...Name: Tutor: Course: Date: Their Eyes Were Watching God The novel their eyes were watching God is a story of an African-American girl called Janie Crawford. At the stage of adolescence, Janie comes across a bee pollinating a pear tree in her backyard and she becomes obsessed with finding true love. She then matures and grows emotionally through three of her marriages (Cheryl 5). Her first marriage is to, a farmer, Logan Killicks and it is arranged and carried on by Janie’s grandmother called Nanny. Logan proves to be a reliable but uninspired husband. He later gives Janie threats to kill her for being disobedient. Janie later leaves Logan for an ambitious man called Joe Starks. Upon their marriage, Janie is taken to Eatonville in Florida, which is among the first all-black city in America, by her husband Joe who is a mayor. Janie later realizes that her husband is very demeaning to women. He silences her when she speaks. He then accuses Janie of acting too younger than her age. Janie finds the situation she goes through unbearable, and she insults Joe’s manhood. When Joe was in his deathbed, Janie enters his room and speaks to him. After Joe dies, Janie stays widowed for some time, and she later meets another man, a fun-loving man whom she is twelve years older than and is called Tea Cake. Janie finds the true love she has been dreaming. They experience jealousy in their relationship but despite this, they are happy interacting with other workers while working...
Words: 2036 - Pages: 9
...In the movie Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there is an exploration of the paradigm of sexual identity from nature through the pear tree, the bee and the flower, and the hurricane. The film follows the transition from childhood to adulthood of Janie Crawford, a mixed girl of black and white. Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of the development of Janie's ideals of love and independence. As a child, Janie sees a bee pollinating a flower in the pear tree of her backyard and from there becomes determined to find true everlasting love. According to Robert Solomon, “This "traditionalist" definition of sexual identity has sometimes been associated with one or more of the following additional positions: that certain...
Words: 1259 - Pages: 6
...Their Eyes Were Watching God is a book we're motif connects to the story. Community, race, and folklore all connect to the meaning of the book. Community and how does it connect to this story?. Janie a main character of this book who helps community tie into the book. First of all, Janie Crawford an African American girl talks to a town folk man. This relates to motif because motif relates to community and in this novel Janie is not apart of the community. Janie is not a town folk but she still talks to the folk of that town. On top of that, people in the community don't accept Janie in their town so she is considered as an outsider. On page 2 paragraph 3 of their eyes were watching god it says “it was a weapon against her strength and if...
Words: 316 - Pages: 2
...Their Eyes Were Watching God tells a story about a young woman going through life and finding her voice, the movie made by Oprah Winfrey flips the story and its characters making the main character and everyone in the story different. Oprah does a wonderful job at completely destroying the morals of the time period, and the symbols shown in the book. The movie changes relationships making the main character stronger and more independent. The beautiful love story shown by Oprah became a ridiculous rendition of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel missing key elements from the book. Oprah Winfrey completely disregards the moral fiber of the time period. In the movie some scenes got extremely graphic with the kissing and love making. These scenes...
Words: 1309 - Pages: 6
...“Their eyes were watching god” is a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston is a well-known novelist and folklorist. She has published the most books than any other woman. Today she is seen as one of the most important writers in the America’s history. “Their eyes were watching god” is a story about a girl named janie crawford and her quest in searching for love. Throughout her journey of trying to accomplish her dream the book walks us through how she slowly matures and enter her womanhood. In the novel “Their eyes were watching god” Hurston uses similes, metaphors, and symbols to display the moral that marriage and intimacy doesn’t bring love. Hurston uses similes as one of the ways to show that love doesn’t come by marriage or intimacy....
Words: 772 - Pages: 4
...The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, is about a woman named Janie telling the story of her life to her friend, Pheoby. Janie, at sixteen, was on a quest for her ideal love and identity in Florida. Zora Neal Hurston portrays Janie after herself, as Hurston had a similar childhood to that in her story. Hurston had parents who were slaves and had lived in Eatonville when she was very young. She also had a fascination with nature, which added to the idea of Janie's idealized view of nature. Janie's journey to find what she was looking for was rough but she ultimately succeeded. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the author uses many symbols to characterize Janie's search for love and identity. In this story, Janie Crawford...
Words: 1468 - Pages: 6
...In “Their eyes were watching god” Hurston tells the story about Janie, a black woman whom because of her grandmother experience and beliefs was forced to marry into a loveless marriage which ended with her running off to marry a man who she thought was flashy and ambitious. Both marriages ended with Janie feeling unloved and trapped. Until she met the man of her dreams and she lived a life worth living even though she didn’t have half of what she had with her two first husbands. Even though her last marriage ended in tragedy Janie felt like she was alive, and she lived a life full of new begging with her last husband. All the men in Janie’s life reacted differently to the feeling of being emasculated. Logan kellicks her first husband treated...
