Theme Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

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.

She use many women to represent these roles, but Janie Crawford, the main character and Mrs. Turner, one of Janie's friends in the town play two of the biggest roles of this portrayal. Although there is many different roles of women in the novel, the main one is that they are supposed to stay within their boundaries and not speak out for or against any other male. Hurston uses her unique portrayal of these two characters to illuminate how poorly they are treated by males and how they feel the need to place themselves above the negroes. This novel was set in a time where it was acceptable for a women to be treated as a possession. There are many instances in the novel where Janie is perceived as a prize or a “trophy wife”. In current times, none of these actions of men would be acceptable and any women under these conditions would speak out and stand up for herself. Their Eyes Were Watching God provides a story that shows how life was like for women in the early 1900’s. While sitting on a porch looking pretty all day may seem like the perfect life, nothing compares to freedom of speech and being able to stand up for yourself in times of criticism. Janie learns this important lesson in the novel, and it becomes clear that her quest she set out on, finding love, is complete, but something else is also. In the book How To Read Literature Like A

In the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, was about how girl named Janie Crawford who had a lot of changes in her life when she met with other important people.By her going through these events she is able to grow as a person and find what true love and happiness is.Also Janie Crawford married three different persons and each of everyone she learn something about her delf and the things she didnt want in her life.A Lot of people expect different things for Janie, but Janie's responses to these expectations is very different , she does the unexpected.I think Janie learns what true love and happiness is from the different relationships she had and she changed as an individual by becoming a more confident and independent.

During the 1920s, there was a period that was called the Harlem Renaissance, during which African Americans got the opportunity to be creative and express themselves through music and art. Langston Hughes and Louis Armstrong were a few of the famous people who came from this period in the 1920s. Another famous person that came out of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston, a multi-talented African American woman who wrote stories that described the life and struggles of the 1920s through the stories she wrote. Hurston was an American writer, who was able to connect to the hearts of most people from all kinds of different races and religions during the period. Even today, her readers still feel the connection Hurston was trying to make

They are told love is something to strive toward; yet, it is typically reliant on the type of man a woman decides to marry. As society blurs the lines between expectation and aspiration, readers see occurring societal expectations in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie’s expectations begin early in the novel with her Nanny. Janie is expected to marry a worthy man; however, she struggles to follow this gender role because she desires love in a marriage. Nanny says to Janie: “You com heah wid yo' mouf full of fullishness on uh busy day. Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all yo bown days, and big protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat tuh you and call you Mis' Killicks, and you come worrying' me 'bout love” (Hurston 23). Nanny voices her disappointment in Janie because she sees no reason for Janie to be unhappy in an arranged marriage. To escape these conformities, Janie finds interest in a second husband, Joe Starks. Though Janie’s marriage to Joe is partly an escape from her previous life, she realizes early on that her marriage to Joe has been a tradeoff for a new form of confinement and social subjugation. Despite her new conditions, Janie is not afraid to let her voice be heard. She asserts herself when she tells Joe: “Naw, Ah ain’t no young gal no mo’ bet den Ah ain’t no old women neither. Ah reckon Ah looks mah age too. But Ah’m uh women every inch of me, and Ah

Although their lives were full of challenges and hardships, they had positive aspects as well. Hurston describes Janie in the following quote, "Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches." (Hurston, 8). She uses a metaphor again, and she implies that Janie has different “branches”, some containing good moments in her life and some with bad. Janie’s life apparently has more hardships than positive moments, yet she still embraces the “dawn” branches. She does not let the negative times in her life unmotivated her, as she continues to try until the end. More than half of the hardships faced in the novel were influenced by race one way or

Zora Neale Hurston reveals inner self versus outward self through different vocal and lyrical diction.

