought that women need men to live and are only about who they end up with. However, Hurston encouraged many women to raise their voice by letting them know that women and romance do not always go together. The novel demonstrates how modernism has built the new structure of women’s…
successful birth of black excellence in a society that crushed any evidence of black people transcending “barbarity”. Just as this renaissance was in decline, one of the most pivotal literary works materialized. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, depicts a woman searching for enlightenment and self-acceptance through in an erratic and unruly world. Themes from the Harlem Renaissance of trying to persevere in an oppressive society correlates to how it is difficult for…
In the novel Their eyes were watching god by Zora Neale Hurston the story of a woman Janie is told from her narrative of how her self journey to happiness and mental freedom is unfolded. The main character of the novel goes through about 3 relationships with 3 different men. But these relationships can be viewed as just a women trying to find the right man and finally get love right. There’s more to these relationships and the events that take place in between all three relationships. Each and…
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Janie Mae Crawford is a woman who is trying to find true love, nevertheless she is having difficulty finding her own identity. It takes her three marriages to find her identity and true love. Each marriage was a part of Janie’s journey to define herself. Janie realizes that she has developed into a strong woman, after each marriage helped shape her into the woman she hoped to be. All Janie wants is to find inner peace with herself and…
Janie’s Experience In the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie explains to Phoeby about how experiencing something and being told something are two different factors. By simply explaining to someone, they would not fully understand the pain, emotion, or the way that experiences can change a life. By experiencing something good or bad, it can teach people lessons in life and also help others to either avoid the pain, or enjoy the excitement. So, the three marriages…
In Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is portrayed as a woman wishing to find her own kind of freedom and wants the perfect man in her life to help achieve that goal. When her grandmother arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, Janie respects her grandmother’s wishes and leaves with Logan. In Janie’s grandmother’s eyes, she is doing the right thing by marrying Janie to Logan; he is a man of respect and owns plenty of land, and after he passes away, Janie will inherit…