Their Eyes Were Watching God Reflection

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is an influential book that teaches a simple lesson: life is not perfect, but we can still find our happy ending. Hurston demonstrates this by following the life of Janie Crawford. Janie is a headstrong African American who is caught up in the mess of early 20th century America attempting to get used to living with free African Americans. Additionally she must decide for herself what it means to love another person, discover who she is, and thereby, what she wants.

Even though Janie is born after the American Civil War, she lives in a society still learning to come to terms with the reality of civil equality. From the time she was very young, Janie stood out. Hurston explains this by narrating a time when Janie’s picture was taken with some other children. As they stand around looking at the picture Janie can’t find herself. “So when we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah waz s’posed to be.” This was when Janie first began to understand things in life would be different for her. She experiences the differences later in life, and much more harshly. Near the end of the

The beginning of the book illustrates this feeling by saying, “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” What Janie wishes for is just out of her reach, and it takes a lot of living and learning to find out how to get it. At first, all she thinks she wants is a marriage, but after her two unsuccessful marriages all she wants to be free. As it states when her second husband died, “This freedom feeling was fine.” But as she grows more lonely, she comes to the conclusion that it is better to go about life with some kind of companion, whether it was a husband, or simply coming to grips with who you