Their Eyes Were Watching An Emmy: Not God
Throughout the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is painted a picture by Ms. Hurston but completely blindsided if they ever sat down to actually watch this horrid slaughter of what was a classic piece of literature. The screen play just another “ pet project “ for Oprah Winfrey, diminishes the light in which Ms. Zara Neal Hurston herself, portrayed is completely altered to fit the television, sex driving industry in which Ms. Winfrey subdues to the viewers. However, the vision is not totally out of sight but it is indeed farfetched from its original point of view; the movie focused almost entirely on a love story aspect between characters and how love doesn’t conquer all in the end. “ It was the most beautiful and poignant love stories I’ve ever read” ( Dir Darnell ). Love that is genuine is hard to come by on a daily, everyone was not meant to experience the marvelous wonders it has to offer.
Not only is the subject matter cropped for modern day television but the supporting characters in the novel are remade to fit Winfrey’s impression of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Males who would not perceive to be the typical sex to gossip, partake in many female characteristics in the movie. Janie’s character is broadcast to be a voice to be reckoned with in the screenplay as a vital denotation of women’s entitlement and place in this world as more than just a caregiver. Winfrey portrays Janie as more than your typical women in this historic error in time, rebellious in the movie but soft spoken in the book shows two different versions of our character but they all show an ongoing change that is about to take place. “ De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see”...
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...hat with spiteful drama that tries to tear the duo apart but fails in the end. ( Pheoby )
Numerous themes are highlighted in Their Eyes Were Watching God, a switch of racism where the tables turn and Caucasian vs. Native American in the screenplay instead of the original African American vs. Native American set up in the novel. Making the white man superior to blacks, the narrator presents an oppression filled atmosphere whose constituents apotheosize the white man by praising him like a “ God. “ “Humph! Y’all let her worry yuh. You ain’t like me. Ah ain’t got her to study ‘bout. If she ain’t got manners enough to stop and let folks know how she been makin’ out, let her g’wan!” (Hurston 3). The novel shows a darker side to the black community, shining light on the vivid jealousy, racism based on skin color, and a striving desire to tear down their prosperous peers.
Janie, lead character of the novel, is a somewhat lonely, mixed-race woman. She has a strong desire to find love and get married, partially driven by her family’s history of unmarried woman having children. Despite her family’s dark history, Janie is somewhat naive about the world.
Oprah Winfrey has twisted the whole book Their Eyes Were Watching God and made a movie which consists of some major changes. Janie’s character changed completely in the book than in the movie, also her relationship with friends and her companions. Oprah reiterates some major parts which also concluded how the hurricane happened which did not last long as it did in the book, symbolism also differed in the movie and some major symbols remained as noticeable as it was in the book. Winfrey changed the whole meaning of the title even though she did not change the title Winfrey made the meaning different when everybody watched God instead of just Janie. Zora Neale Hurston would have been disappointed if she still lived due to the fact that Oprah has remade her book and made it her own version which differed from Zora’s novel.
In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston there were many contrasting places that were used to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of this work.
This excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were watching God, is an example of her amazing writing. She makes us feel as if we are actually in her book, through her use of the Southern Black vernacular and admirable description. Her characters are realistic and she places special, well thought out sentences to keep us interested. Zora Neale Hurston’s art enables her to write this engaging story about a Southern black woman’s life.
In Eatonville, gossip spreads throughout the townspeople. Sitting on each other's porches will become a usual community assembly. In the movie, the men gossip rather than the women who gossip in the book because Oprah wants equally between the men and the women. Janie’s best friend, Pheoby Watson, sits and talks with the women of Eatonville when Janie returns. Oprah portrays Janie in the movie as friends with all the women on the porch, but in the book she did not speak to none of the women. Pheoby walks to Janie’s house and Janie knows that the women have talked about her. Janie makes it clear that what the women say does not affect her. "To start off wid, people like dem wastes up too much time puttin’ they mouf on things they don’t know nothin’ about […]" (Hurston 6). Janie shows she does not care about what the women on the porch think of her because she knows what occurred in her and Tea Cake’s relationship not the women. Pheoby walked to Janie’s house to understand her reasoning for coming home in worn out overalls with no shoes on her feet and to bring her dinner. Oprah wants a weaker relationship between Janie and Pheoby. Zora Neale Hurston made them closer because Pheoby had the comfort of walking through Janie’s back door whereas in the movie she walks in the front door. In the movie version, Janie and Pheoby argue and in the book they never did. Oprah made them argue to continuously display Janie’s
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.
The movie and the book of Their Eyes Were Watching God both tell the story of a young woman’s journey to finding love; however, the movie lacks the depth and meaning behind the importance of Janie’s desire for self-fulfillment. Oprah Winfrey’s version alters the idea from the book Zora Neale Hurston wrote, into a despairing love story for the movie. Winfrey changes Hurston’s story in various ways by omitting significant events and characters, which leads to a different theme than what the novel portrays. The symbolisms and metaphors emphasized throughout the book are almost non-existent in the movie, changing the overall essence of the story. While Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal gives a more in depth view of Janie’s journey of self-discovery and need for fulfilling love, Oprah Winfrey’s version focuses mainly on a passionate love story between Janie and Tea Cake.
In this book, Hurston writes in the dielect of the black community of the time. Many of the words are slang. Hurston begins the story with Janie telling it, but then it becomes a third person narrative throughout most of the story.
Jordan, Jennifer. “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God’.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 7.1 (Spring 1988): 105-117. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Feb. 2011.
Unlike The Odyssey or any other epic tales, Their Eyes Were Watching God has a different perspective of what a hero is. In this novel, Hurston writes a story about an African-American woman named Janie Crawford whose quest is to find her identity and desire as a human being to be loved and appreciated for who she is. Her quest to fulfill those desires is not easy since she has to overcome so many obstacles and challenges in her life. A superiority that her Nanny posses over her to determine Janie's own life when she was a teenager and being a beautiful accessory to the glory of Joe Starks' are some of the experience that she encounters. She also has to make some sacrifices. And yet, just like any other heroes, at the end, she returns to her home with a victory on her hands.
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character of Janie Crawford experiences severe ideological conflicts with her grandmother, and the effects of these conflicts are far-reaching indeed. Hurston’s novel of manners, noted for its exploration of the black female experience, fully shows how a conflict with one’s elders can alter one’s self image. In the case of Janie and Nanny, it is Janie’s perception of men that is altered, as well as her perception of self. The conflict between the two women is largely generational in nature, and appears heart-breakingly inevitable.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
With all three of these aspects of racism in consideration, race was a prevalent theme in the book that couldn’t escape the reader’s consciousness. Whether it was through showing the division of the communities, or through the feelings that each race held about the other race, the book portrays the history of racism in America.