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What are their eyes watching god about by zora neale hurston
What are their eyes watching god about by zora neale hurston
What are their eyes watching god about by zora neale hurston
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One great author once said, “Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much”(Zora Neal Hurston). That same quote relates to Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston were a woman trying to find that love that really satisfies her needs. Throughout her three relationships the reader can see her mind is developing into a woman. Her three relationships make her realize what she actually looks for in love, Yet she struggles to find that one person that gives her love a she imagines, she later finds that love she envisions with Tea Cake.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston the protagonist of the story struggles with finding that
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true love she envisions and with those struggles she develops more into a women because she learns from her marriages. The protagonist had a forced first marriage to a man named Logan Killicks. She was just a teenager at the time and her grandmother married her off as soon as she saw her kissing man. At first she disliked the choice but she thought that with marriage comes love. The author writes, “Finally out of her nanny’s talk and her own conjectures she made a sort of comfort for herself. Yes, she would love Logan after they were married”(Hurston 21). Later when she learns that Logan controls her and only lets her works and stay in the house she wants to become more equal and independent. The book notes, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman”(Hurston 25). That person destroying her dream was Logan, the dream of the pear tree and how it blossoms. When realizing that marriage does not necessarily equal love, and from this understanding, she matures into a woman and runs off with Joe Starks, the new man she falls in love with. As Zora Neal Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God goes on Janie making her own choices makes her develop more into a women. Yet this relationship is as bad and a failure but she doesn’t know. So Janie runs off with her new man, Joe Starks. She thinks she is in love because of his smooth talk about how a woman should be treated with respect. Joe and Janie run off to Eatonville, a newly built town, to buy land. Joe wants her to run a store in the all black town. Joe does not represent the marriage that Janie wants, the kind that feels like what it’s like to be under a pear tree, but the way he treats Janie and the lifestyle they have has changed: “Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance" (29). Joe becomes mayor of Eatonville and Janie is now Mrs. Mayor. Joe gives her freedom for a while until he starts to notice the way people look at her and when a man touches her hair. That’s why she ties her hair up from then on out. Some people really worry on how she is being treated because they notice because the quietness, and doesn’t want anyone looking at her. As the mayors wife Joe wants her to look better than the other woman in the town. He starts to spend tons of money on her but it doesn’t satisfy her. Janie feels like Joe is holding her down “She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels” (76). Janie starts to ignore her emotions and listening to Jody and dealing with arrogant attitude. One day she tries to run away but thinks she has grown unattractive and doubts she would be able to find anyone else. The lack of interest allows her to accept a life she has grown to hate. She loses her voice and is now controlled by Joe. Which is kind of how she felt with Logan. Later Joe dies from Kidney Failure and before she speaks up and tells Joe her actual feelings about their relationship. After his death Janie feels free. She loves that. Then she meets Tea Cake, ore Vergible Woods. She kind of gets smooth talked like Joe and as a result falls in love with him. Janie’s last relationship with Tea Cake is where she finds her actual love she envisions.
She really has grown as a woman. Janie enjoys how Tea Cake treats her. He creates small talk, lets her be her self, and is treated like another man. Janie loves it: “It was so crazy digging worms by lamp light and setting out for Lake Sabelia after midnight that she felt like a child breaking rules. That's what made Janie like it." (102). Janie is finally happy with her relationship. She is free with Tea Cake. So free they did stuff together like hunting, fishing, and movies, play card games, etc. Janie also gets new things from Tea Cake like a blue satin dress, earrings, high heels, and a necklace for her to marry him in. This time the gifts make her happy unlike Joe’s gifts. She is in love. Janie could now do what she wants. Leaving her old life in Eatonville to live in the “The Muck” with Tea Cake. While living that boring life in Eatonville she couldn’t do a lot of things like in the Everglades. The author writes "He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God" (106). She is finally in love and her dream is true. People were jealous of their relationship. Even though her relationship was good she had to kill Tea Cake after her get bit by a rabid dog during a hurricane. Only because he tried to kill her because he got angry easily. Although living in love the only thing that took that love away was
sickness.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or otherwise.
If Ah ever gits tuh messin’ round another woman it won’t be on account of her age. It’ll be because she got me in de same way you got me—so Ah can’t help mahself." Tea Cake professes his love to Janie by saying that she is the only woman he thought of marrying. Tea Cake knows that he will be loyal to Janie, but can not control other women's urges to flirt with him. When Tea Cake tells Janie that he is the man in her life he says:"You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t fuh me, baby, cause Ah’m heah, and then Ah want yuh tuh know it’s uh man heah." (Ch.18). Tea Cake wants Janie to know that he is nothing like her other husbands, but is perfect for her. Tea Cake is essentially perfect for Janie because he helped her accomplish her her ultimate dream of love. Janie and Tea Cake’s marriage is the key to a good marriage because they treat each other with equality and
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells about the life of Janie Crawford. Janie’s mother, who suffers a tragic moment in her life, resulting in a mental breakdown, is left for her grandmother to take care of her. Throughout Janie’s life, she comes across several different men, all of which end in a horrible way. All the men that Janie married had a different perception of marriage. After the third husband, Janie finally returns to her home. It is at a belief that Janie is seeking someone who she can truly love, and not someone her grandmother chooses for her. Although Janie eventually lives a humble life, Janie’s quest is questionable.
