Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
zora neale hurston their eyes were watching god opening paragraph
analytical essay on their eyes were watching god
their eyes were watching god self and god
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Zora Neale Hurston, while living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was researching voodoo on the most scholarly level. She was studying with Haiti’s most well known hougans and mambos, or priests and priestesses. At this time she was gathering knowledge about voodoo so she could write the text, Tell My Horse. Also, at this same time Hurston had finished writing, Their Eyes Were Watching God in only seven short weeks. A close reading of this novel provides the reader with a relationship between voodoo and the text. Hurston not only explores female spirituality and sexuality in, Their Eyes Were Watching God, but weaves the two together revealing that voodoo culture plays an important role within the novel especially in the comparisons between the voodoo goddess Erzulie and the texts main character Janie Crawford.
Hurston exploits the society in which Janie Crawford lives in. Hers is a society in which she is not allowed to live freely and express herself freely. She is suppressed in her society because she is a woman and because she is African-American. Hurston understands this oppression and she uncovers the truth on the status of black females at this time. There were no powerful roles available to them in their American culture or in their African-American culture. Women were looked down on and they were not seen as potentially strong spiritual and sexual
people. Hurston opens the door for her protagonist, Janie Crawford, to create a more substantial and empowering life for herself after the many hardships she faces. She leads her down a path to self-determination and this path is embodied by the spirituality of voodoo. “The old, old mysticism of the world in African terms...a religion of creation and life” (Tell My Horse 376).This i...
... middle of paper ...
...oodoo, which stands in the novel to tie in the value of self-discovery is integral to the story’s comparisons between Janie and Erzulie. Voodoo is believed to have played a shapely role in the Haitian revolution in which Haiti won its independence from France. The integration of voodoo imagery and symbolism throughout, Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects Hurston’s belief that self-discovery for African-American women lies not in their male dominated society, but rather in their understanding of their own sexual and spiritual strength. Hurston achieves this idea greatly by linking the female goddess Erzulie with Janie Crawford.
Works Cited
Tell My Horse. 1938. rptd. in Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs and Other Writings. ed. Cheryl A Wall. New York: Library of America, 1995. 269-555.
Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.
The Harlem Renaissance was all about freedom of expression and the search for one's identity. Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, shows these goals through the main character Janie and her neighbors. Janie freely expressed what she wanted and searched for her identity with her different husbands. Even though Janie was criticized by everyone except her friends, she continued to pursue. She lost everything, but ultimately found her identity. Hurston's writing is both a reflection and a departure from the idea of the Harlem Renaissance.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston which is set in the 1930’s explores the life of an African American women from the south, that trying to find herself. The protagonist of this novel is Janie Crawford. In the novel, Janie is going on a journey to find who she really is and to find spiritual enlightenment. To help shape Janie character in this novel Hurston is influence by the philosophical view from the Romanticism, and Realism movement in addition she is influence by the social events that were happing in the Modernism period.
Harris, Trudier. "Celebrating Bigamy and Other Outlaw Behaviors: Hurston, Reputation, and the Problems Inherent in Labeling Janie a Feminist." Approaches to Teaching Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works. Ed. John Lowe. New York: MLA, 2009. 67-80. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 285. Detroit: Gale, 2013. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author takes you on the journey of a woman, Janie, and her search for love, independence, and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit seems to constantly be disregarded, yet Janie continues to hold on to the potential of grasping all that she desires. In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Hurston illustrates the ambiguity of Janie’s voice; the submissiveness of her silence and the independence she reclaims when regaining her voice. The reclaiming of Janie's independence, in the novel, correlates with the development and maturation Janie undergoes during her self discovery.
