Human Rights Issues In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

The difference between Janie’s desire for freedom and her agreement to her transition from marriage to marriage shows a contrast in her attempt to balance multiple identities. The entirety of Their Eyes Were Watching God emphasizes Janie’s struggle to become both a woman and black person in a society that does not allow either to exist at the same time. Janie went through several marriages before she found her ultimate happiness. In her attempt to reject her Nanny’s pairing of herself and Logan Killicks, her Nanny explains that “de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out”

The film Their Eyes Were Watching God, based off of the novel by author Zora Neale Hurston, is a story of a young woman named Janie who spends the film narrating her life story to a friend. Janie’s story is one of self-exploration, empowerment, and the ability to express her freedoms both as a maturing woman and African American, throughout her life experiences. As she navigates through sexism and racism to find herself it becomes more evident that it will be more difficult than she initially thought to reach a point of happiness.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that follows Janie in her quest to find both her voice and herself through different experiences and relationships. Janie, a female protagonist, struggles to assert both her voice and her independence. Joe Starks, her second husband, is a sophisticated and authoritative man who demands the majority of the attention in both their marriage and society. Joe and Janie reside in Eatonville where Joe is mayor and a prominent figure in society. Janie struggles to discover her voice and often uses it irrationally. Tea Cake, Janie’s last husband, is a regular man who treats Janie

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story that is centered around sexuality, power, and gender discrimination. The main character, Janie Crawford¸ is a mulatto. She was raised by her grandmother, a former slave, since the day she was born, “Ah was born back due in slavery…” (Hurston 16). She and her grandmother, Nanny, lived in West Florida on where they lived in the house in the Washburns’—the family that Nanny worked for--back-yard. Nanny scraped together and bought a house that had a pear tree in the back-yard. It was there under the pear tree in her grandmother’s back yard that Janie saw herself as sexual being that began her journey, “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the

“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford struggles to find true love. Throughout the novel, she marries and estranges from three different husbands. The first husband, Logan Killicks, seems to be Janie's first true love, but he turns out to be weak and lazy. Janie’s second “love” Joe- Jody- Starks beats Janie both physically and mentally, and Jody overrules her with his obsessive need for power. Lastly, she marries and moves away with Tea Cake after Jody dies. Tea Cake was Janie's final and only genuine love. Throughout the novel, the author validates the critical lens of

Zora Neale Hurtson’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is centered around the life of a woman named Janie who struggles to find her voice. Janie is taken under the care of Nanny, who tries to ensure that Janie is provided with a more promising and fulfilling life than the one Nanny herself has lived. Yet, Janie still faces a life of hardships and suppression. These factors become setbacks for Janie and almost prevent her from living a meaningful life. However, throughout the novel, Janie pursues to finally determine her self-worth and find an everlasting love.

Janie is discussing her marriage with her grandmother, when she says, “Some folks never was meant to be loved and he’s one of them.” (Hurston 24). Here, the quote makes it seem as if men should be this perfect specimen in order to be loved; that a man has to fit a certain ideal and be this tailor made fit for a person to care about them, or even be sexually attracted to them. This is harmful to any person, as the stereotype erases those who don’t fit into societal standards and it also alienates those who don’t fit into someone’s perfect box image. In her marriages, Janie’s belief is also that she can have everything that constitutes a marriage to her, without a will to compromise. “Janie wants romance and the high chair. Logan’s belated attempt to make Janie a working partner in the care of the farm is entirely unacceptable to Janie; she is unable to make that kind of commitment without sexual passion” (Paquet 504). This harms those who may not be the most physically appealing, yet are kind and good people; the idea of anything beneath skin deep is lost to those like Janie, who are naive enough to believe that romance and passion can be the only defining points of a relationship. Altogether, this shows one of the earliest moments of the unfair portrayal of men through the novel’s enforcement of the harmful suggestion that men have to fit a perfect mold for others to care about them

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

Zora Neale Hurston’s use of language in Their Eyes Were Watching God effectively creates mood, establishes characterization, and develops themes throughout the novel. Ever since Tea Cake, Janie’s third husband was bitten by a rabid dog, his behavior has been threatening towards Janie’s life. When he points a gun at her, attempting to shoot her, Janie is left with no choice. She aims her rifle at her disease-stricken husband and he dies in her arms. As a result of this shooting, Janie finds herself on trial for Tea Cake’s death.

The book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a noble and heartwarming tale; while the movie is nothing short of a train wreck. Janie’s past, traits, relationships, symbols, and even the dynamics of the town succumbed to change. Oprah Whitney took away the principles of the story little by little.

Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that appears simple to many, but is actually pretty deep the more you really think about it. It is a book that has plot elements that can be analyzed for days on end, whether we’re talking about the use of dialect, the deferment from the Harlem Renaissance, or the poetic language of the novel. However, there is one theme in the book that is very prevalent. Probably due to the fact that it’s the main plot of the story. Throughout the story, Janie marries 3 people.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book by influential author Zora Neale Hurston, is about the life of an African American woman named Janie and the effect relationships have on her freedom. Janie's freedom is constantly limited by the men in her three marriages, but through these relationships she learns how to be free through independence. Although Logan, Jody and Tea Cake all treated her very differently, they all placed some sort of emotional, physical, or social limit on her freedom.

Expecting a great future with Jody, Janie is let down to eventually find out that their marriage consists of Jody marginalizing her. In the beginning of their marriage, Jody becomes the mayor of an all-black town called Eatonville. As Janie is about to make a speech to congratulate her new husband Jody silences her and tells the townspeople his “wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’” (Hurston 43). Janie is powerless to her husband’s word and this is foreshadowing of how the rest of their marriage will play out. As Janie attempts to insert herself into a conversation with her husband and some townspeople, Jody tells her “you gettin’ too moufy, Janie” thus silencing her voice (Hurston 75). Janie’s marriage with Jody puts her down and her independence is limited. Their marriage is doomed because all along “he wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it” and this imbalance in power tipped their marriage over (Hurston 71). The Women in Literature and Life Assembly agree “He also wants to be dominating. Janie 's place is in the home. Janie wants open discussion and relationship, but Jody is too busy and in love with Eatonville” (Berridge 1). Janie’s want for love can not be satiated by Jody’s money and passion for

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.