Argumentative Essay on "Their Eyes Are Watching God"

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Recommended: Their eyes were watching God critical analysis

The novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston clearly is a great book. In the book a young woman named Janie who was raised and married off by her grandmother. At first, all Janie knows of marriage and love is what her grandmother tells her which is that the only thing that is important is if he has land. As Janie goes on her journey of her life and re-marries, she finds that everybody in the town (and in general) has their own belief towards the role of their spouses in marriage. The reader notices Janie struggle in finding herself and over time Janie begins to develop her own ideas and ideals. In Their Eyes Were Watching God each character has their own beliefs towards marriage which in turn develops a viewpoint of how marriage should be and what it shouldn’t be. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (Hurston) explores this marriage issue by showing Janie’s failing love endeavors, showing her real true love, and the after-effects of losing someone dear.
First, Janie’s failing love endeavors with her first two husbands. The first ideas about love that Janie was exposed to was those of her grandmother, Nanny. Her grandmother saw that Janie was entering womanhood and she didn't want Janie to experience what her mother went through (getting pregnant without being married). So Nanny went out to marry her as soon as she can. When Janie asked about love, Nanny told her that marriage makes love and she will find love after she marries Logan which was the old man that has been interested in Janie for a long time. Nanny believed that love was second to security and stability.

Only after those first two criteria were satisfied then one person could experience love. Her grandmother felt that Janie was too young to make...

... middle of paper ...

... learning process and we must take the bad with the good.

Works Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1937. Print.
Johnson, Maria V. "The World in a Jug and the Stopper in (Her) Hand": 'Their Eyes' as Blues Performance. African American Review, Vol. 32, No. 3. Fall 1998 St. Louis: African American Review, 1967. Print.
Bernard, Patrick S. "The Cognitive Construction of the Self in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.2 Print.
Bloom Harold. Modern Critical Views: Zora Neale Hurston. by Harold Bloom; Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes were Watching God. Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 4 (winter, 1989), pp. 799-807 St. Louis: St. Louis University, 1989. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904103

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