Annotated Bibliography for Their Eyes Were Watching

Annotated Bibliography for Their Eyes Were Watching God

Curren, Erik. "Should Their Eyes Have Been Watching God? Hurston's Use of Religious Experience and Gothic Horror." African American Review, Vol. 29, Iss. 1 (1995), 17-25. An exploration of the novel that rebuts and contrasts with earlier analyses that call Their Eyes an "affirmative quest" story. Curren's thesis is that these analyses in fact discount the entire final third of the book which is rife with horror, violence and tragedy, and asserts that what Hurston has done is not so much write an "affirmative quest" of the African folklore experience but tell a story that switches genres from "quest" to gothic horror. He then builds a methodical case for Hurston's deliberate intent to use gothic horror and her reasons for doing so-primarily, an anti-religious viewpoint that in this work is a fundamental underpinning of both gothic horror in general and its uses here. She uses a hurricane and a character's infection by a rabid dog as metaphors for black powerlessness-"watching God" being perceived as "focusing on the massa" (or, the white slaveowner)-reliance on corrupt and "magical" white authoritarian structures, and infection by "American type" materialism and racist ignorance. She warns her people not to fall into the traps inherent in a passive "watching God" mentality that will ultimately render the African American community no better than its white counterpart, with its own racism, superstitions and blind spots. Her characters and their tragedies serve in a "morality play" fashion to show the African American community the importance of its true folklores: the wisdom and wealth of a strong connection to nature, an egalitarian freedom, and a freshness and vitality to life without barriers of prejudice or erroneous magical/dependent thinking. Marks, Donald R. "Sex, Violence and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Black American Literature Forum, Vol 19, Iss. 4 (1985), 152-157. An analysis of Their Eyes in terms of the interdependence of Janie's four consecutive love/sex relationships and their expressions of "organic" versus "mechanistic" lives, or, "those of passion" versus "those of control." Marks proposes that the lines Hurston draws in the work are in fact parallels of her own actual life experiences: he openly states the thesis that the organicism expressed in Janie's experience is actually Hurston's own philosophy. He shows how Hurston equates "control" with death or decay, while "passion" is connected with life, fertility, and community-but how even in the midst of that life and community lurks the everpresent threat of violence, that in fact violence seems to be a "given" in any passionate heterosexual relationship. Finally, he theorizes that the resolution to Their Eyes is a "synthetic" ending-a paradox of trying to reconcile Janie's "romantic" nature, one that needs a heterosexual relationship to work, versus Hurston's own reputed inability to form mutually caring, passionate but nonviolent relationships with men in real life. Schwalbenberg, Peter. "Time as Point of View in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 10, Iss. 3 (1976), 104-105 + 107-108. An article that interprets Their Eyes through the vantage point of differing uses of the sense of time. Schwalbenberg purports that the shifts of time versus points of view in the novel are stylistic and deliberate, a way to alternately bring the reader into closer identification with Janie, then push the reader away into more abstract detachment. The novel presents different faces of time-from the timelessness of learning that she is black, and what that means for her in her world, to the respect for time and what it has taught her grandmother, to the quickening of time when Janie's life becomes less shackled. Change, progress, conflict and symbolism all partner with the use of time, of narrative versus dialogue in dialect-meandering versus immediate-to the effect that instead of "making everything old," time ultimately brings Janie to "youth" in the end, even in the aftermath of disillusionment, tragedy, and betrayal.

Some thoughts in Response . . .

I found the interrelationships of these three essays to be fascinating. I especially appreciate the iconoclast Curren, who is willing to go on record and "buck the tide" of prevalent thought and analysis on the "affirmative quest" versus the "gothic horror" portions of Their Eyes Were Watching God. It's always refreshing to find an author willing to take conventional analysis or "wisdom"-especially wisdom proclaimed by respected members of the literati-and turn it on its proverbial ear. I, too, would have trouble with any analysis of a novel that ignores tragic events in that novel simply so that one's politically-correct thesis is supported, so he's to be commended for his efforts in holding even revered literati up to mirrors that show some prejudice and/or deliberate ignorance. In that venture, he's successful in bringing a degree of honesty and accountability to other writers that they may not appreciate, but from which they can certainly both learn and benefit-and in the process, we all gain enlightenment and insight. What I find most striking, however, is what I see as an inevitable connection between the anti-religious, anti-"organized creed" viewpoint that Hurston expresses, and her apparent inability to separate violence from romantic love, passion, and sexuality-and the consequences of that life-view. How are these two connected? Let's explore that a bit. Formalized Western religion all too often takes a "bashing" as an oppressive system, one Hurston herself calls "words around a wish." What that criticism fails to account for, however, is the natural "braking" effect that a creed, even imperfectly practiced, can have on one's darker impulses. It's that lack of "braking"-in fact, even a glorification, or at least acceptance of its lack-that I find telling in Hurston's apparent psychological links between "passion" between men and women . . . and violence against each other. One cannot help but reflect, even conclude, that Hurston's almost adolescent need to defy her conservative Christian upbringing is in itself her own version of a personal creed-and not a particularly either original or insightful one, at that. What one of us hasn't rebelled against the faith of our fathers (or mothers) at one time or another? The experience is so common and so familiar, it's almost a "religion" in itself to throw Daddy's faith over as one matures and finds one's own way. Only after one tosses the proverbial baby with the bathwater is one left with a question one didn't expect: what, then, takes the place of this imperfect faith and creed? In Hurston's case, what fills the void is a vague combination of hoodoo and voodoo, organicism, and an arrested-adolescent "high tragedy" view of romance/romantic love. This viewpoint, while disdaining the "magical thinking" which equates the "massa" slaveowner with God, unfortunately reveals a total ignorance of a more accurate, truthful image of God that would have been present in a balanced Christian upbringing. True, many Christians lack either an image or an understanding of a compassionate, loving God. Likewise, no question of an inquiring mind should, on its face, be dismissed or condemned as "irreverent" (as apparently Hurston's were in her youth). On the other hand, Hurston's "creed," while not acknowledging a God per se, is certainly as oppressive and stifling as any conservative Christian creed could be. Voodoo is a religion based largely on fear and black magic-"words around a wish," something Hurston claimed to "feel no need of" when it was Daddy's Christianity, but which, oddly enough, she had little skepticism about as a dark art! The bottom line seems to be one of irony. While Hurston decries God as a creation of weak humanity, she as author in turn makes little gods of organicism, passion/violence and authoritarianism, key elements in the relentless male domination Janie encounters in Their Eyes. How does Janie escape the anger of these gods? Murder, denial, and withdrawal-solutions that are at best extreme coping mechanisms for escaping a sexual predator, maybe, but which can hardly be considered "triumphs" of spirit. In the end, Janie-and to some extent her author-is left with only one choice: repeat a descent into "romantic" darkness . . . or retreat into a semi-human withdrawal in which "romance" exists in consciousness as pieces of memory, and selective ones at that. Thus Hurston, disdainful of creed on one hand, embraces her own version of "words around a wish," and is left with the worst of both worlds: a creed . . . but no salvation.