Preview

Their eyes were Watching god

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
765 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Their eyes were Watching god
Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main protagonist, Janie, undergoes three marriages in which she changes and discovers her true self through the experiences that go on through her marriages and she realizes what she likes, doesn’t like, and inserts that into her personality and the way she perceives life. Throughout the book she uses metaphors that are written in a way that makes you think at first but once what is understood on what she’s trying to say, you see through her eyes what’s going on and she just doesn’t tell how she feels, she shows you how she feels.
For instance, in the first sentence of the book Janie talks about the horizon and how “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing,” (p.1) which symbolizes how there are two types of people. There are those who end up “coming in with the tide”, landing and accomplishing their dreams, and then there are those who keep on going farther and farther and are lost forever sailing and never accomplishing or landing to their dreams. When reading this quote, an image comes to mind, a sailor that wonders off never really having a destination or a sailor that knows where to go and how to get there and is focused as to where they end up. Janie gives this scenario and ties it with dreams and it’s just so clear on what she’s trying to demonstrate and get the reader to understand how people chose one way or the other to the way of their dreams.
Love is a big theme in the book. Janie as said undergoes three marriages and what she’s looking for was all influenced when “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree” (p.10) and “she saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” Outlines many motifs authors use to enhance the text, such as irony, allusion, setting, and so on. These Ideals for writing found in the novel “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” by Thomas Foster can be found in the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. This essay will focus on the quest, weather, symbolism, and religion, and how these elements are used to make “Their Eyes Were Watching God” a timeless story.…

    • 890 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Heroes are seen in all kinds of stories and they are universal characters. They possess qualities that are above the ordinary. They also have a tragic flaw that usually ends up leading to their down fall in the story. They do, however end up learning from their experience and grow through it. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God has a character that could be described as a hero. The main character, Janie, is a hero because she has extraordinary physical qualities as well as virtues, she has character flaws that lead to her downfall, and she manages to make her fall have some value.…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    At the start of the novel Janie is but a young girl dreaming about the adventures to come in life;A new flourishing pear tree with youthful green leaves and singing bees all around ,raising its branches towards the summer sun filled future it hopes to be a part of. “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.Where were the singing bees for her?Nothing on the place nor in her grandmother’s house answered her.She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road.Looking,waiting,breathing short with impatience.Waiting for the world to be made”(Ch.2).This quote from the second chapter of the novel sets the stage for Janie's search for her identity.She is only just beginning to see the…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Zora Neale Hurston manipulates imagery to portray the authority of Joe Starks in the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Extreme versions of power are utilized as a means of conveying Joe's natural dominance through his actions and those who interact with him.…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “She had waited all her life for something.” This quote is significant because it epitomizes the struggle of a woman to reach self-actualization. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston juxtaposes opposing places to emphasize the experience gained by the novel’s protagonist, Janie, in each respective location, and to emphasize the effect of that environment on Janie’s journey to attain her dreams. Through this comparison, the author explores the idea of living and experiencing life as a means of self-discovery. Moreover, Hurston expresses another theme central to the novel’s understanding. This particular theme denounces the belief that achieving life experience should always involve happiness. Through the juxtaposition of Eatonville to the Everglades Zora Neale Hurston depicts the self-discovery of a woman, attained only by embarking on through empiricism.In the novel Eatonville serves as a symbol of the oppression that Janie endured throughout the majority of her life. When the narration commences, prior to the introduction of Eatonville, Janie she is sixteen-years-old and living with her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny is characterized as strong-willed and overbearing. Furthermore, she is the first force of oppression, against which Janie must contend. The audience is provided with insight into Nanny’s perspective of the situation when Nanny remarks, “Ah was born back due in slavery...Ah didn’t want to be used for a work-ox and a brood-sow and Ah didn’t want mah daughter used dat way neither...Ah even hated the way you was born. But, all de same Ah said thank God, Ah got another chance” (Hurston 15). Because of her experiences, Nanny desires to protect Janie from all struggles in life; Nanny believes that by marrying Logan Killicks, Janie will be able to avoid the obstacles that her grandmother endured. Although Nanny’s intentions are virtuous, her actions only cause Janie to further rebel. Immediately after marrying…

    • 954 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of the most prevalent themes in, “Their eyes were watching God” is Jamie’s undivided quest for love and independence. Jamie has a goal throughout the novel to find spiritual enlightenment and reach the “horizon”. She went through several relationships and chimerical thoughts to do this, through her grandmother nanny and her three husbands. However, her third husband, tea cake plays a less substantial role in the novel but a significant role in Jamie quest to reach her dream of love, independency and security within herself.…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston has a happy ending Weldon describes. Janie in the end reconciliates and reassess herself spiritually.…

