Their Eyes Were Watching God

"Their Eyes Watching God" is one of the most important works of the twentieth-century American Literature by Zora Neale Hurton. It is and enduring Southern love tory with beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in a captivating voice of a strong willed woman who refuses to live in sorrow, pain, foolish romantic dream, this is the story of a fair-skinned girl independent Janie Crawford, and her always evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trails, hurt, and purpose. Hurtson masterwork remain as prominent as todays works of literature.



Plot Summary
Janie Crawford arrives home after a long trip. She begins to tell the story of the last twenty years of her life to her best hometown friend, Pheoby.Janie's story starts with her youth, as a girl in search of great things. Raised by her grandmother, a black woman raped by a white man, Janie never really has the chance to go out in search of her dreams. Her grandmother, having grown up during slavery, never had much of anything, including a voice. She was always repressed by white people, and never could have the kind of nice things that she wanted. When Janie's mother is raped, she runs away and leaves Janie to be taken care of by her grandmother. Her grandmother only wants Janie to have the kinds of things she never had the chance to have. So, despite Janie's refusal, she arranges for Janie to marry a man named Logan Killicks.

This marriage does not fulfill Janie like she imagines a marriage should. Logan makes Janie work hard and cares little about her opinions. Janie is in search of a husband and a love that make her feel wonderful all over, just like watching the bees sink into the pear tree blossom. When Joe Starks, a well-dressed man with big dreams comes along, Janie thinks this might be her chance at love and a better life. Thus, she leaves Logan and runs off with Joe Starks. They get married and move to a town called Eatonville, where Joe becomes a big voice as the mayor. He becomes such a big voice that he is always silencing Janie. She never has a chance to speak her mind, and her marriage to Joe is not what she had hoped for. After Joe dies, Tea Cake starts hanging around Janie. She falls in love with his carefree attitude and the way that he makes her feel like a pear tree in bloom. He allows her to speak and loves her for herself, and not the money she made while with Joe.

Tea Cake and Janie move to the Everglades to work on the muck where beans and sugar cane thrive. They live off the money they earn and are happy and in love. When a great hurricane comes, they are forced to flee for their lives. Tea Cake saves Janie's life from a rabid dog, but he gets bit in the process. Tea Cakes falls ill from the rabid dog, and, in his delirium, tries to kill Janie. She shoots first and kills Tea Cake. She is broken-hearted that she shot and killed the one man she ever loved, but she is happy she had the chance to love at all. Janie is put on trial, but found innocent.

Janie finishes her story to Pheoby. As Janie goes upstairs to bed she feels Tea Cake is still with her and is satisfied.

Characters

 * Janie Mae Crawford
 * Tea Cake
 * Jody Sarks
 * Logan Killicks
 * Pheoby Watson
 * Nanny Crawford
 * Mr. and Mrs. Turner
 * Sam Watson
 * Leafy Crawford
 * Amos Hicks
 * Motor Boat
 * Hezekiah Potts
 * Dr. Simmons
 * Johnny Taylor
 * Annie Tyler and Who Flung
 * Mr. and Mrs. Washburn
 * Nunkie

