Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the horizon, the pear tree, and the bee and blossom as symbols of Janie’s ideas and dreams. In this paper, there will be the analysis of these symbols in the book and how they fit in the belief system and needs of Janie.

In the excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author uses personification to bring the scenery surrounding Janie to life in a surreal way. By using personification through the passage, the author helps put a vivid imagine in the reader's head.

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

In Janie's world, readers enter into Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" with a rich and expressive language that tugs at the heart and mind. The way Hurston deploys diction and the word choice plays a key role in the shaping of a reader's perspective with respect to Janie's experiences and decisions. For instance, through vivid imagery, Hurston's language helps the reader have a sentimental connection to Janie early on, when she is reminiscing on her life under the pear tree. Indeed, Janie remembers the sun as a "new gold coin, just minted from the mint of heaven. " This metaphor expresses not just the beauty of the natural world, but the longing that Janie feels for fullness and happiness.

Everyone makes a daily decision. Even ones that can change one’s life. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston shows the outcomes of one decision that had pushed Janie on a journey to find out about the mysteries of love and her true identity. Hurston Juxtaposes Janie’s former ideals of love to help her be guided towards a light that will make her future

In many novels, authors have implemented social constructs in order to shape the mood of the books. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston alludes to social class, especially race, subtly. Hurston’s background of anthropology and growing up as an African-American woman clearly plays a role in the social makeup of the novel. The main character of the novel, Janie, has various experiences in which readers can discover the social structures in her life. Through Janie’s story of self-discovery, Hurston reveals social constructs of the time, especially race and wealth, by including anecdotes, complex characters, and thought-provoking scenes that highlight controversial issues.

      Human beings love inertia. It is human nature to fear the unknown and to desire stability in life. This need for stability leads to the concept of possessing things, because possession is a measurable and definite idea that all society has agreed upon. Of course, when people begin to rely on what they know to be true, they stop moving forward and simply stand still. Zora Neal Hurston addresses these general human problems in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston, however, does not present the reader with the nihilistic hopelessness of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but rather offers an understanding of the basic human aspect that causes us to fear emptiness. Janie, the

I think by creating this as the title, Hurston is revealing her argument that people are often seeking answers and action from God

In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she focuses on the life of the main character, Janie Crawford. The novel takes place in a small town down south called Eatonville in the 1930’s. Janie is on a quest to find her true identity or in other words, her horizon. Along Janie’s quest for true happiness, she faces numerous obstacles that continue to hinder her from finding her true identity and a man she can truly love. As the expectations of others control her life, Janie keeps pushing and is determined to find a true inner happiness. Janie has to fight the expectations of others all throughout the novel until she reaches a point

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

Richard Wright and Alain Locke’s critique on Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God reveal the common notion held by many of the time, and still today, that there is a right and wrong way for a black person to talk and to act. Wright’s point of view of clearly racially charged and coming from a place of ignorance and intolerance. While, Locke’s point is simply due to a lack of an ability to think out of the box and observe deeper meaning, perhaps due to internalized oppression and a fearful desire to talk and act just like a white man in order to be taken seriously. Wright’s argument that the novel has no central theme and is parallel to minstrel shows, and Locke’s belief that Hurston uses relatable language to avoid diving into mature writing, are inherently wrong and fueled by the very issues Hurston was trying to combat: racism and sexism.

I read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, copyright in 1937 and has a total of 193 pages.

In conclusion, In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, the audience watches Janie enter a period of self-discovery. When Janie gains this power of freedom, she realizes she craves something different from what society had told her she would want; What we feel inwardly to be true, society seeks to take that truth away. With this experience an internal and external

Warning Signs is definitely something that you adventurous readers will want to get your hands on. Stephen White has concocted a masterpiece of a story with murder, psychology, family, love, mystery,scandals and good old police work. When the battered body of the Boulder County District Attorney, Royal Peterson is found dead in his home with pottery shards around his head, chaos ensues. With a homicide detective as the prime suspect, the whole town is on edge, including therapist Alan Gregory. His wife, Lauren, worked for the victim. While she scrambles to help her friend, the suspect in question, Alan meets with a new patient, who is questionable enough on her own, without who she claims to be her son, making bomb threats to the lawyers in

Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.