    • 340 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Zora Neale Hurston is recognized as one of the key contributors to the Harlem Renaissance that occurred during the 1920s and 1930s. Her multitudes of literary works explore and celebrate African American culture and heritage without directly addressing the subject of racism which was prevalent during this time. Hurston incorporates both the positive and negative aspects of African American culture into her stories in order to give a true depiction to her audience. In a number of her works, including “Sweat” and Their Eyes Were Watching God, domestic violence plays a very frequent role in marriages. Husbands would hit their wives to establish their power in the relationship, even when the wives did not do anything to deserve such cruel brutality. In Hurston’s short story, “Sweat”, oppression of women in the black community is demonstrated through the marriage of Delia and Sykes Jones. In another of her short stories, “The Gilded Six-Bits”, Hurston writes about a married couple who is completely in love and share a balance of power in the relationship. In 1937, Hurston published one of her more well-known works, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel is about a young African American girl, Janie Crawford, and her journey from a young girl into an independent woman. This transformation is gradually seen through her three marriages. Although each of the marriages was very different from one another, they all shared the same underlying conflict: a power struggle between genders.…

    • 2020 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Personification in this chapter is shown in this chapter when the narrator says what she is doing on the porch. “So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.” (ch.10, pg. 95) Here Janie is deciding whether or not she should be wary of Tea Cake; their shared love seems too perfect. This tension is also evident in Tea Cake’s name—his proper name, Vergible Woods, reminds readers of Janie’s past relationships with Logan and Joe. The woods, as earlier discussed, prevents Janie from seeing the horizon and finding love. Though his proper name has negative connotations, it is replaced by Tea Cake, an innocent nickname which comes from a sweet French desert. Hurston thus presents a tension in Janie’s mind between Tea Cake being a figure that will shade her from the light of the horizon or, on the other hand, being the love for which she has been searching.…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Zora Neale Hurston Portrays multiple sublime themes and ideas in her classic 1937 novel. Janie Crawford, the main character, desires love throughout her life in hopes to find the companion of her life to match the familiar ideal that love and successful relationships lead to true happiness. Through her relationships with Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods and Joe Starks she finally discovers a contradicting revelation that she feels genuinely satisfied alone. The accounts of these three characters help implement the theme throughout the…

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    2. In her marriage to Jody, Janie is dominated by his power. At several points, however, it is obvious that he feels threatened by her. Why does Jody need to be in control of everyone around him? How does Janie threaten Jody and his sense of control?…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the beginning of the 20th century, it was a new era for everything, especially literature. Two new and unique literary movements began; Local Color and Naturalism. Local Color with its distinct character tone and Naturalism with its weak main character was knowingly cherished by readers. As a response to Darwinism and the inequality in America, Naturalism opened Americans' eyes of the individual being defeated by society. Local Color freed the minds of the readers as well as the writers by putting the tone of the actual character, not everyone being sophisticated and educated. Despite the fact that Naturalism and Local Color was love, there were two notorious books of each kind; The Awakening, Naturalism, and Their Eyes were Watching God, Local Color. The Awakening by Kate Chopin was banned from most of the places and Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, a talented African-American writer, was hated by her own race. Both of the books have a main character that searches for life's delirium; Edna Pontellier and Janie Starks. Their idea of life's delirium was to find the perfect marriage run by love and find the true joy by and through love. Though they seem to carry the same conflict, they have similarities as well as differences in both of the novels and the characters.…

    • 2161 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For some they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That’s the life of men.” (pg. 1) Janie’s journey is seen through her grandmother and her three marriages, her solely purposes of finding her dreams of the true meaning of love. For some people they never find their horizons while others keep searching for it just like Janie did. Janie’s challenges throughout the book are conveyed by the use of imagery to conjure positive ideas to the reader’s mind. Hurston compares Janie’s love to “the pear tree” where she sees love as something so perfect. She compares love to blue skies, sunny days, bee pollinating pear blossom trees. Hurston’s use of…

    • 966 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston incorporates three marriages into Janies life story. The actual process of marriage and the presence of a special union thereafter are not spoken of with the grandeur they should be associated with, usually only being referred to for a mere one or two sentences at a time in the book. So they were married there before sundown, just like Joe had said (Hurston 33). The only references alluding to a marriage in Hurstons book are subtle and do not call for much consideration. As these unions occur three times in the book, each specific marriage can be evaluated for the presence of love and the values of success.…

    • 1337 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, the pear tree had a lot of impact on Janie’s decisions on who she would marry. She had had to kiss a lot of frogs before she could finally find her voice and independence. Her drive to find true love kept her going where others would’ve given up, which is not only inspirational, but also makes her a heroine in the…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays