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Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Literary criticism on langston hughes
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Conventional wisdom has it that advice given from the older generation is always helpful. Common sense seems to dictate that since the elderly have lived life longer, they are wiser. Speaking as a voice of the younger generation, although the elderly have lived life longer, the advice they give to the younger generation is not always beneficial. One of the most popular Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes and the idolized novelist Zora Neale Hurston, both wrote pieces revolving around the idea of giving advice on life. Both literary works present characters that in offering advice to the young demonstrate their own distinct personalities. Hurston and Hughes explore the idea of using life experiences to offer advice to the younger generation through active use of literary techniques. “Mother to Son” by Hughes depicts the struggles in life of a hardworking uneducated black Mother that attempts to give guidance concerning life to her son through her limited experiences. To take a case in point, Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son” the poet’s character Mother, describes her life metaphorically by relating it to a staircase. Through this metaphor one realizes that Mother has always been climbing up a staircase, meaning she has been overcoming obstacles in life and rising. Similarly, Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God explores the life of the emotionally weak black woman, Janie, who is continuously pressured to make life decisions based on the opinions that her Nanny has amassed throughout her entire life as a slave. In Hurston’s novel the author’s character Nanny, describes a woman metaphorically as a mule. Throughout the narrative, this metaphor allows one to understand the role of women in society. This description of women N...
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...cation that refutes the claim that advice from the elderly is always beneficial is when Nanny tells Janie to marry a rich man. Janie corroborates the age-old adage that advice from the elderly is always helpful. In so, she claims that advice rests upon the questionable assumption of oneself. By focusing on her own feelings and not the advice of Nanny Janie was able to marry a man she truly loved. Janie reminds us that, it is simply not true that advice is given from the older generation is helpful. These conclusions that Janie reaches in life, add weight to the argument regarding advice from the elderly. These findings challenge the idea of people who assume that advice from the older generation is always helpful. Janie’s discoveries will have significant applications in life as people decide whether to put advice from the elderly to use in their own lives.
Zora Neale was an early 20th century American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. In her best known novel Their eyes were watching God, Hurston integrated her own first-hand knowledge of African American oral culture into her characters dialogue and the novels descriptive passages. By combing folklore, folk language and traditional literary techniques; Hurston created a truly unique literary voice and viewpoint. Zora Neale Hurston's underlying theme of self-expression and search for one’s independence was truly revolutionary for its time. She explored marginal issues ahead of her time using the oral tradition to explore contentious debates. In this essay I will explore Hurston narrative in her depiction of biblical imagery, oppression of African women and her use of colloquial dialect.
It’s no wonder that “[t]he hurricane scene in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a famous one and [that] other writers have used it in an effort to signify on Hurston” (Mills, “Hurston”). The final, climactic portion of this scene acts as the central metaphor of the novel and illustrates the pivotal interactions that Janie, the protagonist, has with her Nanny and each of her three husbands. In each relationship, Janie tries to “’go tuh God, and…find out about livin’ fuh [herself]’” (192). She does this by approaching each surrogate parental figure as one would go to God, the Father; she offers her faith and obedience to them and receives their definitions of love and protection in return. When they threaten to annihilate and hush her with these definitions, however, she uses her voice and fights to save her dream and her life. Hurston shows how Janie’s parental figures transform into metaphorical hurricanes, how a literal hurricane transforms into a metaphorical representation of Janie’s parental figures, and how Janie survives all five hurricanes.
Historically, the job of women in society is to care for the husband, the home, and the children. As a homemaker, it has been up to the woman to support the husband and care for the house; as a mother, the role was to care for the children and pass along cultural traditions and values to the children. These roles are no different in the African-American community, except for the fact that they are magnified to even larger proportions. The image of the mother in African-American culture is one of guidance, love, and wisdom; quite often the mother is the shaping and driving force of African-American children. This is reflected in the literature of the African-American as a special bond of love and loyalty to the mother figure. Just as the role of motherhood in African-American culture is magnified and elevated, so is the role of the wife. The literature reflects this by showing the African-American man struggling to make a living for himself and his family with his wife either being emotionally or physically submissive. Understanding the role of women in the African-American community starts by examining the roles of women in African-American literature. Because literature is a reflection of the community from which it comes, the portrayal of women in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain (1952) is consistent with the roles mentioned above.
Many people see Susanna Rowson’s book, “Charlotte Temple”, as a comment on the need for youth to listen to their elders. However, the theme is far more complicated than this as it shows that the advice itself is flawed. As the characters travel from England to America, the inherent problems of the advice appears. It is here that Montraville father’s advice which is assuming similar experiences leads to lifelong misery. Charlotte the most obvious proof that ignoring your parents advice leads to trouble suffer far greater consequences because of the reversibility of that very same advice. Even the readers experience the dangers of advice as the author cautions the mothers reading the novel that their views and consequently advice are not enough because of the inherent problem of advice not being law. Montraville’s, Charlotte’s, and reader’s stories show that it is not enough to follow parental advice if the advice is misguided, founded in untrue expectations, creating more trouble and misery for the youths.