Themes

 * Sexuality
 * Their Eyes were Watching God is in many ways a novel about Janie's sexual awakening. Because it was written in the conservative 1930s, much of this sexuality is masked in metaphor. When Janie finally finds a "bee for her blossom," it is the man that she has been most sexually attracted to in her life. Hurston takes a naturalist approach to sexuality. Unlike her grandmother, Nanny, who sees sexuality as threatening and destabilizing and punishes Janie for kissing a boy, Hurston sees it as an integral part of identity. Janie's sexuality is linked to nature from the very beginning. She learns about it from bees, rather than from a human mentor.
 * Power
 * Power, specifically black power, was an issue of great importance to the Harlem Renaissance writers. Various characters in Their Eyes were Watching God have different notions about the best way to gain power in a white-dominated world. Nanny's idea is that her granddaughter should marry a wealthy man so that she doesn't have to worry about her financial security. Joe gains power in the same way that whites traditionally did, by gaining a position of leadership (the mayorship) and using it to dominate others. However, Janie finds that the type of power that she prefers in a man is personal, rather than constructed. She thinks that a person's power is derived not from their material possessions, but from their personal experiences, and their manner of relating to others.
 * Black Autonomy
 * One of the most politically notable aspects of Their Eyes were Watching God, a decidedly apolitical novel, is the concept of black autonomy. Jim Crow laws were still in effect in the South during the 1930s, keeping blacks and whites in seperate schools, churches, and bathrooms. Eatonville, the town in which Zora Neale Hurston grew up, was famous as the first all-black incorporated municipality in the country. Hurston's novel is a ringing affirmation of black autonomy, portraying a town with a black mayor, post office, and so on. But she questions the methods of the leader of this town, concerned with whether he achieved power through traditionally white avenues.
 * Consumerism
 * Hurston was by no means a capitalist, but this does not mean that she was unaware of some of the evils of capitalism. The easiest way to divide the "good" and "bad" characters in this novel is to ask which characters value material possessions. Nanny, Logan, and, to a certain extent, Joe, all value goods because they see how hard it is for African-Americans to attain them. However, their goods only make these characters look foolish. Joe's golden spittoons are a pitiable attempt to approximate the fashions of his white former bosses. Hurston is careful to draw the connection between characters like Janie and Tea Cake and nature, rather than consumable goods.
 * Gender
 * The distinction between activities appropriate for men and those appropriate for women is strongly drawn in the first half of this novel. Janie is prohibited from speaking her mind, playing checkers, and attending mule funerals. Hurston suggests that these gender constructions are absurd, however. One of Tea Cake's most appealing characteristics is that he empowers Janie to break these rules. Tea Cake encourages her to work, play checkers, speak out, fish, and shoot a gun.
 * Appearance of Race
 * There is a high incidence of African-Americans with mixed black and white descent in this novel. Janie's mother, Leafy, was the product of a rape by a plantation master, and was visibly white enough to garner punishment of Nanny by the plantation master's wife. Janie is described as having coffee-colored skin, and Hurston is careful to describe the degree of blackness of all of her characters. Caucasian characteristics can have a positive (Janie's shiny hair) or negative (Mrs. Turner's pointed nose and thin lips) effect on the character's attractiveness. Hurston is consistent on one point, however, and that is that people who try to look like something that they are not (usually whiter than they are) always end up looking terrible.
 * Work/Money
 * Janie differs from many of the other characters in Their Eyes were Watching God in that she is financially stable throughout the book with a fair amount of money in the bank. Therefore, for Janie, work is isolated from making money, and depends entirely on the nature of the labor. Contrary to most people, she enjoys laboring in the field more than clerking in a shop (despite the fact that the latter is "higher class") because it allows her to be near nature and the man that she loves. Janie's naturalism extends beyond her sexuality to include which type of labor she prefers.

Motifs

 * Community
 * As Janie returns to Eatonville, the novel focuses on the porch-sitters who gossip and speculate about her situation. In Eatonville and the Everglades, particularly, the two most significant settings in the novel, Janie constantly interacts with the community around her. At certain times, she longs to be a part of this vibrant social life, which, at its best, offers warmth, safety, connection, and interaction for Janie. In Chapter 18, for example, when Tea Cake, Janie, and Motor Boat seek shelter from the storm, the narrator notes that they “sat in company with the others in other shanties”; of course, they are not literally sitting in the same room as these others, but all of those affected by the hurricane share a communal bond, united against the overwhelming, impersonal force of the hurricane.At other times, however, Janie scorns the pettiness of the gossip and rumors that flourish in these communities, which often criticize her out of jealousy for her independence and strong will. These communities, exemplifying a negative aspect of unity, demand the sacrifice of individuality. Janie refuses to make this sacrifice, but even near the end of the book, during the court trial, “it [i]s not death she fear[s]. It [i]s misunderstanding.” In other words, Janie still cares what people in the community think because she still longs to understand herself.


 * Race and Racism
 * Because Zora Neale Hurston was a famous black author who was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, many readers assume that Their Eyes Were Watching God is concerned primarily with issues of race. Although race is a significant motif in the book, it is not, by any means, a central theme. As Alice Walker writes in her dedication to I Love Myself When I Am Laughing . . . and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, “I think we are better off if we think of Zora Neale Hurston as an artist, period—rather than as the artist/politician most black writers have been required to be.” Along the same lines, it is far more fulfilling to read Janie’s story as a profoundly human quest than as a distinctly black one.But issues of race are nonetheless present. Janie and Tea Cake experience prejudice from both blacks and whites at significant moments in the book. Two moments in particular stand out: Janie’s interactions, in Chapter 16, with Mrs. Turner, a black woman with racist views against blacks, and the courtroom scene, in Chapter 19, after which Janie is comforted by white women but scorned by her black friends. In these moments, we see that racism in the novel operates as a cultural construct, a free-floating force that affects anyone, white or black, weak enough to succumb to it. Hurston’s perspective on racism was undoubtedly influenced by her study with influential anthropologist Franz Boas, who argued that ideas of race are culturally constructed and that skin color indicates little, if anything, about innate difference. In other words, racism is a cultural force that individuals can either struggle against or yield to rather than a mindset rooted in demonstrable facts. In this way, racism operates in the novel just like the hurricane and the doctrine to which Jody adheres; it is an environmental force that challenges Janie in her quest to achieve harmony with the world around her.


