Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

Tea Cake returns after Janie’s money was stolen; “He took her head in his hands and eased himself into the chair. She still didn’t say anything” (121). Silence is a major instrument in Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship because instead of fighting him she uses silence as a source of empowerment. Janie learns that her silence shows Tea Cake more insight to her apprehension in their relationship, than verbally attacking him will do. In her relationship with Joe, Janie uses her voice to insult Joe to show her displeasure, but with Tea Cake, she knows how and when to use her voice and understands both herself and her emotions. In the Everglades, Janie actively participates in conversation; “Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to” (134). In Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship, equality is a major aspect, Janie has both a voice and a position in their marriage. Janie feels like an individual both with Tea Cake and the people in the Everglades, in contrast to her relationship with Joe where people view her as subordinate to Joe. Tea Cake slaps Janie out of jealousy and control and as a result, Janie does not raise her voice back at him. (147). Tea Cake physically abuses Janie, but never tries to mentally overpower her, and

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

Everyone has a goal, a mission, a dream. Many dreams of people are far away and in many cases are perceived to be mysterious and merely out of reach. In the story Their Eyes were Watching God, this notion is expressed by the symbol of a horizon. The horizon is a faraway horizontal line between the earth and the sky; between human life and the beyond. This mid point between the possible and impossible is where dreams, wishes, and desires lay. The horizon symbolizes dreams that are seemingly out of reach. In the beginning of the story, this is the state of the dreams of Janie, her horizon. Through chapters 1-9, readers understand through the two failed marriages of Janie, that she dreams to love and be free. Janie wants to love another person

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly." These dream quotes came from the one and only "Their eyes were watching God," book by Zora Neale Hurston. Mrs. Zora Neale Hurston was an expert in writing in dialect. This unique literary form creates differences between other novels or storybooks. In this book, various events (to be specific, a death) seem to illuminate the meaning of life as a whole.

From the beginning, Janie’s happiness is abundantly clear in her relationship with Tea Cake. Although she is now a woman in her forties, Janie acts very youthful and unrestricted with him. She wears “new dresses and...comb[s] her hair a different way nearly every day (111)”. Tea Cake allows for Janie to be herself, in stark contrast to misogynistic Joe who constrained her individuality daily. Janie reports that “Tea Cake love[s] me in blue, so Ah wears it (113)”.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

Zora Neale Hurston’s highly acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God demonstrates many of the writing techniques described in How to Read Literature like a Professor by Tomas C. Foster. In Foster’s book, he describes multiple reading and writing techniques that are often used in literature and allow the reader to better understand the deeper meaning of a text. These of which are very prevalent in Hurston’s novel. Her book follows the story of an African American woman named Janie as she grows in her search for love. Hurston is able to tell Janie’s great quest for love with the use of a vampiric character, detailed geography, and sexual symbolism; all of which are described in Foster’s book.

The book opens with Janie returning to Eatonville, after Tea Cake’s death. She walks down the street wearing the same overalls she wore while she was working with Tea Cake, causing many of the town’s residents to wonder about her. When confronted about this gossip, Janie proclaims, “if God don’t think no mo’ ‘bout ‘em then Ah do, they’s a lost ball in de high grass” (5). She means that if God cared about the townspeople as little as she did, they would get lost amongst all the other things God likely does not care about. This shows how little she minds what other people think of her, and how her quest for self determination has been

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a 1937 novel which follows the life of a woman named Janie who, on her journey of finding her identity, marries three men in hopes of discovering her purpose. This novel is about a woman on her expedition to self-realization and fulfilment or perhaps it’s about the importance of the rabies vaccine. For the sake of simplicity, I will argue the former. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a deeply feminist text. Hurston provides us with a plethora of themes that can be viewed through feminist perspective such as Voice, Identity and Divergence from the Norm.

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.

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.

Their fellow residents in Eatonville warned Janie she was being manipulated by Tea Cake. They question why a young man such as him would even spare a second to look at the much older woman. The accusation said that he was only hanging around her for her money and would end up leaving her sooner or later. At the time, Janie started believing it herself. She questioned, “Is he uh thief…hurt people wid?” (Hurston 102). Rather than having faith in Tea Cake, she took the words from mouths known for gossip. Tea Cake ended up giving her rights to being uneasy when he took her money. “He spied the money…to be a millionaire” (Hurston 122) exemplified his lack of control even for

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, experiences relief at the end of the novel. The novel begins at the end, emphasizing the importance of her moral reconciliation. Though at the beginning, it appears she returns home defeated, it is contrary. She returns home triumphant in finding her peace and fulfillment. When Janie starts to take things into her own hands instead of relying on her faith of others, she finally finds herself and joy. She needed to experience love in her own way to find what she was missing and what she needed in her love and her life.

Tea Cake allowed Janie to involve herself in community activities while Starks tried to isolate Janie as much as possible. Janie and Tea Cake moved to the Everglades where there were “big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything” (127). The luscious, thriving nature symbolizes the new and growing profound love Janie and Tea Cake have for one another. Soon, Janie “got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake” (133) because “its mo’ nicer than settin’ round dese quarters” (133). Therefore, Janie now doesn’t mind partaking in manual labor because it’s out of her personal choice and love for Tea Cake whereas, before with Logan she was forced into it causing no enjoyment. Janie “learned what it felt like to be jealous” (136) with Tea Cake involving Nunkie and “cut [Tea Cake] short with a blow” (137). Instead of fighting back, “Tea Cake kept holding Janie’s wrists” (137), “hurled her to the floor” (137), and “kissed [Janie] until she arched her body to meet him” (138). The resistance Tea Cake displays to use physical contact upon Janie reveals Tea Cake’s patient character. Also, it adds onto the motif of love where Janie and Tea Cake have equally passionate feelings toward one another such that Janie is demonstrating jealously which was absent in her previous marriages. Moreover, with the threat of the oncoming hurricane and the turned down invite from one of the Bahman workers, Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship heightens. The soon appearance of the violent hurricane caused “crashing” (159), “hurdling” (159), and “questioning God” (159). The hurricane brings the theme of religion where God is mentioned throughout the text as a sense of hope and faith. However, Tea Cake and Janie realize they needed to escape “before worse things happened” (160) causing Janie to soon approach a near death experience. While fighting for her life by holding onto “the tail of the cow” (166) in the aggressive waters, Tea Cake “split the water” (166)

Throughout history, the aspiration to accomplish one’s dreams and gain self-fulfillment has been and continues to be prevalent. Consequently, one’s reactions to the obstacles propelled at them may define how they will move forward in search of achieving their goals. Reaching one’s full potential is certainly not an easy conquest. Zora Neale Hurston, an especially noteworthy African American author, uses her astounding piece of literature, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to illuminate the path to discovering what is truly valuable in life. She uses the character, Janie Woods, who endures some of the greatest hardship imagined to elucidate the ways in which hindrance, although discouraging, only makes one stronger. Accordingly, Hurston argues