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

Zora Neale Hurston was an American novelist, anthropologist, folklorist, and short story writer and is closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston grew up in one of America’s first all-black communities. Growing up in this unique community gave her a sense of independence, freedom and boldness that many African-Americans, especially females, did not have during this time. Growing up in that community distinguished her from other writers of her time, and it is clearly reflected in her work. Hurston wrote many short stories, plays, essays and four published novels. Of all of the works she published and accomplishments she had, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel tells the story of Janie Crawford a young African-American girl growing up in

Florida in the early twentieth century. As a young girl, Janie sees a bee pollinating a flower and becomes determined to find true love. The book captures Janie’s life and her quest for true love as she ages and matures as well as capturing her life struggles in regards to race, gender, and Janie’s discovery of her voice during the turn of the century. The book follows her through three marriages and documents her emotions and maturity regarding love throughout her lifetime.

Throughout the novel Janie must discover what she thinks is important in regards to love such as innocence, understanding and openness, which she associates with the actual meaning of true love. Through the various marriages in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel suggests that stability is irrelevant in comparison to true love.

There are a variety of ways this novel suggests that true love is far more important than financial stability. One instance of this was in chapter six, in this chapter Janie’s husband Joe Starks, that Janie meet and almost immediately ran off with, begins to show troublesome behavior. Janie is drawn to this man because he is strong, independent and successful and he can provide her a comfortable life because he was wealthy and successful. Even though he was able to provide finical stability for Janie, she was still unhappy in her marriage to him. Chapter six of Hurston’s novel gives a prime example of Janie being unhappy in the marriage, when her husband Joe Starks attempts to make Janie a submissive house wife and she starts to grow

