Zora Neale Hurston Obstacles

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, home to Janie is a place that has both positive and negative associations- the pear tree. Janie constantly goes to the pear tree for comfort; it is her place of happiness, peace and her love life. At the same time, Janie has the pear tree embedded in her mind. She constantly compares her partners to the pear tree and what their love should be like; so when the thought of an unwelcoming incident pops up in her head, he is tarnishing her pear tree. At sixteen, Janie’s grandmother caught her kissing Johnny Taylor; Janie spends most of her day under the pear tree in her backyard with her mind-boggling questions on virginity, love and marriage.

The book begins when she is a new born and is unaware of what the world has to offer. At the age of one her mother takes her and her siblings to South Carolina to live with their grandparents. She remains in South Carolina for several years. During this time the only children she encountered where the three sets of neighbors that lived on the same street as her. The first set neighbors included the boy with the hole in his heart and her grandmother used this individual to teach her that you discuss sensitive topics such as illnesses that others have with them.

When Tita receives the roses from Pedro, she experiences a lot of emotions. Looking back at it while she is making the sauce, she remembers being “shaken as she was to get a bouquet of roses, and from Pedro besides” (Esquirel 47). The feelings she has represent her being deeply in love with Pedro. She is taken by surprise when he gives her the roses. When her family feasts on the sauce, more than anyone, her oldest sister Gertrudis is affected by the magical realism of the quail in rose petal sauce.

Alice Johnson was born and raised in Boston, she was born on June 14th 1800. Her mother died at her birth she was raised by her two older sister and father who worked in the trading business, both of her sisters were school teachers. Alice was very well educated at home. She began writing poetry at the age of 13, reaching her early 20s, she used poetry to speak out against the inequality of Men and Women. Alice lived in a house in a suburban area, new railroads were being built just a mile away.

He, even in her eyes, is not perfect, however they love each other mutually. For once, one of Janie’s husbands is not trying to dominate and make himself superior. Janie states this mutual love for him at their relationship’s beginning by saying, “he could be a bee to a blossom — a pear tree blossom in the spring”(Hurston ). At last, the mutual relationship like a bee and blossom is possible, both benefit and neither feels left out. He teaches her to shoot, hunt, play checkers, and work outside.

On page 11 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston writes, “Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.” This quote represents how Janie sees herself; she sees herself as a young tree in bloom.

Though some members of her family are acclimated to white culture, Mama sees that they are still viewed down upon. She also realizes that Black people sometimes put themselves down because they think they are worthless, and therefore wants Walter to understand that just because he is Black doesn’t make him any less of a person. She makes him acknowledge this by sharing an anecdote of her history and how even though her ancestors were slaves, they never let anyone tell them that they “[weren’t] fit to walk the earth” (Hansberry 143). This enables Walter to also put his family's needs before his personal needs of obtaining more money. After seeing her family finally come together, Mama has finally successfully completed all 5 levels of the pyramid.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” a novel written by African American author Zora Neale Hurston is a story about the life of an African American women, Janie, who has trouble finding a husband that she really loves. Looking through the analytical lense of race one major theme that is identified in the first half of the book is beauty. Janie is a beacon of beauty that radiates into every character’s eyes and men can’t help but drool over her. Throughout the story it seems that not one women or man is anywhere close to looking as good as Janie does.

As a poor, African American girl in the 1940s, society has cast Pecola aside. Right from birth her mother thought she had a “head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). Pecola does not understand the ugliness placed upon her. For “long hours she [would sit,] looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised” (45). Pecola finds herself drawn to the prostitutes because they do not accept the ugliness forced upon them and instead find themselves worthy of love and beauty.

Forced by their husbands into hard-working jobs, such as farm laborers or as maids for American families, the Japanese women quickly noticed how different they were from their American counterparts. “We loved them. We hated them. We wanted to be them… And we regretted that we could not be more like them” (Otsuka, 2011, p. 39).

Sanchez Pg.1 Perfection does not exist within the finding of a husband. Woman may unintentionally encounter several marriages and in the end it may seem like everything happens for a reason. Experiencing a horizon would be a blessing to protagonist Janie Mae Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. She is an African American woman who deals with hardships while being married to her three husbands Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake, each having their own effect on Janie.

They had one daughter, A’Lelia McWilliams, born June 6, 1885. Moses died in 1887. In 1888, Breedlove and her daughter moved to Saint Louis, Missouri. Breedlove began to work as a laundress, hardly earning more than one dollar a day.

In like manner, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston can be closely associated with Mr. Foster’s “quest formula”. The novel revolves around a main character named Janie who, since a young girl, has always wanted to find true love after witnessing a bee pollinating a pear tree. With only her grandmother as her family, she married twice, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, before she found a man that made her happy. During unexpected circumstances, Janie had to kill Tea Cake and return to her previous home, where she rationalizes that Tea Cake gave her what she wanted the most, freedom and free will, and finally finds her peace of mind.

Mary was born August 5, 1861 in Belleville,IL to Henry and Lavinia Richmond. She was raised by her grandmother and two aunts in Baltimore, MD after her parents died. She grew up around racial problems, suffrage, social, and political beliefs. Because she grew up around those things she started becoming a critical thinker and social activism. Richmond was home schooled because her grandmother and aunts were not familiar with the traditional education system until the age of eleven when she entered public school.

Mary wasted no time a year later she graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. Mary was teaching at Kendall Institute in Sumter, SC when she met another teacher by the name Albertus. They married each and Mary birthed their son by the name of Albert McLeod Bethune o February 3, 1899. They lived in savannah, Georgia for a while until they relocated to Palatka, fl.