Their Eyes Were Watching God Love

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, endures two marriages before finding true love. In each of Janie’s marriages, a particular article of clothing is used to symbolically reflect, not only her attitude at different phases in her life, but how she is treated in each relationship.

Throughout the book “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (written by author Zora Neale Hurston and published in September 1937) multiple motifs (a recurrent image, symbol, theme, character type, subject, or narrative detail that becomes a unifying element in an artistic work or text) have appeared amidst the chapters. Furthermore, motifs have played an excruciatingly important role overall throughout the book, whether it be a place, a person, the weather, or simply just a personʻs possession(s). Therefore, in this prompt I will explain the various motifs exhibited in the passages.

Love may blind some but for others it opens eyes. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Kneale Hurston, the main character Janie, lives an arduous life of trying to find what love really is. Throughout her three marriages, Janie develops into a strong woman due to her own ignorance, being submissive, and love.

Throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford searches for unconditional and fulfilling love. She experiences different degrees of love throughout her life, primarily through her three marriages. As she strives to find her own sense of love and independence, Janie encounters judgement from the townspeople during various points in the novel. In the novel, Zora Neale Hurston uses diction and symbolism in order to prove that one must develop their own sense of independence before they can obtain their desired love, which may involve one going outside of their expected role or comfort zone within society.

Topic 2: Compare/contrast Janie in Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God & Edna in Chopin 's The Awakening in terms of conformity within a male-dominated society. (four page minimum)

A new hindrance called society skeptically watches Janie as she quickly changes from being a widow of a powerful man to the wife of a young, poor man named Tea Cake, since her quest for love was not nearly over. She had the option of either being submissive to society by staying as Joe’s widow or show tremendous self-reliance and confidence by marrying Tea Cake. Pheoby, Janie’s close friend, declares, “Dat’s de way it looks. Still and all, she’s [Janie’s] her own woman...she should know by now what she wants tuh do” (Hurston 111). This shows how Pheoby trusts in Janie’s self-reliance and genuinely believes that she can make her own decisions. Also, Janie explains that “Tea Cake ain’t no Jody [Joe] Starks… but de minute Ah marries ‘im everybody is gointuh be makin’ comparisons...dis is a love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). She wants to live her own independent life, and not have to rely or depend on anyone. This is rather ironic because Janie does end up depending on Tea Cake, but perhaps not for material goods or money, like with Logan and Joe, but for something called love. Because Janie loves Tea Cake so much, she is willing to become submissive to his will. He ends up finding pleasure by letting out his anger by beating her. For example, Sop-de-bottom, one of Tea Cake’s friends, states “Ah love tuh whip uh tender women lak Janie! Ah bet

Hurston uses exclamatory sentences and extensive imagery to reveal her aspirations for Janie. While Hurston expresses her cheerfulness through exclamations, she also creates a sense of delicacy by describing the moon rising through words such as “amber”, “fluid”, and “quenching”. Janie initially finds herself feeling adamant about following Tea Cake down the walk. As Janie has found herself receiving the short end of the stick in regards to her past relationships, she is cautious about entering a new one. Janie’s mind is flooded with the possibilities of Tea Cake’s true intentions. However, rather than using an interrogative sentence (Maybe this strange man was up to something?), Hurston employs an exclamatory sentence to give weight to the intense emotions Janie is experiencing. This shows how Janie is led by her heart rather than by her head. Throughout the novel, Janie finds herself questioning the true intentions of Tea Cake and contemplating the idea which others have planted inside her head that Tea Cake is only after her for her money. Despite being an opinionated, strong-headed woman, Janie also craves affection and love, and finds herself depending on others to provide this for

In the re-designed cover of Their Eyes Were Watching God I used a road as a symbol of dreams. The road helps show that there are better things ahead with the possibility of change and improvement. “Ships have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail on forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in the resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. that is the life of men” (Hurston 1). People rely on their dreams to get them to where they want to go just as Janie relies on men to get her to where she wants to go.

The standards are so set into one's head that the men are completely oblivious and see themselves as the most important; this constant feeling of superiority in that period especially. They neglect the feelings of their wives and only seek their benefit and pleasure. After all this, Janie realizes that “Some folks never were meant to be loved and he’s one of ‘em” (56). Janie is done pretending and insists that she doesn’t want to be married to Logan anymore. Janie perseveres and understands that at the current rate, her pear tree dynamic that she wants so much won’t happen.

In Catholic doctrine, the seven cardinal sins are the basis from which all the “sins” of humanity stem. In this system, any moral infraction a person may commit would be categorized under one of these seven sins (also known colloquially as the “seven deadly sins”). This system has been widely adapted throughout culture over the centuries, and is a common tool utilized to examine the actions of humans. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, enters into three marriages, two of which fail based on the failings of her husbands, and the third of which succeeds in spite of the failings of her husband. Each of these husbands, in fact, displays traits which fall under the cardinal sins, and the sin of pride in particular; even the third husband, Tea Cake, displays the very same sin, leading to the downfall of their marriage.

In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.

Through the ‘death’ of Janie’s dream, Hurston argues that one cannot move forward until she has accepted the truth. Janie’s Nanny had constantly reminded her that she needed a husband to one day rely on when Nanny was not around anymore. Nanny claimed that if Janie were to get married to a financially stable husband, she would be prosperous. Therefore, Janie believed marriage automatically results in love. Correspondingly, Hurston writes,

Hurston details Janie’s search for love to show her as a symbol of a hopeless romantic. In Janie’s first marriage with Logan Killicks, she clings to a

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.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.