Crash Course Literature: Their Eyes Were Watching God

One final passage from Their Eyes Were Watching God

With this post I just want to provide a beautiful quote that we can just revel in. Some marvelous poetic lines that we can root around in and just enjoy because they sound wonderful.

"So Janie began to think of Death. Death, that strange being with the huge square toes who lived way out West. The great one who lived in the straight house like a platform without sides to it and without a roof. What need has Death for a cover, and what winds can blow against him? He stands in his high house that overlooks the world. Stands watchful and motionless all day with his sword drawn back, waiting for the messenger to bid him come. Been standing there before there was a where or a when or a then. She was liable to find a feather from his wings lying in her yard any day now. She was sad and afraid too. Poor Jody!"

Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for teaching the novel to my AP Literature and Composition students. I had heard of the book for years, but never expressed much interest. Maybe it was the time period, or the characters, or the subject matter that didn't appeal, but I never took the initiative to pick this book up.

But...I'm glad that I did. This is a marvelous work of fiction and deserving of its place on the same list with other literary greats.

Hurston's style is interesting. At times I struggled with the southern speech. I often needed an adjustment period when I would begin reading, but after a few pages of dialogue I would find myself reading these lines of dialect without any trouble. As a general rule I don't much care for writer's use of dialect, and here I felt it was just okay. I don't think it added as much as say Twain's use of dialect in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I also noticed that Hurston has a tremendous ability to provide the reader with beautiful and interesting images. She does include her fair share of lyrical language, which you know that I love.

I won't go into too much detail on the plot as others have done that to excess and you can read their reviews if you really want to know what the novel is about. What I found interesting is the fact that this story is really three stories that are all interconnected through one character: Janie. Her three marriages are the three different tales that this book weaves and it is interesting that this is what Hurston focused on. Janie grows as she experiences being married to these three very different men, and I would say that each marriage improves upon the last. But because of the way these stories are approached, it is almost as if we have three completely different characters named Janie. Three versions of the same person. I think there is a lot to be said about this aspect of the novel. How people change throughout their lives and could you really say that I am now the same person that I was when I was 16. We want and care about wildly different things. We act, speak, and live very differently. So, is the sixteen-year-old me really me? This is the wonderful depth that Hurston evokes with her main character.

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Janie's Face

Just polished up my glasses and now it is time to blog. It is amazing how dirty glasses get throughout the day. I try not to touch them and still...

Several times throughout the novel, Hurston refers to her main character as "Janie's Face," or spends time describing Janie's face. Here is one notable passage after Jody passes away.

"Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Never-more. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. She did not reach outside for anything, nor did the things of death reach inside to disturb her calm. She sent her face to Joe's funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world."

And here is another one from earlier in the novel:

"The years took all the fight out of Janie's face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods--come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn't value."

As I was reading Their Eyes were Watching God I noticed these phrases peppered throughout the novel and wondered about their importance. It wasn't until I got to the the end of the novel that I figured it out. Well, I think I figured it out. The story of Janie is a story of a woman who is forced to follow societies norms for women at the time. Janie doesn't want to marry, she doesn't want to keep house. But the worst part is that Janie doesn't know initially that she doesn't want these things. She is just going along with the flow. She marries her first husband because her grandmother expects it and society expects it. She marries Jody because it seems like a good choice based off of societies expectations. in these first two marriages that phrase "Janie's face" crops up. She isn't a whole person. She puts on an act for the people around her: playing the part of the dutiful wife. Society expects her to be dumb, and submissive, and not play checkers and so she puts her face on, just like any woman would put on makeup in the morning. It's a mask. 

But after Jody's death, Janie is finally able to take that mask off when she hooks up with Tea Cake. No more expectations because Janie just doesn't care anymore. And that is where the phrase "Janie's face" disappears because she isn't "Janie's face" anymore, she is just Janie.

Pronoun Usage in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston is a very interesting author. She seems to fall into and out of lyrical language throughout her novel. There are moments where she needs to write beautifully, and then there are moments where she pulls back and just presents the action at hand. Something that I have noticed while reading, is that during these moments of beautiful, lyrical language Hurston plays with nouns and pronouns. The emphasis is mine in the following quotes.

"The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgement."

This first quote come right at the beginning of the novel and Hurston describes these people, these "sitters" as less than human. She doesn't use words with positive connotations--"mules," "brutes," "sitters," "conveniences," even "people." There is no familiarity, nor is there any love. As these "skins" are passing judgment on Janie, Hurston wants us to be passing judgement on them as well.

This next quote is right at the end of the novel...

"The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."

The first line is so interesting to me because there are three distinct days in the list and they are coming to life in these lines and singing and sobbing and sighing. The events of Janie's life are so powerful to her that she visualizes them before her and then wraps herself in these experiences. Very symbolic.