Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

• Written during Harlem Renaissance
• Setting: 1920s-30s, Rural Florida
• Published in 1937

How does one find

...despite social, economic, and political constraints?

Point of View

• Third person, omniscient narrator
• Janie speaks through Frame Story
• Narrator is abstracted from Janie.
• Folksy language, metaphors
• Dialect of the rural folk

Folklore and Folkways

• beliefs, practices, customs
• traditions,stories, jokes
• passed down orally
• Gives insight into the people

Bildungsroman-coming of age story

• atypical protagonist (female "mule" in society)
• extended flashback gives exposition of childhood
• Janie begins with innocent view of marriage and life
• Through experience she becomes an independent, strong, confident woman
• In this genre, story shows protagonist's SPIRITUAL JOURNEY of self

Language is mechanism of control.

• Janie is silenced.
• Others control her voice and control her.
• Tea Cake helps her develop voice (porch/much)
• She tells her story=she is in control
• Janie is symbol of all women "speaking out"

Love/Relationships VS Independence

• Janie equates true love with bee & blossom.
• Each relationship brings her closer to that love.
• True love must be worked for/earned.
• True love doesn't hide her beauty or voice.
• What matters most is loving/valuing one's self.

Motifs

• Gender Roles/Sexism
• Race and Racism
• Community
• Folklore Quality of Religion

Symbols

• Horizon
• Speech/Voice
• Hair
• Clothing
• Pear Blossom/Bee

Symbols

• Mule
• Tree without roots
• Porch

Symbolic Settings

• West Florida--control of the past/childhood
• Eatonville--
• Muck--
• Eatonville-