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¶ … Eyes Were Watching God." It discusses the ending of the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and precisely how and why the ending appropriately or inappropriately concludes the work.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" first published in 1937. In this book Hurston uses vision along Janies way to finding a vision of her. The ending of this book was quite unusual from other books it wasn't exactly a happy ending but it appropriately concluded the work of Neale Hurston. In the ending chapter of this book Janie's vision of Black and white had been distorted. Starting from when she was a child, she had not even known that she was African-American. When she first met Joe, she likes him because he was "kind of portly, like rich white folks." Her marriage to him also gave her the image of being white and sitting in a "high chair." It is not until her third marriage, to Tea Cake, that she can finally fulfill her vision of self. After going through all the hardships of life Janie has made sense of her marriages and struggles. She has seen the horizon and taken control of it no longer is the horizon some strange far away source of aspiration. Janie owns the horizon; she can wrap it around herself and rejoice in the memories that have been trapped in it like fish in a net. The theme of the novel is summarized by Janie in three sentences: "you got tuh go there tuh know there...Two things everybody got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves." (Hurston 1937) These sentences are calls to empowerment for all people, women and men alike. Janie has found that she must live for herself in order to be self-fulfilled. Since the entire novel has focused on Janie's progressive journey to finding herself. Even though life wasn't easy as she thought it will be and towards the end the experiences that she went through helped her found her true self.
References
Hurston, Zora Neale: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" 1937.
Her increased sense of self-worth because of her romantic relationship with Tea Cake made her consider the possibility that she can attain her needs and wants, and be able to control her actions and behavior in order to attain these needs and wants. In effect, in order to preserve her relationship with Tea Cake, she willingly let herself be subjugated by Tea Cake's dominant nature. On a bigger plane, Janie's
Janie did gain some very valuable insight into her self; she had thought that her dreams could be fulfilled through someone else's dreams. After Joe's death Janie no longer gave away her power to others, she knew what she wanted and was going to be very cautious about who she let into her life. The townspeople were eager to criticize Janie for her limited period of grief and mourning. While
This turns out not to be entirely true, however, as in one incident Tea Cakes slaps her in public, not to be mean, exactly, but because "being able to whip her reassured him in possession (Hurston, 176). Though I do not like this part of myself, I can absolutely identify with such feelings -- it sometimes seems like anger and even violence are the only effective ways to exert
Zora Hurston THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD Zora Hurston's 'Their Eyes were watching God' occupies an important place in African-American literature on account of that fact that it is not part of the protest literature that emerged during Harlem Renaissance. The novel revolves around a powerful belief: a person's failure is caused more by his thinking than his sex or color. In other words, Hurston argues that when man refuses to strive
Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye is deals with the historical and psychological effects of defining beauty according to race. The Bluest Eye is essentially about how concepts of beauty are instilled from a very young age. It is about the life of the Breedlove family who resides in Lorain, Ohio. The novels focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with
Literary Analysis on �Their Eyes Were Watching God��The Eyes are Watching God� is written by Zora Neale Hurston, a 1935 classic novel that received great acclamation and criticism. The novel is about a white girl, Janie, and her life with three husbands and her grandmother. Life chronicles also detail facts about the people she knows or comes in contact with, which greatly shape her life experiences.Hurston�s novel is mainly enlightened