Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

He wins her heart with his energy, and willingness to make Janie his equal. Tea Cake is the only husband that actually takes a genuine interest in Janie. He takes her hunting, fishing, and plays checkers with her. She especially enjoys playing chess, the fact that he considers her intelligent enough to learn such a game shows that he thinks more of Janie than Logan or Joe ever did. The town disapproves of Janie and Tea Cake because he is poor and younger than her. They have the impression that he is just after her money. Janie and Tea Cake leave the town of Eatonville and travel to a town called Jacksonville where Tea Cake has work. The sense of gender equality is very important to Janie in a relationship. Tea Cake asks Janie to work alongside him in the Everglades fields. Logan and Joe both wanted her to work, but she resented it. The difference is that Logan wanted Janie to do hard labor because he thought of her as an object like a workhorse. Joe wanted Janie to work in the store, which she also disliked because Joe just wanted to publicly display her as his trophy wife. Tea Cake’s attitude about Janie working is completely different. He gives her the choice of working and doesn’t command her. Janie goes to work the next day, “So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake. There was a suppressed murmur when she picked up a basket and went to work. She was already getting to be a special case on the muck. It was generally assumed that she thought herself too good to work like the rest of the women and that Tea Cake "pomped her up tuh dat." But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away.”(133) This is the first relationship that Janie doesn’t care to work. She actually likes working alongside Tea Cake. As time passes the town gets word of a hurricane coming. All the people start fleeing to different places, but the boss

This is not because she did anything wrong, but rather because a neighbor’s brother showed interest in her. Tea Cake was not, truly, free of the misogynistic stereotypes of women, and the event showed deep down the possessiveness he felt for her. “Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession” (147). Again, Janie is in a marriage where her husband thinks of her as a property. Tea Cake’s character brought much hope for a lifestyle in which Janie could be independent and powerful, participate in conversation and checkers, and be respected on an equal level. Ultimately, Tea Cake was still possessive, and in many ways was not in fact free of the suppressing beliefs of society as a whole. His character is evident of how deep rooted the beliefs were. Tea Cake passed away, but Janie carried on, returned to Eatonville, once again showcasing her

In both the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, young girls are lectured on who they should be in life and how they should act.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston utilizes the image of the horizon to represent the prospect of improvement, and to develop the relationships between Logan Killicks and Janie Crawford, Joe Starks and Janie, and Tea Cake and Janie.

In the scene when Janie shoots Tea Cake, it shows how even though she loved him, she still had to do what was best for herself. Once Tea Cake dies, Janie is alone, but she seems content. She feels a deeper connection with the world around her and even feels Tea Cakes spirit with her. This scene shows how her love for Tea Cake was unconditional. Throughout Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake she gains independence and the ability to be okay by herself or alone from her unfulfilling relationships with Johnny and Jody. She accomplishes her quest to find true love but it doesn’t last long enough to enjoy. Tea Cake gets bite by a dog and catches rabies and begins to start acting crazy, so Janie is forced to shoot him, which, is very ironic because Tea Cake is the one who taught her how to shoot a

Love can appear out of nowhere.In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, She introduces us to Janie a mixed woman who struggles with finding her vision of love. When she meets her later husband Teacake we see that her vision of love is slowly coming true. Hurston uses the relationship Janie has with Teacake to show that Janie found the love she envisioned when she was a child.

In the book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" the main conflict is shown through Janie's, the main character, quest for spiritual fulfillment and love. Janie clashes with the values that others imposed upon her. Throughout the book she is trying to find love. Love to Janie is not only physical passion but an emotional connection, like the bumble bee and the pear tree, she sat under as a child. Zora Neale Hurston represents this through Janie's three marriages in this book.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching god, by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston uses different stylistic techniques to help speak about both the reflection and departure from the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston's writing can be shown to reflect the Harlem Renaissance because Janie Crawford, the main character in Hurston's novel, is trying to search for her true identity in life going through different aspects of relationship problems leading up to what determines her strive to be the woman she has grown up to be. Hurston uses different dialectical situations including male dominance and self-discovery to assist. There were many examples of being a departure of Harlem Renaissance when a specific action took place during the novel including

was like during the Harlem Renaissance and is one the most famous writings of 20th century literature. Hurston’s writing provided a feminist voice in a movement that was dominated by men, we can see this through her character Janie Crawford, the protagonist of the story and her search for unconditional, true, and fulfilling love. She meets different men throughout the story and experiences different types of love throughout her life while at the same time seeking personal independence as well as her own personal freedom.

“Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.” This was said by the author Zora Neale Hurston about love. In the novel Their Eyes watching Janie was a small town girl she was married to an older man because her grandmother made her marry him. Janie did not love him. She soon meet a man named Joe Starks who was a rich man she ran away with him to a town called Eventon vill. Joe Starks loved her but their marriage soon fell apart. Joe Starks died and months latter she meet a man called Tea Cake they got married and moved to ……. (have to find name of town) time after Tea Cake died because of a dog bite and a shot to his chest. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston using metaphors she describes how Janie always searches to feel loved.

In both Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Awakening by Kate Chopin based during a time period when men and women treated differently. Both books occurred before the 19th amendment passed when women had limited to no rights. In both these books, women treated differently from men. Their Eyes Were Watching God, both men and women play very different roles. Women fundamentally defined by their relationship to men, women expected only to gain power through marriage. The Awakening treated women with restrictions and expectations based on their gender. During the Victorian Era woman presented to only act like a wife and mother.

Tea Cake also illustrates sacrifice as he risks his life to save Janie from the dog during the hurricane. This eventually brings upon the ultimate sacrifice, which is death. This marriage encompasses all the elements of a successful marriage, transforming it into a model marriage for determining success.

In the early 1900’s African American women were encountered with one main limitation. That limitation was inequality, causing many woman to become generally demoted within its culture. This separation of inequality leads to many women to become socially reduced by man itself. In the novel “There eyes were watching God” by Zora Hurston the “Mule” symbolizes Janie’s limitations as an African American Woman to society which is influenced by time, place, and psychology of that culture.

“They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all” (O’Brien 20). Both Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are considered classic fictional novels of American literature. While Their Eyes Were Watching God centers around Janie Crawford’s journey as she matures and finds true love, The Things They Carried focuses on the strenuous lives of soldiers during the harsh conditions of the Vietnam War. Although both stories concentrate on much different topics, both Hurston and O’Brien demonstrate the theme that society’s traditional beliefs of men as the dominant sex can quickly be compromised at any indication of weakness.