Their Eyes Were Watching God Review

Summary

The major conflict is during her quest for spiritual fulfillment, Janie clashes with the values that others impose upon her. Janie’s gets rid of the materialistic desires of Nanny, Logan, and Jody in her attempt to balance her love for Tea Cake; the hurricane. This progression pushes her toward the eventual conflict between her environment (including the people around her) and her need to understand herself. The confrontation between Janie and the insane Tea Cake in Chapter 19 marks the moment at which Janie finds herself in the face of the most difficult obstacle she has had to face. Janie’s decision to shoot Tea Cake demonstrates that she has the strength to save herself even though it means killing the man she loves; the white women’s support of Janie shows the importance of individuality in the sense of not living up to stereotypes.

Themes

Language as a mechanism of control

Power and conquest as a means to fulfillment

Love and relationships versus independence

Spiritual fulfillment

Materialism

Major Literary Devices

Motifs: Community, race and racism, the folklore quality of religion

Symbols: Janie’s hair, the pear tree/trees in general (My theory behind the symbolism of the tree is this. The trunk is life its self. The people are the branches and the roots are peoples purposes in life, or the reason they are there), the horizon, the hurricane.

Foreshadowing: In Chapter 1, we learn that Janie has been away from her town for a long time and that she ran off with a younger man named Tea Cake; Janie then tells Pheoby that Tea Cake is “gone.” The entire beginning, then, foreshadows the culmination of Janie’s journey.

Structure

A novel written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. Though the novel is narrated in the third person, by a narrator who reveals the characters’ thoughts and motives, most of the story is framed as Janie telling a story to Pheoby. The result is a narrator who is not exactly Janie but who is abstracted from her. Janie’s character resonates in the folksy language and metaphors that the narrator sometimes uses. Also, much of the text relishes in the immediacy of dialogue. The narrator’s attitude toward Janie, which Hurston appears to share, is entirely sympathetic and affirming (Tone).

What types of question would this be good to use to answer

This would be good for any questions about self-empowerment, anything about like obeying family, because Janie gets married to Logan because Nanny tells her to because he will be good for her and that she will love him after they are married for a while, (which Janie never does and eventually leaves him for Jody, and they then go on and build up a town run by blacks). The symbol about trees is something that can be written a lot about because it deals with growth and people and you can talk about why they choose a pear tree.