Janie’s grandma made efforts to warn Janie of the systematic hardship she’ll endure as woman of color. (p.14) Nanny essentially told her that in terms of societal value, black women were the most taken for granted, for they’re the “mules uh de world” as far as she knew. Nanny was constantly urging Janie to find a man because of this. She believed that a man could better her granddaughter, whether there was requited love or not, by providing security and financial stability. Janie tried to refute this idea that only a man could complete her life. Although she yearned for a reciprocated love, she didn’t need it, for she was more longing of an overall well-being. Her independency and empowerment conveys the feminism focus because she never necessarily believed that any man could waltz into her life and drastically improve. She saw them as equals. She believed that women could think and care for themselves sometimes. For instance, Joe told her, “...Someone got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none themselves.” Janie was quick to dismiss his ignorant slanders in efforts to disprove them. In the following paragraphs, Hurston narrates her reflection on what transpired. She knew he ultimately wanted her to yield in submission to his every command, but she

Janie Crawford Killiks Starks Woods is the main character in the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, where she learns what's it's like to go from marriage to marriage looking for love. In the novel, Hurston utilizes the pivotal moment when Janie realizes that marriage doesn’t always mean love to show Janie's coming of age and psychological development which is used to show that love doesn't always come first.

Zora Hurston uses vivid imagery, natural diction, and several literary tools in her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”. Hurston’s use of imagery, diction, and literary tools in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” contributes to, and also compliments, the essay’s theme which is her view on life as a “colored” person. Throughout “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” Hurston carefully incorporates aspects of her African American culture in an effort to recapture her ancestral past. Hurston’s use of imagery, diction, and use of literary tools shape her essay into a piece of Harlem Renaissance work.

between Joe and Missie May is greatly affected by materialism. Every Saturday afternoon Joe throws nine silver dollars for Missie May to pile beside her plate at dinner; she then runs out to greet him and they play fight with each other. She digs through his pockets for candy kisses and other goods that he has put in them for her to find. They obviously love each other, but I think that in this Hurston is giving a subtle hint of what role materialistic things play in the relationship between them. Slemmons is a wealthy, new man in town that everybody is in awe of; Joe especially, and eventually that leads to hardship in the marriage between him and Missie May. She sleeps with Slemmons because he promises gold, but what ultimately leads her to be unfaithful? Is it that she wants it - thinking only of herself? Or, is she thinking that she

Historical criticism strives to cognize a literary work by examining the social, cultural, and intellectual context that essentially includes the artist’s biography and milieu. Historical critics are more concerned with guiding readers through the use of identical connotation rather than analyzing the work’s literary significance. (Brizee and Tompkins). The journey of a historical reading begins with the assessment of how the meaning of a text has altered over time. In many cases, when the historical context of a text is not fully comprehended, the work literature cannot be accurately interpreted. For example, three literary works that entail the reader to better understanding the historical context are: “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston, “London”

When someone is put into a situation of whether to save someone they love that have been treating them poorly or to ignore them, I think that some people would ignore it. In this short story “Sweat” written by Zora Neale Hurston, Delia and Sykes are married couple for fifteen years. Delia had the choice of helping her husband that was bitten by a rattlesnake, which he deliberately set it up to frighten and get rid of Delia, or to ignore his cry for help.

In the short story by Zora Neale Hurston (glided Six-Bits) the black regular black working class linked into the story. The characters Joe and his wife Missie May are a happily young couple who are married. Their marriage was then messed up by Slemmons a player they met that opened an ice cream shop in there town. Joe and his wife Missie May worked things out with each other because they loved each other. A happy marriage in the working class is seem to be what everyone wants but there is rarely no such thing in real life.

Zora Neale Hurston’s book, “The Gilded Six-Bits” is an important piece of literature due to its impact on the world during the Harlem Renaissance era. It is considered a brilliant piece of modernist literature due to Hurston staying true to her background and roots as a black woman from the south, in which segregation was still a huge issue. The reason why it is considered a piece of modernist literature is because she wasn’t afraid to write in the black vernacular which was considered uneducated as blacks were progressing in arts, literature, and the music was alive. The story is filled with many different themes and issues that people can relate to such as money, deceit, and for people who have a big heart forgiveness and reconciliation.