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Zach Lane
Ms. Seltzer
English 3 Honors
May 19th 2014
Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay
In today’s society women are viewed as equals with men, but in the time period in which Their Eyes Were Watching God takes place, it was believed that a woman needed a man. In this novel, Hurston portrays Janie as an independent woman, but throughout the book she is almost always with a man because of her placement in society. She does to show that women are capable of independence but are not the given the opportunity to be independent. In this essay I will examine the independent elements of Janie’s personality as well as the dependent elements of Janie’s character.
Their Eyes Were Watching God a story about how Janie reaches a strong sense of self and comes to recognize her independence. But her path toward understanding is not tackle alone. The gender differences that Hurston uses require that males and females provide each other with things that they require but don’t have. Janie sees that fulfilling relationships are shared and based on mutual respect, Hurston demonstrates in Janie’s relat...
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
Comparing and Contrasting Relationships in Hurston’s Novels, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee. In Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwanee, Zora Neale Hurston creates two protagonists, Janie and Arvay, and depicts their rich relationships with Tea Cake and Jim, respectively. This brief paper compares these two women and their interactions with their husbands. Contrasting the similarities of these relationships helps underscore deeper themes that Hurston draws from two ostensibly different women.
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.
Nicholas Sparks once wrote, “ You can’t live your life for other people. You have to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.” In other words, a person must live life in his favor because it’s his own happiness that truly matters. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Hurston uses many devices to illustrate that if one wants to truly achieve inner happiness he must live life for himself and no one else.
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.
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.
The contrast of these two places reinforces the theme of a search for love and fulfillment. To see what an ideal situation for an independent woman like would be, Hurston must first show the reader what Janie cannot deal with. Hurston has her character Janie go on a quest, one that was begun the day she was forced to marry Logan Killucks. The contrast in the setting is similar to one between good and evil.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people” (85). Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities that “represent increasingly wide circles of experience and opportunities for expression of personal choice” (Crabtree). Their Eyes Were Watching God is an important fiction piece that explores relations throughout black communities and families. It also examines different issues such as, gender and class and these issues bring forth the theme of voice. In Janie’s attempt to find herself, she grows into a stronger woman through three marriages.
Of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Alice Walker says "it speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done." Though 45 years separate Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Color Purple, the two novels embody many similar concerns and methods. Hurston and Walker write of the experience of uneducated rural southern black women. They find a wisdom that can transform our communal relations and our spiritual lives. As Celie in The Color Purple says, referring to God: "If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you."
I found both books, Seraph on the Suwannee and Their Eyes Were Watching God to be very well written, yet I found it very ironic and almost funny to compare the two. Although it may not have been intentional, Hurston uses, what can be called, race reversals to describe Janie and Arvay. Janie is a not-so-typical black woman who is confident and while she is somewhat submissive to her husbands, she has more integrity than her white counterpart, Arvay.
In 1937, Nora Zeale Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel that forever changed societies view on women. Zora Neale Hurston’s character, Janie, portrays a black, southern woman, although she is black, universal positions of women play a key role in her development. Universal themes of women are reiterated and reinforced through the series of three marriages with three men. These three men play a role in Janie’s life long search for independence and soul renewal.
In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, certain parallels or recurring events prove to be significant. Some examples of parallels include the relationships between the characters and the aspect of love shown through nature. A significant recurring event is Janie being married multiple times. All three of these occurrences greatly contribute to Janie's individuality.
In the novel Their Eyes were watching God by Zora Hurston, Zora shows evident gender roles through strong symbols, diction and Juxtaposition. Feminism is one of the biggest issues in this piece of literature; Janie, the main character of the book, faces the struggle to escape society’s expectations that she lives her life doing what she is told, rather than reaching out of the domestic sphere she is in and pursuing her dreams.
... Janie is free-spirited and unconcerned about what others think of her. When she returns to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death, she shows no shame for what she has done or where she has been, because she is finally able to live the life she always wanted to lead. Hurston’s own struggles in life for individuality and an outlet for her suppressed spirit clearly contribute to the development of Janie’s character. Just as Hurston struggled for recognition, equality, and purpose in the literary world during the Harlem Renaissance, Janie’s struggle for the recognition, equality, and purpose in her relationships.