Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston | Summary & Analysis

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God explained in just a few minutes!

Professor Kristen Over of Northeastern Illinois University provides an in-depth analysis of the plot, characters, symbols, themes, and motifs of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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Zora Neale Hurston's bildungsroman uses a frame narrative to tell the story of the life of the protagonist, Janie. Janie relates her experiences as a black woman growing up in early 20th century Florida. She does this by describing the events to her best friend, having just returned to her hometown after years away.

Janie’s quest for identity reveals the obstacles that an African American woman faced in the early 20th century. A product of rape, she is raised by her grandmother and is married for the first time at 16. She flees that marriage to be with Joe Starks, an ambitious and controlling man who is establishing the all-black town of Eatonville—Hurston's own hometown.

She stays with him until his death twenty years later. Then she meets the younger Tea Cake, with whom she becomes a migrant worker. Through this relationship, Janie discovers true love and, in the process, finds herself. However, she is forced to kill him when he develops rabies from a dog bite and attacks her in a state of delirium.

At the conclusion of the novel, Janie is alone in her house with her memories of the people, places, and experiences she has had. She realizes that she has found peace at last.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937. Hurston completed the novel in seven weeks while traveling through Haiti. Hurston herself married three times, and her affair with a younger man inspired the novel's character Tea Cake. She was a respected anthropologist, often weaving African American folklore into her writing.

The novel contains many enduring themes: judgment, as Janie faces the opinions others hold of her based on her appearance and actions; inequality, as the characters struggle to overcome limitations imposed on them by society because of their gender, race, and class; and gender roles as Janie searches for a partner who will treat her as an equal rather than as an object.

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