Zora Neale Hurston's Struggles In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Prompt 10 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

The answers to her prayers came in the form of Tea Cake, a young man twelve years her junior who was a little infamous amongst the townspeople for his mischievous antics. Tea Cake loves Janie genuinely, and doesn’t try to keep her from being who she wants to be. Although he dies before he and Janie are able to spend many years together, marrying him has an effect on Janie that causes her to forget her past grievances, and consider herself as an independent person like she always hoped to be. After Tea Cake, Janie is a free woman in that she is no longer under the oppressive restraints that she once allowed to hold her back from a life she considers worth living. The exploration of gender roles and the plight of women in Hurston’s novel continues to be relevant in today’s world, despite the fact that Their Eyes Were Watching God is now 79 years old. Janie struggles with this conflict, but eventually overcomes the issues that once withheld her from pursuing what she really wanted in life. Although the novel was published in a different time, the central message to pursue the destiny that one truly desires still reaches women and girls all around the world