- See also the television film of the same name, Their Eyes
Were Watching God (2005 television).
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work
by African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Set in central and southern Florida in the early
20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication,
and has come to be regarded as a seminal work in both African-American
literature and women's literature.[1]
Plot summary
The main character, a black woman in her early forties named Janie Crawford, tells the story of her life and journey via an extended flashback to her best friend, Phoeby, so that Phoeby can tell Janie's story to the nosy
community on her behalf . Her life has three major periods corresponding to her marriages to three very different men.
Janie's grandmother, Nanny, was a slave who was impregnated by a white man and gave birth to a daughter, Leafy. Leafy was
raped as a teenager by the local school teacher and became pregnant with Janie, but left Janie with Nanny and is not present in
the novel. Nanny sees Janie kissing a neighborhood boy, Johnny Taylor, and fears that Janie will become a "mule" to some man, so
she arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older man and farmer who is looking for a wife to keep his home and help on
the farm. Janie has the idea that marriage must involve love, forged in a pivotal early scene where she sees bees pollinating a
pear tree and believes that marriage is the human equivalent to this natural process. Logan Killicks, however, wants a domestic
helper rather than a lover or partner, and after he begins to hit Janie and to try to force her to help him with the hard labor
of the farm, Janie runs off with the glib Joe (Jody) Starks, who takes her to Eatonville.
Starks arrives in Eatonville (the United States's first all-black community) to find
the residents devoid of ambition, so he arranges to buy more land from the neighboring landowner, hires some local residents to
build a general store for him to own and run, and has himself appointed mayor. Janie soon realizes that Joe wants her as a
trophy. He wants the image of his perfect wife to reinforce his powerful position in town, as he asks her to run the store but
forbids her from participating in the substantial social life that occurs on the store's front porch.
After Starks dies, Janie finds herself financially independent and beset with suitors, some of whom are men of some means or
have prestigious occupations, but she falls in love with a drifter and gambler named Vergible Woods who goes by the name of Tea
Cake throughout the story. She sells the store and the two head to Jacksonville
and get married, only to move to the Everglades region soon after for Tea Cake to find work
planting and harvesting beans. While their relationship has its ups and downs, including mutual bouts of jealousy, Janie now has
the marriage with love that she had wanted.
The area is hit by the great Okeechobee Hurricane, and while Tea Cake and
Janie survive it, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog while saving Janie from drowning. He
contracts the disease himself. He ultimately tries to shoot Janie with his pistol, but she
shoots him with a rifle in self-defense. She is charged with murder. At the trial, Tea Cake's black, male friends show up to oppose her, while a group of local white women
arrive to support her. The all-white jury acquits Janie, and she gives Tea Cake a lavish funeral. Tea Cake's friends forgive her,
and they want her to remain in the Everglades. However, she decides to return to Eatonville, only to find the residents gossiping
about her.
Analysis
Janie is a prototypical black woman of the new generation. Slavery has
long since ended, but living with her grandmother has caused her to be taught a certain linear viewpoint of the world. Her
independent and deterministic spirit lies dormant beneath the surface.
The phonetically-written speech of the African Americans in the novel not only gives
context, but helps round out the aesthetic to the novel. While Hurston has been criticized for condescending her own people, a
more critical analysis of the novel and the author reveals an earnest attempt at authenticity. Rather than appearing patronizing,
the frequent dialogue is indeed the most oft-quoted and engrossing-- often, as well, the most
telling and philosophical.
Janie is an anomaly in her time in that she subconsciously realizes that she is a human being rather than a category.
All the same, she simultaneously recognizes her position in the society she lives in (both the world and where she lives), and
many times proclaims her commitment to being a black woman. Through her commitment she will prove to the world, or at
least those around her, her worth.
Hurston liberally sprinkles the novel with spiritual overtones, but despite the title, they are hardly the focal point of the
narrative. The characters, including Janie, are appropriately Christian, and their thoughts
inevitably reflect this belief in some capacity at various points in the story, whether it be pleading to God in a moment of
intense emotion, or simply wondering what 'He' has in store for them. The title has less to do with a literal belief in God, and
more with human emotion--They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God, reads the full quote.
The storm and other such mercurial things are spoken in terms of 'His' judgment, but once again, they serve as broad strokes of
the brush rather than concentrated, determined proselytizing.
Hurston maintains an emphasis on the worth of humanity. All characters have flaws, whether they be overt or subtle, and they
are almost never outright admonished for them; rather they are, at the very least by the omniscient narrator, forgiven for simply
being themselves--imperfect beings. Hurston imbues the readers with an intense feeling of brotherhood and community, even in
times of struggle. Janie is often criticised and prodded, but she seldom returns the favor, and usually braves it through,
believing in their ultimate kind-heartedness and taking solace in her own. It should be noted, however, that she is capable of
being shockingly harsh and bitter when provoked.
Criticism
While today Hurston's book is present on many reading lists for African American
literature programs in the United States, the book was not universally praised by Hurston's peers, with particular
criticism leveled at her use of phonetic spellings of the dialect spoken by blacks of African and
Caribbean descent in the South of the early 20th century
(for example, "tuh" instead of "to" and "Ah" instead of "I"). Richard Wright
called Their Eyes Were Watching God a "minstrel-show turn that makes the white folks laugh" and said it showed "no desire
whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction."[2]
Ralph Ellison said the book contained a "blight of calculated burlesque."[3] Many other prominent authors that were a part of the Harlem
Renaissance were upset that Hurston exposed divisions between light skinned African-Americans and those that had darker skin, as
seen in Mrs. Turner, as well as the more subtle division between black men and women. This concern is quickly dispelled, however,
as the character is largely an adversary of the rest in the book.
The book, written in black southern vernacular, has attracted criticism also by those who claim it portrays African-Americans as ignorant (though Hurston herself is African-American). Similar criticisms have
been leveled at Twain's Huckleberry Finn. But while Twain
transforms the minstrel into a three-dimensional character, viewed through Huck's revelations, Hurston uses black southern
dialect to show that complex social relationships and common feats of metaphoric language are possible in something considered
"substandard" to English.
Film adaptation
In 2005 the novel was adapted into a television movie of the
same name starring Halle Berry. It was produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.
Notes
- ^ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past
and Present (New York: Amistad, 1993), p. xi.
- ^ Burt, Daniel. The Novel 100. Checkmark Books, 2003. p. 365.
- ^ Ibid., p. 366.
References
- Nishikawa, Kinohi. "Janie Crawford." The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Ed. Emmanuel S.
Nelson. 5 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 512-13.
- --. "Tea Cake." The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. 5 vols.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 2142.
- --. "Their Eyes Were Watching God." The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Ed. Emmanuel
S. Nelson. 5 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. 2146-47.
External links
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