Her hair serves as a reminder throughout the novel of the social pressures and expectations people, especially black women, were suppose to follow during this time period. The racial tensions were high throughout the country and many were oppressed through racism and sexism. These hurdles cannot be ignored, so it is important to identify the importance of Janie's hair to the overall understanding of the novel. Through symbolism, Hurston was able to portray a real example of the oppression and conflicts many faced during the
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s powerful feminist novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” she tells the story of Janie Stark and her journey into becoming a powerful black woman during the time when those words were not spoken together. Hurston uses Janie as an archetype for what we should all aspire to be, because in Hurston’s eyes, and the eyes of many others, Janie is the only character in the novel that gets it right. The thing about Janie that set her apart from everyone else, the reason that she got it right, was not because she was just born that way, but it was because she used all of the trials and hardships in her life to her advantage. She never crumbled or quit, but she continued to move on and use her life experiences to help mold to her
The author also vividly expresses that Janie has been through hard times and still managed to make it through because she is strong of mind and heart. Hurston’s sympathy seems to be coming out of admiration as well as affirmation.
Zora Neale Hurston an early twentieth century Afro-American feminist author, was raised in a predominately black community which gave her an unique perspective on race relations, evident in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston drew on her on experiences as a feminist Afro-American female to create a story about the magical transformation of Janie, from a young unconfident girl to a thriving woman. Janie experiences many things that make her a compelling character who takes readers along as her companion, on her voyage to discover the mysteries and rewards life has to offer.
In this book, Hurston writes in the dielect of the black community of the time. Many of the words are slang. Hurston begins the story with Janie telling it, but then it becomes a third person narrative throughout most of the story.
Hurston begins the essay in her birth town: Eatonville, Florida; an exclusively Negro town where whites were a rarity, only occasionally passing by as a tourist. Hurston, sitting on her porch imagines it to be a theatre as she narrates her perspective of the passing white people. She finds a thin line separating the spectator from the viewer. Exchanging stances at will and whim. Her front porch becomes a metaphor for a theater seat and the passers
Hurston's novel incorporates diverse incarnations of prime examples that may uncover her women's activist propensity. As the story tells, there are different signs of Voodoo symbolisms;in any case, one will just concentrate on the female pictures that stamp Janie as a prototype saint/champion. In this way, these models are the picture of the Voodoo's Goddesses and Divine beings, for example, Erzulie Freda, Erzulie Danto and Legda Loa.
Zora Hurston was an African American proto-feminist author who lived during a time when both African Americans and women were not treated equally. Hurston channeled her thirst for women’s dependence from men into her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of the many underlying themes in her book is feminism. Zora Hurston, the author of the book, uses Janie to represent aspects of feminism in her book as well as each relationship Janie had to represent her moving closer towards her independence.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, revolves around the small town world of Janie, a vibrant yet oppressed woman. The reader is taken through Janie’s experiences, which elicit tremendous emotional growth in the heroine. Their Eyes Were Watching God is teeming with symbols; however, one of the most prevalent symbols is Janie’s hair. Her hair conveys far deeper themes that the novel is imbued with. Described as long and flowing, Janie’s hair symbolizes her vivacity and free will; however, it also conveys the theme of being ostracized from a community you belong in. Janie’s hair, although lauded, gives her an appearance that is of stark contrast to the rest of her community.
Zora Neal Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, reveals one of life’s most relevant purposes that stretches across cultures and relates to every aspect of enlightenment. The novel examines the life of the strong-willed Janie Crawford, as she goes down the path of self-discovery by way of her past relationships. Ideas regarding the path of liberation date all the way back to the teachings of Siddhartha. Yet, its concept is still recycled in the twenty-first century, as it inspires all humanity to look beyond the “horizon,” as Janie explains. Self-identification, or self-fulfillment, is a theme that persists throughout the book, remaining a quest for Janie Crawford to discover, from the time she begins to tell the story to her best friend, Pheoby Watson. Hurston makes a point at the beginning of the novel to separate the male and female identities from one another. This is important for the reader to note. The theme for identity, as it relates to Janie, carefully unfolds as the story goes on to expand the depths of the female interior.