Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Analysis

Oscar Wilde once said, “Memory… is the diary we all carry around with us.” This is a topic seen throughout the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as the entire account is a recollection of events that happened during Janie’s lifetime. The author of this critically acclaimed novel, Zora Neale Hurston, was born on January 7, 1891 in Alabama. Her personal experiences and background helped shape this book into the classic novel it became, and she herself became a historical figure, as she defied all odds and worked to protect the rights of all African Americans. Being her most famous work, Their Eyes Were Watching God deals with the difficulties black people had to face, making it one of the most relevant books of her time, and creating a lasting

Without Janie’s competence, the memoir would be virtually impossible to tell. Each person’s perspective is different, and the tale is her personal version of how the events took place. Therefore, memory played an important role, because Tea Cake or Logan could have remembered each situation in various ways that contradicted what Janie thought or believed. On top of that, if there were gaps or holes within the story, her record could have been entirely different from what actually took place. For example, if Janie had not remembered that Tea Cake had gotten rabies, the reader would have been led to believe that he had just become hysterical and that she would have shot him without trying to reason with him. This would have changed the history of what genuinely happened and distorted what the reader thought of Tea Cake, Janie, and the story itself. She idealizes her memories as if they were a continuation of her life and that they were still occurring, but they in fact, are of the past and affect the decisions she continues to make in her present and future life. The entire book is based off of Janie’s memories and what had happened, so if her memory became dull or if she were to falsify information, one would be led to believe something completely different. Given these points, one can conclude that Janie’s ability to recognize the past

From the start of the novel, the reader sees and understands that Janie repeatedly contemplates about past circumstances and situations. She begins talking about the importance of remembrance, and how it can affect a person. Thus, leading into the narrative that is full of past experiences and occurrences. Often coming in and out of the past, it is as if she is stuck in her former days, regularly replaying and reliving former times. A specific time one can clearly see Janie coming out of a flashback, is at the very end of the book, when she has concluded her life’s story and come back to the present, realizing that the past was just that, and that she must be ready for the future. The presence of memory occurs heavily within the book as it is clearly presented many times. In this way, Hurston made it a primary focus, as the events were not in the moment, but of the past, yet they still affected Janie in the most meaningful ways. Her memory on previous ordeals oftentimes made its presence known as it affected her decision making more often than not. Ultimately, the author centered the novel around memory, often making its presence apparent to the