Their Eyes Were Watching An Emmy: Not God
Throughout the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is painted a picture by Ms. Hurston but completely blindsided if they ever sat down to actually watch this horrid slaughter of what was a classic piece of literature. The screen play just another “ pet project “ for Oprah Winfrey, diminishes the light in which Ms. Zara Neal Hurston herself, portrayed is completely altered to fit the television, sex driving industry in which Ms. Winfrey subdues to the viewers. However, the vision is not totally out of sight but it is indeed farfetched from its original point of view; the movie focused almost entirely on a love story aspect between characters and how love doesn’t conquer all in the end. “ It was the most beautiful and poignant love stories I’ve ever read” ( Dir Darnell ). Love that is genuine is hard to come by on a daily, everyone was not meant to experience the marvelous wonders it has to offer.
Not only is the subject matter cropped for modern day television but the supporting characters in the novel are remade to fit Winfrey’s impression of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Males who would not perceive to be the typical sex to gossip, partake in many female characteristics in the movie. Janie’s character is broadcast to be a voice to be reckoned with in the screenplay as a vital denotation of women’s entitlement and place in this world as more than just a caregiver. Winfrey portrays Janie as more than your typical women in this historic error in time, rebellious in the movie but soft spoken in the book shows two different versions of our character but they all show an ongoing change that is about to take place. “ De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see”...
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...hat with spiteful drama that tries to tear the duo apart but fails in the end. ( Pheoby )
Numerous themes are highlighted in Their Eyes Were Watching God, a switch of racism where the tables turn and Caucasian vs. Native American in the screenplay instead of the original African American vs. Native American set up in the novel. Making the white man superior to blacks, the narrator presents an oppression filled atmosphere whose constituents apotheosize the white man by praising him like a “ God. “ “Humph! Y’all let her worry yuh. You ain’t like me. Ah ain’t got her to study ‘bout. If she ain’t got manners enough to stop and let folks know how she been makin’ out, let her g’wan!” (Hurston 3). The novel shows a darker side to the black community, shining light on the vivid jealousy, racism based on skin color, and a striving desire to tear down their prosperous peers.
Janie, lead character of the novel, is a somewhat lonely, mixed-race woman. She has a strong desire to find love and get married, partially driven by her family’s history of unmarried woman having children. Despite her family’s dark history, Janie is somewhat naive about the world.
Oprah Winfrey mutilated the classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston by turning the movie into a story with no resemblance to the book. Throughout Janie Crawford’s life, love is a dream she wished to achieve. Oprah makes changes to Janie’s character, her marriages, and the differences of symbolism, the change of themes, and the significance of Janie’s childhood which will alter the entire moral of the story. Another difference is the way the townspeople gossip. Oprah changes the point of Janie’s life journey to find herself to a love story.
Throughout the movie Their Eyes Were Watching God, Oprah Winfrey alternates Zora Neale Hurston’s story of a woman’s journey to the point where nobody even recognizes it. The change in the theme, the characters, and their relationships form a series of major differences between the book and the movie. Instead of teaching people the important lessons one needs to know to succeed in this precious thing called life, Oprah tells a meaningless love story for the gratification of her viewers. Her inaccurate interpretation of the story caused a dramatic affect in the atmosphere and a whole new attitude for the audience. During the movie, Oprah makes a shift in Janie’s character by strengthening her mental and physical state.
The movie and the book of Their Eyes Were Watching God both tell the story of a young woman’s journey to finding love; however, the movie lacks the depth and meaning behind the importance of Janie’s desire for self-fulfillment. Oprah Winfrey’s version alters the idea from the book Zora Neale Hurston wrote, into a despairing love story for the movie. Winfrey changes Hurston’s story in various ways by omitting significant events and characters, which leads to a different theme than what the novel portrays. The symbolisms and metaphors emphasized throughout the book are almost non-existent in the movie, changing the overall essence of the story. While Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal gives a more in depth view of Janie’s journey of self-discovery and need for fulfilling love, Oprah Winfrey’s version focuses mainly on a passionate love story between Janie and Tea Cake.
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.
Jordan, Jennifer. “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God’.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 7.1 (Spring 1988): 105-117. Literature Resource Center. Web. 9 Feb. 2011.
Janie who continually finds her being defined by other people rather than by herself never feels loved, either by her parents or by anybody else. Her mother abandoned her shortly after giving birth to her. All she had was her grandmother, Nanny, who protected and looked after her when she was a child. But that was it. She was even unaware that she is black until, at age six, she saw a photograph of herself. Her Nanny who was enslaved most of her lifetime only told her that a woman can only be happy when she marries someone who can provide wealth, property, and security to his wife. Nanny knew nothing about love since she never experienced it. She regarded that matter as unnecessary for her as well as for Janie. And for that reason, when Janie was about to enter her womanhood in searching for that love, Nanny forced her to marry Mr. Logan Killicks, a much older man that can offer Janie the protection and security, plus a sixty-acre potato farm. Although Janie in her heart never approves what her Nanny forced her to do, she did it anyway. She convinced herself that by the time she became Mrs. Killick, she would get that love, which turned out to be wrong.
In conclusion, these three aspects clearly show how Ta-Nehisi Coates and Zora Neale Hurston address race and civil rights issues in different ways. While Hurston feels above the ignorance of society and recognizes herself as woman rather than a person of color, Coates recognizes the nation’s immense issues and the ambience to speak up against them. Both authors, in
In the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston there were many contrasting places that were used to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of this work.
With all three of these aspects of racism in consideration, race was a prevalent theme in the book that couldn’t escape the reader’s consciousness. Whether it was through showing the division of the communities, or through the feelings that each race held about the other race, the book portrays the history of racism in America.
Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.
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.
This excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were watching God, is an example of her amazing writing. She makes us feel as if we are actually in her book, through her use of the Southern Black vernacular and admirable description. Her characters are realistic and she places special, well thought out sentences to keep us interested. Zora Neale Hurston’s art enables her to write this engaging story about a Southern black woman’s life.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.