...Their Eyes Were Watching God: Celebrating Independence and Condemning Patriarchy Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is an exquisitely rich novel, intertwining themes of race, love, and feminism. Hurston ingeniously combines these themes into one central story which follows the journey of Janie Crawford, a mulatto woman who fervently desires to find herself and her place in the world. Along the way, Janie discovers the fruitfulness of the black community in Eatonville, a self-segregated town in West Florida. She becomes captivated with the community’s so-called “mule talk” and sense of unshackled independence. However, even in a town founded on equality, women are considered as lesser compared to their male counterparts. Thus,...
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...about you” (Hurston 6) Zigaboos- offensive ethnic slur “Time makes everything old so the kissing young darkness became a monstropolous old thing while Janie talked” Monstropolous- a growing forgetfulness that grows in proportion and size. “a heaping plate of mulatto rice” Mulatto-rice with a touch of tarbrush Diction: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses colorful diction to reflect characterization, tone and theme. In chapter 7, Hurston’s word choice when Janie is describing the way Joe looks is important to note for several reasons, “his prosperous- looking belly that used to thrust out so pugnaciously and intimidated folks, sagged like a load suspended from his lions” ( Hurston 77). First, this characterizes the personality of Joe, it shows how Joe would push anyone out of his way to get what he wanted, power and respect. Secondly, it reflects the deterioration of masculine power and how Janie is rising up to be the powerful sex, since Joe is aging and deteriorating. Hurston’s tone is very mocking in this scene, almost of as if she is laughing at how the big and mighty can come crashing down, which is the case with Joe. Background and Literary Context: Langston Hughes’s essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” is about a hypothetical black poet’s perception on two different African American cultures. He believes that there are the high class blacks, who are ashamed of themselves and unconsciously place whites on a higher pedestal. There are also “the lower...
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...In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Janie married three men with different personalities. Throughout the book, as readers we witness the types of love she experiences with her ex-husbands. Her troubles of love included running away, suffering abuse, and gossip from the townsfolk. Life was difficult for Janie, from her family history to her role as an African American woman in the ‘30s. Even though she was described as very beautiful, Janie stood out from everyone due to her past. “Seeing the woman as she was made then remember the envy they had stared up from other times”(Hurston 17). Because of her wish to find true love, Janie discovers it with the cost of being alone and losing people along the way. Janie’s first marriage was an arrangement made by her grandmother, Nanny. She didn’t want to be with Logan Killicks, but Nanny told Janie that love was going to come to her. “Ah ain’t gointuh do it no mo’, Nanny. Please don’t make me marry Mr. Killicks”(Hurston 32). She tried being married, but never felt any sort of love for him. Janie said to her grandmother “Cause you told me Ah gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t”(Hurston 40). After Nanny passed away, Janie’s life was difficult without any more family left. In chapter 4, she leaves Logan for another man and decides to marry him instead....
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...Inequalities within a community are nearly inevitable. There is always an arrogant leader who abuses of his power, or a group of people who are convinced of their superiority. Usually, the social structure of a community is based on discrimination. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is set in the early 20th century in the United States, an era in which the social hierarchy was very clear, and racism was at its peak. The hierarchy was headed by white men, the ultimate dictators of society, who were rarely questioned or opposed to, and at the very bottom were found black women, the “mules” of society, followed by native americans, who were not even thought of as humans. Neale Hurston explores the theme of freedom in relation to race through her main character, Janie, a mixed woman who experiences racism from both sides. Janie’s mixed heritage put her in an awkward position, because her caucasian features make her “exotic” and...
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...In our culture, the idea of freedom is pervasive. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" demonstrates the search and struggle for freedom, particularly from a woman of color's perspective. This is shown in three different ways: through the relationships of the main character's, her place in society, and her reflection of the self. Relationships are the basic units of society. The first relationships in life are familial; in this novel, Janie was raised by her grandmother. Like any parent, Janie's grandmother was always worried about her, not wanting Janie to grow up and have what she considered a bad life. "Ah don't want yo' feathers always crumpled by folks throwin' up things in yo' face. And Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe the menfolks white or...