Eudora Welty establishes “The Worn Path” in the midst of the twentieth century – in an era where African Americans were not considered as equal to white Americans. Welty tells the story of Phoenix Jackson, an elderly African-American woman, who makes a lengthy voyage into town to get medication for her chronically ill grandson. For most people the journey from the countryside to a town in a city, would not be very difficult. However, the fact that old infirm Phoenix is faced with hindrances and some racist attitudes of people she encounters along the journey; she endeavors onward despite frequent hindrances in her path that include her own deteriorating health and the grandchild’s slim chance of subsistence.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character of Janie Crawford experiences severe ideological conflicts with her grandmother, and the effects of these conflicts are far-reaching indeed. Hurston’s novel of manners, noted for its exploration of the black female experience, fully shows how a conflict with one’s elders can alter one’s self image. In the case of Janie and Nanny, it is Janie’s perception of men that is altered, as well as her perception of self. The conflict between the two women is largely generational in nature, and appears heart-breakingly inevitable.
In Mary Hoods “How Far She Went” A grandmother struggles with the burden of experience, loss and a life of unsparing decisions; where a girl strives to live in a naïve and free spirited illusion. The paths of a grandmother and her granddaughter soon collide when experience and naivety rendezvous on a dirt road in the south. “How Far She Went” illustrates how generational struggles and contretemps can mold people and predispose their lives and the way
African American families have special challenges. In his novel When All Is Said and Done, author Robert Hill explored the large portion of women and adolescents who, through the years, have had to work inside and outside the home long before careers for women was ever established and became more acceptable and adaptable in society. Although Hill’s characters are Jewish, his story resonates on how necessary and extraordinarily versatile historical family roles are in African American families. Langston Hughes’s special poem, Mother to Son, likewise captures the voice of an African American mother’s struggles as she challenges her son to face life’...
Hiller, S. M., & Barrow, G. M. (2011). Aging, the individual, and society. (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
The term “ageism” is not easily understood by most of the population because of its acceptance as normal behavior due to the ingrained attitudes that most people develop in their youth, but health care workers must fully embrace the term within their profession in order to avoid becoming a contributor to the historical prevalence of prejudices and discrimination. The term ageism is defined by Klein and Liu (2010) as “the discrimination of individuals based solely on age” (p. 334). “Ageism is a social construct that is internalized in the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of individuals” (Klein & Liu, 2010, p. 334). Robert Butler, a well-known gerontologist, coined the term “ageism” citing that the discrimination and prejudice associated with this term is often based on the lack of a person’s experience with older people (Ferrini & Ferrini, 2013, p. 6). Ferrini and Ferrini (2013) refer to the strong influence that cultural beliefs and attitudes as well as a person’s current age influence the perception of aging (p. 6). Everywhere within society there are influences that encourage ageist attitudes such as media conveyances through movies, books, television, greeting cards, magazines and the Internet (Ferrini and Ferrini, 2013, p. 6). These negative connotations related to growing older begin to influence all people at a very young age and therefore impact their attitudes as they make career decisions. This has directly impacted the number of health care providers who specialize in geriatrics as well as the attitudes of those who do provide services for older adults. These false perceptions and negative attitudes are currently impacting the q...
Even in the year 2016, social standing is very crucial to some people. Your family’s’ name and the respect people have for it can mean everything. Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is similar to “Girl” in that there’s a struggle with the mother and daughter. Both mothers give advice they think is unsuccessful in teaching their daughters how to become better women. Mothers only want the best for their children, and more likely than not, women are more concerned with decorum and social equity than fathers, which can lead to many disagreements. Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” although carries a different message from “Girl” shows the importance the role of a mother is in a household, especially if a father figure isn’t more prominent. More and more children live in single parent households, and a mothers’ influence is very
Younger people have tended to look towards the elderly for wisdom and guidance since the beginning of recorded history and beyond. Students to teachers, children to parents, ordinary people to royalty and politicians – generally those who have lived longer are not only believed, but expected to have garnered more knowledge in their longer lives. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. Also, in 2008 the Australian newspaper published an article detailing a study undertaken by the University of Aarhus in Denmark, which disproved the theory that the mind is at its peak in the late teens to mid-twenties. But all this is not to say that older people should not sometimes listen to and heed advice from younger people.
Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston are similar to having the same concept about black women to have a voice. Both are political, controversial, and talented experiencing negative and positive reviews in their own communities. These two influential African-American female authors describe the southern hospitality roots. Hurston was an influential writer in the Harlem Renaissance, who died from mysterious death in the sixties. Walker who is an activist and author in the early seventies confronts sexually progression in the south through the Great Depression period (Howard 200). Their theories point out feminism of encountering survival through fiction stories. As a result, Walker embraced the values of Hurston’s work that allowed a larger
Aside from the mother’s race and gender, her lack of education also plays a role in the hardships in her life. Hughes makes her limited education apparent in his use of her vernacular. Words like “ain’t” and “I’se” (MS lines 4, 9) symbolize the fact that Mother is from a Black background and she does not have sufficient education. These limitations, however, do not keep her from persevering and keeping a positive paradigm. She wants her son to realize that, though they may not have the best education or a more advantageous skin color, they must strive to overcome these hardships to reach their higher potential.
Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son” does not have as complex of a story as Tennyson’s. The poem is short and sweet, a piece of dialogue of a ...