Identity In Hurston's Post-Reconstruction, Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a young woman who struggles to find her identity. Janie Separates her exterior life from her interior life by keeping certain thoughts and emotions inside her head, and she reconciles this by while presenting the proper woman society expects her to be. Janie also silently protests to those expectations by acting against what people require of her, both emotionally and physically.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, main character Janie Crawford struggles through many of life’s trials, including poverty, discrimination, and three consecutive marriages that each come with their own challenges for Janie. While many tribulations of the era are discussed during the novel, the featured conflict revolves around Janie, and what it means for her and her dreams of being independent to be alive during a time when she is discriminated against for both her race and gender. Hurston’s novel explores how deeply generations of oppression and poverty can affect a person, and how Janie slowly but surely overcomes the obstacles of ignorance and prejudice barring her

Foster develops the concept that an illness is never just an illness in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. This is evident in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God through the symbolism of the illnesses that impact Janie’s life. Foster explains that a prime literary disease “should have strong symbolic or metaphorical possibilities” (Foster 224). Hurston utilizes this concept in her novel, the characters developing illnesses that represent Janie’s freedom and independence. Janie, bound to her husband, Jody, and obliged to do as he asked, looked for a way to freedom, but only felt more trapped. Her path to freedom finally appeared when Jody began to have kidney failure. On his deathbed, Janie was finally able to stand up to him, commenting that “ all dis bowin’ down, all dis obedience under yo’ voice- dat ain’t whut Ah rushed off

The United States Constitution states that the country values liberty, life, and happiness for all of its citizens. These three values shape the ideal American experience. Most view it as living freely, where all men, women, and races are created equal, and where oppression of genders and races does not exist. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, however, Zora Neale Hurston challenges the traditional view of this experience by illustrating how gender roles and racism change it, manifesting that it is not close to what the average citizen goes through, especially if he or she is black.

In the 19th century, the journey to unity, freedom, and equality for African Americans began with the creation of the black press. Its contribution to the overall advancement of people of color was one of the greatest of all time. Though it possessed a strong impact on the lives of African Americans, the demand for a black press eventually faded, specifically during the pre-civil rights era. The decline in the prevalence of minority based newspapers was the result of various changes in lifestyle; changes that would affect black and white America.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the long-lasting effects of slavery have taken a toll on Janie Crawford. Janie’s grandmother was raped by her master and had a child named Leafy. Leafy, although not born into slavery, endured a similar fate, which led her to run away, leaving her mother to raise her child, Janie. Janie’s appearance, showing strong European features, was both praised and shamed by society. This double standard was created by racism and was able to remain present due to segregation. The minds of black people have been brainwashed into thinking that people with more European features are more beautiful. Janie’s appearance models power, reflects society’s hypocrisy, and shows the distinction between the inner

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston introduces readers to the life of Janie Crawford living in rural Florida during the early twentieth century. During this time, women, specifically black women, were considered to be property of men in the south. Legally, women had no voice. Janie Crawford, as well as many others find themselves in a society expecting more out of life than what the time period has to offer. Through love affairs, catastrophes and death, Hurston shows readers how a small voice can make a difference. Janie Crawford fights to live the life she imagines for herself. Being lively but voiceless, she holds the trigger to her own destiny. Janie’s main characteristics are her willingness to act upon her inner instincts and

Anthropologist, and Harlem Renaissance writer and activist Zora Neale Hurston sought to share the “untouched, raw” characters of the South with her readers. Zora masterfully incorporates metaphors, imagery, idioms, and personification into her narratives as she shares her biography, folk tales, voodoo customs, and the social context of black life. Similar to Dust Tracks on a Road Zora Neale Hurston's autobiography, she uses metaphors and imagery to rise from her childhood poverty in the rural South to a leader taking over a captivating movement of her time, the Harlem Renaissance. In Mules and Men, a black America’s folklore who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery.Figurative language in Hurston’s work is used in order to convey its themes and messages and make the language richer and deeper. Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of Zora’s eminent bodies of work shows examples of Hurston using figurative language to bring Janie's (the main character) experience of tragedy to life.Janie wants something out of life and love that seems

There have been conflicts in the equality of our society. Black rights have taken several decades to achieve, and even today the black community faces racism. A notable time regarding black rights would be the early 1900s, when blacks were beginning to utilize their rights in the US. Although blacks were freed from slavery and confinement, they still faced troubles in equality that lasted throughout the 1900s. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God portrays the struggle and hardship of colored people as they fought for equality. Roger Rosenblatt reviewed and analyzed Hurston’s novel. While Roger Rosenblatt’s opinions on Janie’s struggle are accurate, his view of her relationship with Tea Cake does not agree with Zora Neale

Today is a time of equal opportunity and astonishing miracles for the human race as an entirety. Blacks are running the country, and women are discovering the unthinkable. The earth is billions of years old, yet just about one hundred years ago, it was a completely different world. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel by Zora Neale Hurston in which a character Janie yearns to find love in a time of harsh discrimination and violence. In this bitter setting, it seems that the hardest thing for Janie is to find that love. Hurston reflects the struggle of black women in the early 1900s America. However this author's purpose was to describe how in these times anger and societies denial were the recipe for strength and revival. Hurston uses religious allusions, swaying psychological perspectives, and crude gender roles to relocate the readers from our modern day lives to inside Janie’s consciousness and how a black woman overcame and shattered societal expectations.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston wrote in a way that conveyed a message through her characters, using a storytelling "frame" to express her ideas. Hurston did not stop by means to get her point across. Hurston uses Janie’s thoughts and actions to represents how during Reconstruction, African Americans were trying to find their identities and achieve their dreams of independence.

This article analytically manifest the purpose of the book. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God conveyed the life of the main character. The main character was a young African American women that yearned to be the owner of her own life. However Hurston manifested in the book that the main character wanted to find independence, but the main character is shocked by the fact she cannot be independent. She cannot find the independence she wants because a man will always define her. Hurston structured the book to show that the dominance of the male figure, and how her husband ultimately controls her actions.

The black culture is very diverse in different parts of the world-even in different parts of the state. Janie as moved throughout Florida to places such as West Florida, Eatonville, and the Everglades. Residing in these different places helps develop and define the character of Janie. Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie experiences many variations of black culture that helps build her character as she travels through Florida.

In Mapping the Margins by Kimberle Crenshaw, Crenshaw explains to the readers why women are more subjected to problems of violence. Race and gender have a huge part in this. Women of color, however, are more subjected to these type of things. Including rape, abusive relationships, homelessness, etc. Women of color are part of subgroups which increases their chances of being part of violence. Being part of the different subgroups prevents them from getting everything they need and want. They are burdened by lack of income and jobs. Without these essential things many of them will not be able to take care of themselves nor their family.

“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society” (“Famous Angela Davis quotes - We have to talk about ….). Angela Davis no longer accepted the philosophies or ideas she could not modify within others, but worked to change the beliefs she could no longer accept. Davis aimed for her voice to be heard, so that her perspectives would perceive and taken into account by society. Davis is best known as a profound African-American educator, extremist for civil rights, and other advocate of other social issues. She realized about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. She emerged as an influential counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as an authority figure of the