Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1937. Print. In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the life of a southern black woman, Janie Crawford whose three marriages of domineering control of men make her acknowledge her independence and self-satisfaction as an African-American woman. Set in the early 1900s, Hurston reveals the dominant role of men in southern society and…
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” is about a southern girl growing up with the pressures of being black and finding her true love. Janie the main character goes through life thinking love is one thing learning it from her grandmother to having to find her true self and true love. Many critics call the book a feminist novel which is true portraying Janie trying to gain strength for herself, the book showing men dominance and the treatment of women. The book does do an amazing job showing Janie…
In Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford, the main character of the novel embarks on a journey of self discovery, independence and self understanding. She enters several marriages and her universal expectations for each grow as she learns from the last. Though she has three serious relationships, Janie does not ever have her desires fully met, even with the one she loved most, Tea Cake. Janie spends much of her life in search of her happiness to find in the end that…
have total control and power in their relationships. Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, exemplifies this traditional ideology in a southern community during the early 1900s. Janie’s grandmother forces her to accept male superiority and throw away her own independence. The male figures in Janie’s life suppress her opinions, treat her as property and abuse her. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s grandmother…
During the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the role of silence is very exposing. In almost all the relationships in the book they are changed by silence. If that means the person gains more power by being silent or loses power and is too afraid to speak up. Not only in this book but in life silence has much more of a role than just not talking and sometimes it goes unnoticed but it always has an effect. During this book one of the most effective parts of silence in relationships was with…
Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Namesake - Compare and Contrast Essay Experiences and overcoming conflicts can either help one achieve self realization or hinder their view of himself. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, both Janie and Gogol Ganguli struggle to find their true identity due to a lack of support from their relationships, societal discrimination and negative experiences. Ultimately, both Janie and Gogol are able to overcome…
The Events of the Horizon The Horizon is as unattainable as immortality. The moment one makes a move closer to it, the horizon moves the same distance away. This mentality is often characterized in the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, where the symbol of the horizon is continuously used in conjunction with our protagonist’s, Janie Wood’s, emotions. Janie traveled through a roller coaster of feelings and beliefs, as she bounced from one unfulfilling relationship to…
In the 1930s, women were still fighting for equality, but they were not being viewed as independent people. Women were often used as symbols in a family to show the power the man had by the control he had over his wife and her beauty. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author includes symbolism and heavy description about finding love and independence as a woman in the 1930s through her carefully crafted characters. In the novel, the main character, Janie, undergoes…
In the book, Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses Literary elements, to contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole. The literary elements Zora uses are Characterization, Imagery, and Allegory to advance the book. One of the elements Zora Neal Hurston is using is characterization. Tea cake husband of Janie that is dark toned describes Mrs. Turner to the readers. Mrs. Turner was a “milking sort of women that belonged to a child bed. Her shoulders rounded a little and she…
Many consider mules to be substandard animals, only useful for labor-intensive tasks. Yet, in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, mules represent more than just a poor, defenseless animal. The way men treat them in Eatonville reflects the condition of the black female, as it serves as a symbol of Janie’s struggle in her relationship with Joe. In fact, the mule and its subsequent mistreatment represents how African-American females are comparative to these second-rate workhorses,…