 * The Folklore Quality of Religion
 * As the title indicates, God plays a huge role in the novel, but this God is not really the Judeo-Christian god. The book maintains an almost Gnostic perspective on the universe: God is not a single entity but a diffuse force. This outlook is particularly evident in the mystical way that Hurston describes nature. At various times, the sun, moon, sky, sea, horizon, and other aspects of the natural world appear imbued with divinity. The God in the title refers to these divine forces throughout the world, both beautiful and threatening, that Janie encounters. Her quest is a spiritual one because her ultimate goal is to find her place in the world, understand who she is, and be at peace with her environment.Thus, except for one brief reference to church in Chapter 12, organized religion never appears in the novel. The idea of spirituality, on the other hand, is always present, as the novel espouses a worldview rooted in folklore and mythology. As an anthropologist, Hurston collected rural mythology and folklore of blacks in America and the Caribbean. Many visions of mysticism that she presents in the novel—her haunting personification of Death, the idea of a sun-god, the horizon as a boundary at the end of the world—are likely culled directly from these sources. Like her use of dialogue, Hurston’s presentation of folklore and non-Christian spirituality celebrates the black rural culture.

Symbols

 * Hair
 * Janie’s hair is a symbol of her power and unconventional identity; it represents her strength and individuality in three ways. First, it represents her independence and defiance of petty community standards. The town’s critique at the very beginning of the novel demonstrates that it is considered undignified for a woman of Janie’s age to wear her hair down. Her refusal to bow down to their norms clearly reflects her strong, rebellious spirit. Second, her hair functions as a phallic symbol; her braid is constantly described in phallic terms and functions as a symbol of a typically masculine power and potency, which blurs gender lines and thus threatens Jody. Third, her hair, because of its straightness, functions as a symbol of whiteness; Mrs. Turner worships Janie because of her straight hair and other Caucasian characteristics. Her hair contributes to the normally white male power that she wields, which helps her disrupt traditional power relationships (male over female, white over black) throughout the novel.


 * The Pear Tree and the Horizon
 * The pear tree and the horizon represent Janie’s idealized views of nature. In the bees’ interaction with the pear tree flowers, Janie witnesses a perfect moment in nature, full of erotic energy, passionate interaction, and blissful harmony. She chases after this ideal throughout the rest of the book. Similarly, the horizon represents the far-off mystery of the natural world, with which she longs to connect. Janie’s hauling in of her horizon “like a great fish-net” at the end of the novel indicates that she has achieved the harmony with nature that she has sought since the moment under the pear tree.


 * The Hurricane
 * The hurricane represents the destructive fury of nature. As such, it functions as the opposite of the pear tree and horizon imagery: whereas the pear tree and horizon stand for beauty and pleasure, the hurricane demonstrates how chaotic and capricious the world can be. The hurricane makes the characters question who they are and what their place in the universe is. Its impersonal nature—it is simply a force of pure destruction, lacking consciousness and conscience—makes the characters wonder what sort of world they live in, whether God cares about them at all, and whether they are fundamentally in conflict with the world around them. In the face of the hurricane, Janie and the other characters wonder how they can possibly survive in a world filled with such chaos and pain.

Significant Quotes

 * 1) "Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."
 * Explanation
 * This passage, which opens Their Eyes Were Watching God, establishes the novel’s unusual perspective on gender difference. Because it is the story of a woman and because it was the first major novel published by a black woman, Their Eyes Were Watching God is often classified as a feminist novel. But feminism is often associated with the idea that men and women are absolutely equal; here, the narrator immediately establishes a fundamental difference between men and women. The idea that men and women need certain things from each other recurs many times throughout the novel, as Janie searches for the man who can complement her and give her those things that she doesn’t have, and Logan, Jody, and Tea Cake attempt to fill their respective needs in their respective relationships with Janie. Finally, the passage foreshadows the novel’s thematic concerns: the statement about women is proud and defiant, saying that while men never really reach for their dreams, women can control their wills and chase their dreams. As the novel unfolds, Janie acts according to this notion, battling and struggling in the direction of her dream


 * 1) [Janie] was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting 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 the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.
 * Explanation
 * This passage from Chapter 2 marks the beginning of Janie’s spiritual and sexual awakening. She is a young girl under the care of her grandmother, and this incident propels her upon her quest to reach her horizon. The embrace between the bee and the flowers imprints itself upon Janie as an idealized vision of love—a moment of mutual, reciprocal fulfillment. The flowers arch to meet the arriving bee, and the consequent union of the two provides each partner something desired. Janie searches for such a give-and-take love over the course of the entire novel. The passage also relates to an even deeper desire, which is the ultimate goal of the love that Janie seeks: a sense of enlightenment, of oneness with the world around her. The language of this passage is evocative of the erotic, naturalistic romanticism of Walt Whitman. Like Whitman’s poetry, Hurston’s prose here finds divinity and spirituality in the fertile lushness of the natural world (“the ecstatic shiver of the tree . . . frothing with delight”). Janie sees nature as she wants it to be: a world full of beauty and fulfillment. She chases after this ideal because she wants to experience a harmonization with the beautiful and wild forces that she witnesses under the pear tree. Later events—particularly the hurricane of Chapter 18—introduce a very different vision of nature, but the pear tree continues to serve as her vision of ideal love, of a perfect union with another person.


