Their Eyes Were Watching God is a captivating novel written by Zora Neale Hurston in which she depicts the life struggles of one Janie Crawford. Throughout her life she encounters many different opportunities and challenges. Some of these challenges are brought about by the men in her life. First she is with Logan Killicks, whom she only married for his financial stability. Then she ran off with Jody Starks who showed her a rich life of fun and running a business. However, once he died she runs off with a much younger man named Tea Cake. He shows her a new exciting, wonderful, and adventurous life in which she no longer cares what anyone thinks. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Tea Cake gets bit by a rabid dog and gets driven mad by the disease and eventually ends up dead in the process. Rabies is a disease that affects the brain not only in animals but in humans as well. By comparing the true effects of rabies and the novels description it will shed light to whether the portrayal is accurate or an elaborate dramatization to create a more suspenseful atmosphere.
Rabies is a deadly virus that occurs in the brain. It can affect all mammals but the ones that are most commonly found with the virus are dogs, bats, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes. This means that any non-mammal can not contract the virus, such as fish, birds, and reptiles (2). The virus can be contracted by humans with saliva transfer with broken skin contact from an animal which has the disease. As this is the most common form of transferring the disease it is very believable that Tea Cake contracts the virus from the wild dog that “managed to bite [him] high up on his cheek bone once” (1). The rabies virus works by being a bullet shaped virus that directly attacks th...
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...in the times she did this is one of the most accurate descriptions of the rabies virus and not all for dramatic tension and dramatization.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.
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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
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.
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.
Zora Hurston was an African American proto-feminist author who lived during a time when both African Americans and women were not treated equally. Hurston channeled her thirst for women’s dependence from men into her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of the many underlying themes in her book is feminism. Zora Hurston, the author of the book, uses Janie to represent aspects of feminism in her book as well as each relationship Janie had to represent her moving closer towards her independence.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses colloquial language to show readers exactly why Nanny raised her granddaughter, Janie Crawford, the way she did. When Janie is sixteen years old, her grandmother wants to marry her off. The teen pleads to her grandmother with claims of not knowing anything about having a husband. Nanny explains the reason she wants to see Janie married off is because she is getting old and fears once she dies, Janie will be lost and will lack protection. Janie’s mother was raped by a school teacher at the young age of seventeen, which is how Janie was brought into the world. Nanny has many regrets about the way her daughter’s life turned out after Janie was born. She resorted to
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
Janie sets out on a quest to make sense of inner questions. She does not sit back and
The late first lady Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it." Mrs. Roosevelt means that although one person may feel alone through the hardships one faces, one has millions beside oneself who can relate to and understand what one may feel. Zora Neale Hurston shows that even though Janie's family and spouses continue to be abusive and harsh toward Janie, their hate and control left her stronger than before, preparing her for the next challenges thrown at her. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the deaths' of close relatives and family positively affect Janie because she tends to become more educated and wiser with each death she overcomes in the obstacles she calls her life.
From the beginning of society, men and women have always been looked at as having different positions in life. Even in the modern advanced world we live in today, there are still many people who believe men and women should be looked at differently. In the work field, on average women are paid amounts lower than men who may be doing the exact same thing. Throughout the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston brings about controversy on a mans roles. Janie Crawford relationships with Logan, Joe and Tea Cake each bring out the mens feelings on masculine roles in marital life.
A “vaccine” or otherwise known as a vaccination, is something that stimulates someone’s immune system from a disease. Vaccines can prevent infections and actually cause it to not re-occur again. The invention of the Rabies, and Anthrax vaccines not only saved life’s, but helped scientist conduct and produce more accurate and successful research. Discovered by Louis Pasteur, in 1882, the innovation of the rabies vaccine was invented. Rabies is a critical and sometimes fatal infection that one could get with coming in contact with a “rabid” or wild animal. When this virus enters the body and spreads, it travels slowly through all the nerves and all the way to the brain. Once it reaches the brain, it becomes fatal. The number of deaths due to rabies worldwide each year is approximately 55,000. However, due to the invention of the rabies vaccine, the number of fatalities and illnesses decreased by a substantial amount.
Once the rabies disease shows symptoms on the victim it becomes impossible to cure because the disease has already spread through out the entire nervous system. Did Zora Neil Hurston accurately portray the rabies disease in the novel as to real life? Because in the novel Hurston did portray the symptoms accurately. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston gave Janie's husband, Tea Cake, great characteristics of having contracted the disease. Some of the characteristics that were shown in the novel were Tea Cake gagging when drinking liquids, bad headaches and the time period it took for the symptoms of rabies to finally show up.
How Do Vaccines Work? How Do Vaccines Work? Department of Health, Jan. 2011. Web. The Web.
The public is becoming increasingly aware of the potential for vaccination to cause reactions that range from swelling and pain at the injection site to life threatening anaphylactic shock, to brain and immune system injuries resulting in lifelong disabilities. " Since the illnesses that vaccines combat are no longer major killers in the United States, far greater attention is paid instead to the risks that immunizations present." (Calandrillo, 2004, p. 14)