increasingly annoyed with him. Starks attempts to have her follow his orders, silence herself in conversations and he even begins to become aggressive with her. Her husband begins to treat her as more of a piece of property rather than a romantic partner. In the novel when Janie was working at the shop, it states “Janie loved the conversation and sometimes she thought up good stories on the mule, but Joe had forbidden her to indulge. He didn’t want her talking after such trashy people.”(63). This quotation is an example of how he was attempting to control Janie and control her life, which made her very upset. This further proves the point that even though he is able to provide things for Janie finically he is still unable to make her happy. Love cannot be bought and just because someone can provide a comfortable life for you it does not mean they can make you happy and you may not be able to love them. One advocate of this according to the article she published on the utm site was Emily Kendall, who wrote “As a sixteen-year-old girl, lying beneath a pear tree in the spring, she watches a bee gathering pollen from a pear blossom. The experience becomes a symbol to Janie of the ideal relationship, one in which passion does not result in possession or domination, but rather in an effortless union of individuals.” This may be one of the reasons she is unable to be happy in her relationship with Joe Starks because she believes that they should be equals in their relationship. Not just because he is wealthy which is one of the reasons she remains unhappy throughout the marriage even though she is stable finically.
Another example of Janie’s belief that love is more important than finances is when she is in a relationship with her first husband Logan Killicks. After Janie is seen kissing a boy under a tree as a child, her grandmother arranges to have her married to a guy who can provide for her because she does not want Janie to live a hard life. Janie is very apprehensive of her grandmother’s decision because she believes that marriage should be associated with love rather than stability. Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God states “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted on the floor.” Pg. 23. This quotation shows how Janie valued the idea of love its significance to her. It also shows apprehension about marrying Logan Killicks because she does not love him, and marrying him would ruin the idea of true love she has had since she was a young child. Janie then begins to question whether love will come with marriage as her grandmother told her it would. There are more people who also believe agree Janie values love more than finical stability. For example, two students from Xavier University said:
“Nanny is aware of the inevitability of death and wishes only to ensure Janie a stable life and security. Therefore, she implores Janie to marry Logan Killicks, a middle-aged farmer whose sixty acres of land represent security. Unable to express her yearnings for romantic love, Janie consents to marrying Logan. Thus, as at sixteen Janie enters her first marriage with a spiritless man, primarily focused on farming. Because of this marriage, Janie dons an apron and begins married life as a helpmate, worker for Logan Killicks. Soon after she finds herself unfulfilled and thus, the first marriage expands her knowledge of relationships and women's experiences.”
In this statement they are showing that Janie is unhappy in her finically stable marriage to Logan and how after time passes she decides to leave the marriage because she would rather feel love than stay in her stable marriage. Because she believes she can learn to love Logan with time she remains in the relationship for a while, until she meets Joe Starks who she catches feelings for almost immediately. These immediate feeling she has causes her to leave her current husband who has managed to provide a stable life for her.
As Janie is maturing and growing older she is discovering more about love and deciding what aspects of the relationship drive her to feel love. During her marriage to Starks she realizes she was correct when she was younger, believing that love is very important for marriages. She is beginning to realize that when her grandmother made her marry Logan she was steering her the wrong way and caused her years of unhappy marriage. Even though he provided her stability he could not provide her happiness. She was unhappy in this marriage because it has more to do with connection than it does finances. After she is married to Joe for a few years and she begins to feel the love leave their relationship she begins to question whether she has found her true love or not. Eventually, Starks grows ill and Janie becomes a widow. After six months she meets a man named tea cake who she instantly feels a connection with. After meeting Tea Cake she is trying to discover if she is open for love again and believes that there is something different about him right from the start. In the Hurston’s novel after the day it states “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life. Look how she had been able to talk with him right off! He tipped his hat at the door and was off with the briefest good night.” At this point, Janie is getting over her deceased husband and is beginning to feel opportunity for something else to possibly emerge from the man she just met. She also begins to find independence now that she does not have Jody around telling her what to do. The immediate connection she has with Tea Cake that opens her back up to the idea of falling in love can indicate that she does not value finical stability in her relationships. This can be concluded because even though she is not aware of his economic status she is still considering the possibility of being in a relationship with him. DeLisa D. Hawkes from Cleveland State University said: “…her relationship with Tea Cake marks the moment when she gets to live out the ‘self’ she knew existed deep inside of her even during her previous unhappy relationships.” This quotation shows that even though Tea cake could not provide economic stability in the way her other husbands could, he was still her savior and brought her the only thing that she truly desired which was true love.
Additionally, in the novel she begins to realize that she resents her grandmother for the ideal system she raised Junie on. In Hurston’s novel Janie states “She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time.” (65) This quotation shows how as the story progresses Janie continues to discover more about herself and more about what she thinks is important when it comes to discussing love. She realizes she strongly dislikes her grandmother for putting ideas in her head as a young child, making love more about what her husband should have to offer her when it can to wealth and financial security and less about how he treated her and how he made her feel. Originally as a child she had thought that love was more about how someone made her feel and that was tarnished and distorted by her grandmother’s beliefs that affected her into her later years in life causing her to grow very resentful of the old women long after she had passed away. This is another instance in this story where Janie continues to grow and mature and really discover aspects she thinks is important regarding love. A quotation written by a University of Washington student shows this by stating:
“Throughout her upbringing Janie has never been able to truly express herself and was expected to do as the people around her. Her grandmother, her first and second husbands were all people of which Janie relied upon heavily for gaining her independence and through each of these relationships Janie grew to discover that she was dependent on their approval in order to discover herself.”
This quotation shows that throughout Janie’s life she had been controlled by many people which cause her to come off track in her discovery for true love. Once she is free of all of these people she is able to experience true love which is what she dreamed about for a long time.
After meeting Tea Cake, Janie enjoys that he treats her as a mutual and that he appears to respect her. Eventually Tea Cake tells Janie that he likes her as more than a friend. Soon after they make their relationship public, Janie decides that she wants to sell the store in the town and get married to Tea Cake. People try to warn her that he is trying to take advantage of her because she is wealthy and she says she wants to live for something deeper than what her grandmother wanted for her. At this point of the novel, it appears that Janie has rediscovered love and is now emotionally invested in Tea Cake in ways that she was not invested in the other men she was with. She likes him for the way he treats her and the way they are able to interact as equals which was something she lacked in her previous relationships. In Hurston’s novel when Janie was thinking of Tea Cake it states:
“She couldn’t make him look just like any other man to her. 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.”Pg.77.
This quote indicates that she has finally found what she has been searching for since she was a young girl. When she was little she became obsessed with finding her true love and compared it to a bee pollinating a flower in her pear tree. She is now thinking that Tea Cake could possibly be that for her which means she believes that she has finally found her true love. Janie is still apprehensive that he may be trying to take her money, but when she tells him about the large amount of money she has in the bank, he say she will never have to touch it because he will provide for her and she then begins to trust Tea Cake. A man named Vincent Walsh wrote:
“…the primary focus of the novel is the relationship between Janie and Tea Cake, how it represents the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, a quest for true love. The passionate devotion these two share is one where there is mutual regard and respect between equals who not only desire, but fully support and actually revere each other, who sacrifice willingly and gladly, even joyfully, for each other’s happiness and wellbeing, to the extent that Tea Cake ultimately risks and finally pays the price of his own life to save Janie from the rabid dog.”
This shows that by the end of the novel Janie was able to find her true love as she had dreamed of since she was a young girl. They live together and have a very happy life for a few years and Janie believes her life is complete. Eventually Tea Cake gets very sick because of a rabid dog bite and attempts to kill Janie so she is left no choice but to kill him instead. After his funeral, she moves back to Eatonville and concludes her story to Pheoby. She claims she has finally completed her life and now knows what true love is.
There are a plethora of possible interpretations to the true purpose of this story. One of the most accurate interpretation is this is a story in which a young girl who dreams of finding her true love must go through much maturing and self-discovery to find her one true love. This novel teaches you to think independently and to live to make yourself happy and to never stop looking for the things that will make you happy, for instance, Janie knew since she was young the one thing she wanted was to find her true love and she stayed true to herself and remained open-minded and determined and ended up fulfilling her dream of discovering true love. Through the various marriages in, Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God the novel suggests that stability is irrelevant in comparison to true love. Throughout the novel Janie must discover what she thinks is important in regards to love such as innocence, understanding and openness, which she associates with the actual meaning of true love.