Their Eyes Were Watching God: Comprehension and Analysis Blog

I think the role of women in Their Eyes Were Watching God is an interesting interpretation of women’s rights during that time period.  It would seem that the women are caught half way between two worlds.  On one hand, they are African-Americans who have just earned their right to freedom.  Then they are also women, who are in fact not entitled to all the same rights as men.  Janie, as a black woman, manages to escape actual slavery, but finds in the real world that black men have assumed the position of slave holders.  Logan Killicks tells Janie that: “You ain’t got no particular place.  It’s wherever Ah need yuh.  Git uh move on yuh, and dat quick” (Hurston 30).  He sees her as a slave.  I think it is interesting that in this particular scene, Logan is discussing going to purchase a new mule, yet he is talking to Janie like she is a mule that he can load up with his chores and she will go out and make his work easier. 

            Contrary to the wishes of her Nanny, husband, and even the society she lives in, Janie lives her life the way she wishes.  She embraces both her womanhood and blackness.  Her Nanny marries her off to Logan which is: “frustrating and futile for Janie, as her desire is to explore the world, to take risks, and to savor life’s possibilities- all qualities of and reserved for men in western cultures” (Lester 81).  It is an interesting action coming from Nanny who is indeed the patriarch and matriarch of her family.  She is land owner and the sole provider for the household, so she herself has taken on the more masculine role of the family.  Yet she slaps Janie for her insistence on wanting to travel and find love, Nanny will not allow Janie to have the same patriarchal lifestyle that she now leads.

            As Nicole mentioned in her post, the story is about Janie’s search for her identity.  Can we conclude from Janie’s current taste for freedom that her identity quest will take her towards a more manly identity?  Is it Janie’s embracing the rights of men even though she is a woman that makes her the heroine that women across the country love her for?  Or is it her integration of male characteristics into her womanhood that make her the heroine?

                                                                                                   Kara Buchan

Chapter 1 begins with a comparison of men’s and women’s dreams.  Hurston wrote: “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 leaving until the Watcher turns his eyes in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.  That is the life of men” (Hurston 1).  Men’s dreams are always constant.  Throughout life men dream of the same things (”his dreams mocked to death by Time”), whether or not they come true (”come in with the tide”).  Unlike women who as Hurston wrote, “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” (Hurston 1).  Women focus on what is pleasurable to think about.  Their dreams control their lives when men’s dreams are “at a distance.” 

I think this is a very interesting way for Hurston to begin the novel.  It seems to have a large symbolic meaning to the story, but as readers we do not know yet how this exactly applys. Hurston also hints in the next paragraph, the reason for Janie’s homecoming: “she had come back from burying the dead. …the sudden dead” (Hurston 1).  Although, in the first two chapters we do not know who died.  Could the first two paragraphs of the story allude to the thematic implications of the entire novel?

The second chapter is more revealing than the first.  We learn of Janie’s childhood and part of her Nanny’s life.  A main theme in this chapter is the references made to the pear tree.  Hurston wrote that as a child, Janie desires ”to be a pear tree– any tree in bloom!  With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!” (Hurston 11).  The pear tree is symbolic to Janie’s desire to expierence womanhood and adulthood: “she wanted to stuggle with life but it seemed to elude her”  (Hurston 11).  Literary critic Saunders states that “Janie envisions complete fulfillment;… she identifies not with another person, but with a part of nature. As a “tree” she will be in possession of great strength, awesome beauty, and communion with the natural world….” (Saunders).  Janie views a pear tree as strong, beautiful and a center structure of nature.  She wants to be a strong, powerful and beautiful woman.  Although, later in this chapter when Nanny tells her shes a woman Janie feels “the thought was too new and heavy… she fought it away” (Hurston 12).  It is interesting to see that now that Janie has what she wanted, she feels she is not ready.

Another interesting concept of the pear tree is it relates to the first two paragraphs in chapter 1.  Janie “had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree” (Hurston 10).  To be like the pear tree was Janie’s dream and Janie acted and did things accordingly.  She tried to live in her dream. 

If the concept of women’s dreams applys to the pear tree and Janie, will other concepts of dreams apply to Janie’s life?  And if so, can we rely on what Janie says if “women forget all those things they don’t want to remember” (Hurston 1)?

The Forward to Their Eyes Were Watching God gives background information on the author, Zora Neale Hurston and the rebirth of this novel.  I think it is difficult to understand exactly what Mary Helen Washington, the author of the forward, is saying.  Since I have not yet read the entire novel, I cannot apply the analysis of Janie and Tea Cake with the story.  Although, I have made connections to previous works we have read.  Washington states this novel is about “a woman on a quest for her own identity and… her journey would take her, not away from, but deeper and deeper into blackness” (Washington ix).  Like Joyce Carol Oates’s style of writing, this novel focuses on a search for identity.  In “Mark of Satan,” Flash is lost and unsure of his identity.  Washington tells the readers that Janie, too, is unsure of her identity.  Question: From the Foreward, are there any other aspects Washington leads the reader towards, that we have expierenced in previous literary works this semester?

In the Foreward, Washington awares the reader of some of Hurston’s main choices and implications.  Washington says that she loved this novel because of “its investment in black folk traditions” (Washington viii).  Clearly Hurston wanted to depict aspects of African-American life and use allegories of folklore.  Washington also implies that Hurston wanted to do this in a way that the women readers can relate directly to the characters: “women all across the country who found themselves so pwerfully represented in a literary text was often direct and personal” (Washington ix).  The readers like Janie because she’s a woman “who wasn’t pathetic, wasn’t a tragic mulatto, who defied everything that was expected of her, who went off with a man without bothering to divorce the one she left and wasn’t broken, crushed, and run down” (Rushing ix).  I think the readers look up to Janie for her strength and at the same time feel connected.