Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay

The Experience and the Withdrawal from the Harlem Renaissance Life is compiled of time intervals of change that move people with each passing moment. Literature is the mirror that reflects the culture of the time, including people’s opinions and behaviors, giving modern day people perspective of how life was like in that given time era. In the iconic literature novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston takes us through the life of Janie Crawford, a black woman in the early 1900’s, and her journey for love and identity through three different marriages. Janie experiences the influence slavery still has on the Black community even after slavery was abolished, and also the re-emergence of racial stereotypes, rendering Zora Neale

One important aspect of the Renaissance was music. Jazz and Blues were introduced and embraced by the African American culture as part of their identity. “The term "Jazz Age" was used by many who saw African American music, especially the blues and jazz, as the defining features of the Renaissance”, and these new types of music “emerged out of the African American experience around the turn of the century in southern towns and cities, like New Orleans, Memphis, and St. Louis” (Wintz), and proceeded to spread throughout the entire country. The embracing of Jazz and Blues provided African Americans with a newfound sense of identity, which was promoted by the majority of the country, to help construct their culture. During the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans sought many ways to create their own identity to replace what slavery had previously labeled them

After a huge flood had occurred in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie and her third husband, Tea Cake, were desperate for the needs to survive, and part of that is the necessity of work, but some of the people near where Janie and Tea Cake ended up after the flood/storm, had different ideas of what they should be doing. “‘Hello, there, Jim,’ the tallest one called out. ‘We been lookin’ fuh you’ … ‘Dat’s whut we want yuh fuh-not doin’ nothin’. Come on less go bury some uh dese heah dead folks”(Hurston 169-170). A fair few of white citizens still believed that they were racially ‘superior’ to African Americans, which resulted in them forcing African Americans to do as they said, and work under their care and watch, despite the new freedoms that had been given to them. Slavery still continued to shape the new lives of African Americans as a result of their previous occupations, which appears in Zora Neale Hurston’s writing. “Land and labor were an important theme used in Hurston’s work. African Americans have had a strong connection to the land that they live on because of their past as slave workers and sharecroppers”(Project Mosaic). The work that they did as slaves was very similar to the work they did once they achieved their freedom.