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...The horizon is an endless stretch of nature, spanning as far as the eye can see, holding anything and everything. In “Their Eyes Were Watching God” the horizon symbolizes the hope that Janie has for her future every time that she moves on in her life and the dreams of equality and love she hopes to one day experience. Present throughout the entire book, the horizon manifests itself as Janie’s dreams for a better life. She travels along in the horizon in her marriages, always searching for her own ideal life. In her mind and adventures, the horizon gives her hope that a better life will be there for her allowing her to move on and grow as a person. The beginning of the book states that “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board… For others they sail forever on the horizon.” (Hurston 1)These first parts of the book foreshadow Janie’s own personality and what she is going to do in the near future. This quote is Janie stating that all men have dreams and intentions, just like Janie, but even though they have an advantage over women they do not pursue their own dreams and so their intentions slip away. Janie is different,...
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...Throughout life we have many desires and one of the things we want the most is love. We want to be loved and Zora Neale Hurston addresses the reality of love in her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. In this revolutionary book, love is the primary theme. It takes the reader through one woman’s desire for love, and the reality of what love is. Hurston is telling us that love is something that you must work to find and to keep, and for the main character Janie this was not what she imagined. When Janie is young she paints love to be this hallmark moment, where two people fall madly in love with a sexual desire for each other. “She was stretches on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold sun and the punting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and...
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...Choice and Consequence The human race is imperfect. They make mistakes, argue with one another, and hold grudges for sometimes years at a time. Similarly, the characters Janie meets on her journey in Zora Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, hurt her very deeply. However, through analyzing the backstories and motivations of each character, it is discovered that none of them are intentionally trying to cause Janie pain. From their point of view, they believe that they are helping her, even though their actions lead her to feel isolated, unhappy, and miserable. In the second chapter of Zora Hurston’s novel, Janie’s grandmother forces Janie to marry a man she does not love, and in the heat of her protests, Granny slaps Janie as hard as she can to silence her (Hurston 14). Granny justifies this action by telling herself that the only way to get her point across is to slap her. She grew up as a slave, so receiving small slap for being rebellious is more of an act of mercy than punishment. Granny is also convinced that...
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...“De nigger women is de mule uh de world…” (14). The book Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a captivating story about Janie Crawford and her life. During this time Janie struggles between keeping her own power, and others taking it from her. Janie is overpowered by many in this novel, her Nanny, first husband, second husband, and by many others in her new life. Although she loses her power through these relationships she always retrieves them, and asserts her power. One example of Janie’s loss for power is when her Nanny marries her off to Logan Killicks, an old man who has sixty acres of land. Janie is forced to marry Logan because Nanny thinks she would be better off with someone like him, someone dependable,...
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...Relationships are some of the most important and central parts of human life. They connect people and fabricate human experience in a unique and fascinating way. Not only does an individual discover another person and who they are through a relationship, but they truly discover themselves. Their Eyes Were Watching God, a beloved and respected novel by Zora Neale Hurston, depicts the life and experiences of a woman named Janie. Each marriage Janie shared with her three husbands develops the motif of love and defines Janie’s character, purpose, and true self. Amid the pain, contention, and mistreatment, Janie learns the value of love and subsequently she distinguishes her own value and finds her truest self. At the beginning of this story...
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...While presented with an unfamiliar situation, in order to prevail, one must create a successful plan. In three literary works, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Odyssey by Homer, and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, the protagonists, Janie, Odysseus, and Viola, respectively, enter new lands and must adapt in order to survive. After encountering her new husband, Joe, and moving to an all-black town, Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God faces the issue of undermining the values she holds in respect to being her version of an independent woman in order to satisfy him. Years after the Trojan War and still landing into many tough situations in different territories, Odysseus from The Odyssey makes use of his sharp intellect,...
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...The book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, has many literary terms within the story. No story, book, essay, or short story can be written without literary terms. This book uses irony, tone, symbolism, and theme. Each one is explained differently and put in so that the readers could have different perspectives. This allows readers to understand a certain book better. Theme, tone, irony, and symbolism all have different meanings to the each reader. Theme is a central meaning or dominant idea in a literary work. It provides a unifying point around which the plot, characters, setting, point of view, symbols, and other elements of work. Zora Neale Hurston writes the theme in many different ways. The one that stands out to me...