Zora Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” depicts the journey of a young woman named Janie Crawford’s journey to finding real love. Her life begins with a romantic and ideal view on love. After Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, soon grows fearful of Janie’s newfound sexuality and quickly marries Janie off to Logan Killicks, an older land owner with his own farm. Janie quickly grows tired of Logan and how he works her like a slave instead of treating her as a wife and runs away with Joe Starks. Joe is older than Janie but younger than Logan and sweet talks Janie into marring him and soon Joe becomes the mayor of an all African American town called Eatonville. Soon Joe begins to force Janie to hide not only her
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston centers around the life of Janie Crawford, an African American young woman, who is seeking ‘the horizon’ comprised of ideal living, experiences, and authentic love. After having two failed marriages, Janie meets Tea Cake, a suave, charming younger man who truly loves Janie. By exposing Janie to the world, and providing her with experiences and memories, Tea Cake directs her to the ‘horizon,’ where she can lead a fulfilling life. The selected passage begins as Janie concludes sharing her story with Phoeby. The flashback comes to its end, and the setting returns to Eatonville, Florida. I selected this passage because it reveals the great impact that Tea Cake has had on shaping Janie’s life.
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is written by Zora Neale Hurston in the year of 1937. In the novel, the main character is Janie Crawford. Janie has been treated differently by others during her life because of how she was raised and the choices she has made throughout her life. The community is quick to judge her actions and listen to any gossip about Janie in the town. Janie is known to be “classed off” from other members in her community in various ways. “Classed off” means to be separate or isolated from other people.
In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author takes you on the journey of a woman, Janie, and her search for love, independence, and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit seems to constantly be disregarded, yet Janie continues to hold on to the potential of grasping all that she desires. In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Hurston illustrates the ambiguity of Janie’s voice; the submissiveness of her silence and the independence she reclaims when regaining her voice. The reclaiming of Janie's independence, in the novel, correlates with the development and maturation Janie undergoes during her self discovery.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Lora Neale Hurston, the main character engages in three marriages that lead her towards a development of self. Through each endeavor, Janie learns the truths of life, love, and the path to finding her identity. Though suppressed because of her race and gender, Janie has a strong will to live her life the way she wills. But throughout her life, she encounters many people who attempt to change the way that she is and her beliefs. Each marriage that she undertakes, she finds a new realization and is on a never-ending quest to find her identity and true love. Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each help Janie progress to womanhood and find her identity.
When thinking about the novels that are read in high school, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby come to mind for most people. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston usually is not thought of. Throughout the years, critics believed Hurston’s novel to be just fiction and that it pose no meaning. In spite of the novel not having much politics, it does contain many social issues from the past that are still somewhat relevant today. Above all, Their Eyes Were Watching God deals with the way people are unequally treated in society based on their gender, race, or anything that makes them diverse from others. It is probable that Hurston brings up the controversial issues of her time era in the hope to cause a transformation in the world.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people” (85). Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities that “represent increasingly wide circles of experience and opportunities for expression of personal choice” (Crabtree). Their Eyes Were Watching God is an important fiction piece that explores relations throughout black communities and families. It also examines different issues such as, gender and class and these issues bring forth the theme of voice. In Janie’s attempt to find herself, she grows into a stronger woman through three marriages.
Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God follows a black woman trying to find true love while hindered by a variety of factors: nature, class differences and men, who oppress her the most. In fact, the main character, Janie, had two husbands which mistreated her. As an exception, Tea Cake, her third husband, helps Janie to accomplish inner peace and allows her to flourish into her own character. However, Janie would not have found Tea Cake had she not realized her life’s intent under her Grandmother’s pear tree and chased that dream. It is when Janie realizes her dream under the pear tree where Hurston establishes that self-revelation is reached only by chasing dreams.
In Zora Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie Crawford was an attractive, confident, middle-aged black woman. Janie defied gender stereotypes and realized others cruelty toward her throughout the novel. Behind her defiance was curiosity and confidence that drove her to experience the world and become conscious of her relation to it. Janie’s idealized definition of love stemmed from her experience under a pear tree, an experience that was highly romanticized and glamorized in her sixteen year old eyes. Janie’s ability to free herself from the confining, understood, stereotypical roles enforced upon her allowed her to not only find true love but define true love as well.
It is difficult for humans to allow life to flow without being proactive. This is especially true when it comes to love. One may try very hard to try to resist the attraction that they may feel to avoid the potential hurt that may result from being in love. In contrast, others may seek love and never find it. In the two novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston and The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid the characters demonstrate that although one may attempt to manipulate the circumstances in which love is attained, there is no way of predicting how love will manifest itself. The characters are put into situations that compromise their beliefs towards love, and in addition, they engage in a socially unacceptable relationships. The unpredictable nature of love can also be observed as one character resists the urge to be swept into the arms of love whereas the other is vigorously searching for it.
Zora Neale Hurston once said, “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.” In post-slavery African American society, this statement was unusual, as society was focused on materialistic values. The “veil” Hurston mentions is a lens used to sift through one’s beliefs; to help one understand that what they have is more important than what they don’t. Hurston alludes the veil in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in the form of a fish-net, saying “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it in from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders" (193). Just like the veil, the “fish-net” allows one to sift through one’s beliefs, deciding what is important and what is not. Essentially, Hurston