Words: 356 - Pages: 2
...Their Eyes Were Watching God is a classic novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston uses the story of Janie Crawford to show how women had to gain and develop a voice for themselves. Women during this time were seen as either a “toy’ men could show off or a worker. Janie Crawford went through three marriages. In each marriage, she learned what she did and didn’t want in love. Janie also learned about herself. The things she went through in her marriages helped her develop a voice and her own personality. Janie had to develop her sense of self and independence. Janie had been alone from the beginning, her father left and so did her mother. Her grandma was her only hope of developing into a great and independent woman. Janie had no idea how...
Words: 1717 - Pages: 7
...The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, is set in West Florida during the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1900s, and tells the story of Janie Crawford, an African American girl growing up in the care of her grandmother, Nanny. As a young teenager, Janie has a moment of enlightenment underneath a blossoming pear tree. As she is enveloped in the beauty of the tree and in her own thoughts, she sees a local boy on the other side of her fence, and on a whim, goes up and kisses him. Nanny, witnessing this event, calls her into their house and explains to her that she is becoming a young woman and will need to be married off. Shortly after, Janie is married to Logan Killicks, a much older, but financially stable man. Hating how he treats her and forces her to work, Janie leaves Logan for a man named Joe Starks, who Janie is married to for nearly 20 years. Joe progressively gets more and more protective and controlling of Janie, and...
Words: 472 - Pages: 2
...Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel written about and follows the protagonist, Janie Crawford. Janie’s first marriage, to a farmer named Logan Killicks, was intentional and implemented by Janie’s grandmother, Nanny. Before Nanny died, she wanted to see Janie married and well-off with a man. A few months into the marriage, Janie opens up to Nanny about how she is feeling; she says she doesn’t feel the love like she should. Janie is very upset and cries to her Nanny. But her Nanny dismisses her and Janie returns to her home with Logan. One morning, Logan leaves the house to purchase a mule so Janie can help harvest and plow the fields. While he is away, Janie discovers a “cityfied, stylish dressed man,” walking near her house. She invites him over and they get to talking when eventually Joe proposes her to leave her husband and...
Words: 435 - Pages: 2
...In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Janie married three men with different personalities. Throughout the book, as readers we witness the types of love she experiences with her ex-husbands. Her troubles of love included running away, suffering abuse, and gossip from the townsfolk. Life was difficult for Janie, from her family history to her role as an African American woman in the ‘30s. Even though she was described as very beautiful, Janie stood out from everyone due to her past. “Seeing the woman as she was made then remember the envy they had stared up from other times”(Hurston 17). Because of her wish to find true love, Janie discovers it with the cost of being alone and losing people along the way. Janie’s first marriage was an arrangement made by her grandmother, Nanny. She didn’t want to be with Logan Killicks, but Nanny told Janie that love was going to come to her. “Ah ain’t gointuh do it no mo’, Nanny. Please don’t make me marry Mr. Killicks”(Hurston 32). She tried being married, but never felt any sort of love for him. Janie said to her grandmother “Cause you told me Ah gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t”(Hurston 40). After Nanny passed away, Janie’s life was difficult without any more family left. In chapter 4, she leaves Logan for another man and decides to marry him instead....
Words: 542 - Pages: 3
...Throughout life we have many desires and one of the things we want the most is love. We want to be loved and Zora Neale Hurston addresses the reality of love in her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. In this revolutionary book, love is the primary theme. It takes the reader through one woman’s desire for love, and the reality of what love is. Hurston is telling us that love is something that you must work to find and to keep, and for the main character Janie this was not what she imagined. When Janie is young she paints love to be this hallmark moment, where two people fall madly in love with a sexual desire for each other. “She was stretches on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold sun and the punting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and...
Words: 1035 - Pages: 5
...Their Eyes Were Watching God The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story of a woman’s growth as a person physically, emotionally, and intellectually while on a journey for life fulfillment. Janie lives her life how her grandmother wants her too, and then tries to take her own course only to find out that she is still unhappy. Finally she finds happiness within herself. During the Harlem Renaissance Janie faces all of these feelings and conflicts. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that included the new African-American cultural expressions across United States during the 1920’s. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the style element of conflict to reflect from the Harlem Renaissance ideal of asserting agency, while she departs from the ideals of the movement with her use of conflict to reflect from the Harlem Renaissance ideal of...
Words: 896 - Pages: 4
...While presented with an unfamiliar situation, in order to prevail, one must create a successful plan. In three literary works, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Odyssey by Homer, and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, the protagonists, Janie, Odysseus, and Viola, respectively, enter new lands and must adapt in order to survive. After encountering her new husband, Joe, and moving to an all-black town, Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God faces the issue of undermining the values she holds in respect to being her version of an independent woman in order to satisfy him. Years after the Trojan War and still landing into many tough situations in different territories, Odysseus from The Odyssey makes use of his sharp intellect,...
Words: 442 - Pages: 2
...Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people”. Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities. I am very interested in the determination that Janie has to find true love. The idea that Janie has about true love is very beautiful and fascinating. The idea she has is what allowed her to find true love. She finds what she was looking for in Tea Cake even though it took some time. As you read you learn about the value of true love. Tea cake promises Janie a great life. He helps her on her quest...
Words: 405 - Pages: 2