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...Theo Siggelakis Prof. T Dansdill February 20, 2012 Of Books Books either encompass my thinking or they stretch the limits of my imagination. Some of the most inspiring books are those which capture life, as I know it down to every specific detail. These books are similar to watching an HD TV; every detail is just so pronounced and accurate. Books that resemble this beautiful real life portrayal could be like J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in The Rye. Every emotion that Salinger delineates through his characterization of Holden Caulfield is so potent that those details resonate even more for someone dealing with a similar internal struggle. When I read the book at 15, every sensory detail that Salinger described helped better illuminate part of my own internal struggle. The over exaggeration of the resentment of society as being in genuine really captured my own internal resentment for molds that people contrive themselves to fit. The one scene with Caulfield sitting in the bathtub depressed after refusing sex from a hooker will always be infused into my constant sub consciousness. When I just feel worn out and pushed to my emotional limit, I see that image burned bright into my memory because that scene is the ultimate depiction of frustration and stress. Although, this style of writing may be beautiful, sometimes it is nice to escape the hyperrealism captured in a book like Catcher in The Rye, and instead read something that expands the mind’s imagination. The contrary to the...
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...Joshua Osemwengie English II Mr. Saldivar 4/10/15 TEWWG Literary Analysis In “The Three Waves of Feminism” by Martha Rampton, she describes the second wave of feminism as the wave of obtaining equal rights for both genders. Rampton refers to the protest of the Miss America pageant in 1968 and 1969 where the women “crowned a sheep as Miss America and threw ‘oppressive’ feminine artifacts such as bras, girdles, high-heels, makeup and false eyelashes into the trashcan” (Rampton). Janie demonstrates a similar type of protest in the story after Jody dies. Then Janie gets remarried to Tea Cake and develops herself more as a feminist through the performance of task that were considered to be masculine. Janie goes in to visit her husband on his death bed. She talks and tells him how he oppressed her and wasn’t “de Jody ah run off down de road wid”. Once Jody finally does die in front of her, Janie “tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair” (Hurston 87). Janie is showing her protest of the oppressive clothing pieces that Jody had her wear by taking them off and letting her true self be shown and it represents the principles of the second wave of feminism. By not wearing the “appropriate” attire for a woman, Janie is showing how she is doing everything for herself and not to please men and fulfill their gender stereotypes. When Jody dies, Janie is single and rich so many men in the town try to come and marry her. She feels that she can live without a...
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...Education - ADHD, Learning, Philosophy of Education, Privatization, Public Schools, School Violence, School Vouchers, Teaching, Technology and Education, Test and Testing, Writing English Composition Essays - Analitical, Autobiographical, Argument, Cause/Effect, Classification, Compare/Contrast, Comparison, Conversation, Creative+Writing, Critical, Deductive, Definition, Descriptive, Description, Dialog, Division, Exploratory, Expository, Informative, Interview, Inquiry, Journalistic, Narration, Observation. Personal Narrative, Place, Profile, Process, Proposal English Literature and Literary Analysis - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A & P, Antigone, Apocalypse Now, Araby, The Awakening, Barn Burning, Beowulf, Beloved, Bible, Birthmark, Blade Runner, The Bluest Eye, Candide, Canterbury Tales, Catcher in the Rye, Cathedral, Chrysanthemums, A Clockwork Orange, The Color Purple, Comparing Literary Works, Crime and Punishment, Death of a Salesman, Death in Venice, Desiree's Baby, A Doll's House, Dr. Faustus, Epic of Gilgamesh, Everyday Use, A Farewell to Arms, Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, Glass Menagerie, Gulliver's Travels, The Handmaid's Tale, Heart of Darkness, The Iliad, Invisible Man, Jane Eyre, The Joy Luck Club, The Lottery, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Metamorphosis, My Antonia, My Papa's Waltz, Neuromancer, The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, On the Road, Oresteia, Paradise Lost, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Portrait of the Artist...
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