 * 1) 	“Listen, Sam, if it was nature, nobody wouldn’t have tuh look out for babies touchin’ stoves, would they? ’Cause dey just naturally wouldn’t touch it. But dey sho will. So it’s caution.” “Naw it ain’t, it’s nature, cause nature makes caution. It’s de strongest thing dat God ever made, now. Fact is it’s de onliest thing God every made. He made nature and nature made everything else.”
 * Explanation
 * This interchange, which occurs in Chapter 6, is an excerpt from a lively debate between Lige Moss and Sam Watson on the porch of Jody’s store. In addition to being an excellent example of Hurston’s use of dialect and idiomatic English, this dialogue speaks to Janie’s developing understanding of herself in relation to the world. Here, Sam and Lige argue about the relationship between mankind and God and between themselves and the world around them. In modern terms, it is a discussion of nature versus nurture. Lige argues that humans are taught everything that they know; such a perspective implies a fundamental antagonism between humanity and the natural world. In Lige’s terms, there are hot stoves everywhere, and humans must learn and be vigilant to survive. Sam, on the other hand, argues that humans are naturally cautious; such a perspective implies a fundamental harmony between humanity and the natural world. According to Sam, humans, as creatures made by God, are inherently part of nature. Over the course of the novel, Janie progresses through the obstacles that the world presents her until she finally, harmoniously, reaches the horizon that she has long sought.


 * 1) It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
 * Explanation
 * In this passage from Chapter 16, Hurston carves out an exception to the gender dichotomy that she presents in the opening sentences of the novel. Mrs. Turner’s worship of qualities that she will never possess groups her with the men whose ships “sail forever on the horizon.” What is most peculiar about the passage, though, is the implicit comparison between Mrs. Turner and Janie. The “indiscriminate suffering” and “real blood” that may lead to wisdom could equally well belong to Janie. Janie’s trip to the horizon requires her to suffer at the hands of two husbands, shoot her third, and brave a ferocious hurricane. Yet for Janie, suffering is not an end in and of itself. She endures it so that she may experience the fullness of life and the good that comes with the bad. Mrs. Turner, however, worships her false gods because they give her a sense of superiority over her peers and because, something of a masochist, she enjoys the pain that these gods dole out. When she is mocked for her views by others, she feels like a victim and a martyr, a feeling she finds pleasurable. The narrator’s stylized description, in the paragraph just below the above quote, of her wish for “an army, terrible with banners and swords,” illustrates the fantastic vengefulness and inflated sense of self-importance that Mrs. Turner’s ostracism gives her. It is this pleasure in pain that motivates her to worship “gods who dispense suffering without reason.”


 * 1) 	The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
 * Explanation
 * This quotation from Chapter 18 neatly summarizes the central conflict of the novel, as Janie, Tea Cake, and Motor Boat seek refuge from the raging hurricane outside. The struggle at the heart of the novel is set forth in the starkest terms: humans against God, Janie and the others against nature. It is significant that Motor Boat joins Janie and Tea Cake in their house and that the narrator notes that everybody is united in the same struggle. We see here that the bonds of human interaction and intimacy provide refuge against the forces of nature. Tea Cake and Janie share an intimacy that allows them to struggle and survive these forces. The sense of self that Janie gains from the love that she shares with Tea Cake enables her subsequently to endure another hostile force—the mean-spirited scorn of the black women of Eatonville—and maintain her inner peace

Allusions
A Duff 21:32, 10 November 2011 (MST)
 * "And when ah touch de match tuh dat lamp-wick let de light penetrate inside of yuh, and let it shine, let it shine, let it shine."
 * In this quote Brother Davis means people are quick to judge and deliver harsh punishment for the slightest mistake.


 * Ah'm de apostle Paul tuh Gentilies
 * This is a reference to St. Paul's Preaching the gospel to the gentiles. He was visted on the road to Domascus and directed to preach the word. Tea Cake is teasing Janie about her thoughts regarding his behavior.


 * The Pear Tree
 * This is an allusion to Gebesis 2-4, the story of the Garden of Eden. In some ways Janie is a prelapsarian figure, full og the innocence that filled man and woman before they disobeyed God.