Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston: Literary Analysis

Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American author who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic movement that took place in Harlem between the 1920s and the 1930s. The Harlem Renaissance was a period where African-Americans started to overcome racism and assimilate into a Caucasian dominated society. Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is one of the most famous novels of the Harlem Renaissance. The novel focuses on the plight of an African-American woman, Janie, achieving a joyous, respectable life from a humble background. Janie struggled through life due to her mostly unsuccessful search for love. After many years with an oppressive husband, Janie finally found her true love and started to live life the way she wanted. This theme can be seen in the way that Hurston wrote the novel.
The novel was written in the unique style of dialect. The dialect captured the vernacular conversations of the characters in the novel. Along with dialect, Hurston used many different literary elements and motifs.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston used style and literary elements to prove through Janie that people could gain racial and personal independence by following God rather than other humans.
Slavery in the United States officially ended on December 6, 1865, the day the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. The end of slavery had not brought the equality that many African-Americans had envisioned. Instead, white supremacy quickly gained power in the New South, where ninety percent of African Americans lived. Janie’s grandmother was a former slave living in the South. Due to white supremacy, Janie’s grandmother had a skewed vision of love. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother’s, hopes for Janie’s future were influenced by her own painful experiences. Nanny was a former slave and had Janie’s mother due to rape by her white master. In spite of the fact that what the master did was awful, it was Nanny's reputation that was tarnished because she was seen only as an unmarried mother and not as the victim of a rape. Not only was Nanny raped, but Janie’s mother was also raped, had given birth, and had then become an alcoholic. Due to Nanny’s past, all she desired was for Janie to marry and be a legitimate wife. This was all due to Nanny’s psychological inability to love. Maslow’s theory states,“A man must meet safety needs before he can love.” This quote explains Nanny’s psychological inability to love which she passed on to Janie. The motif of the pear tree is reoccuring through the novel. The pear tree symbolizes to Janie the possibility in life for a connection between self and nature, and the feelings of sexual desire and love. Janie is envious of the pear tree. She wants this love and connection and the whole novel is about her search for it. Susan Meisenhelder is a Professor of English at the California State University-San Bernardino. Meisenhelder writes, “In this story of a black woman’s search for identity, the main character, Janie, suffers through two unfulfilling marriages to oppressive, materialistic men, who ‘squinch’ her spirit until she meets Tea Cake..” Here Meisenhelder summarizes Janie’s search for unconditional love. Janie ended up in these unsuccessful marriages because she followed her grandmother's ideologies. Later in the novel, Janie realizes that the only way that she will find the unconditional love that she seeks is by following God and not other people, such as her grandmother, which is a major theme of the novel.
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic blossoming that took place in Harlem between 1918 and 1937. Zora Neale Hurston was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. She was undoubtedly the most influential woman in the movement. When the titans of the Harlem Renaissance created the formula for what the “New Negro” should be, they actually meant “New Negro Man.” Hurston was able to provide a much needed feminist voice to the male dominated movement. The dialogue in Their Eyes Were Watching God is written in dialect in order to capture the sound and grammar of African-American vernacular. The novel also explores the ways men and women used language differently. Men dominated conversations, commanding and issuing orders, while women were subdued into submissive servitude. A main theme of the novel is finding a voice, which is what Janie longed for. It was hard for females, especially AFrican-American females, to have a voice. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston writes,“So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush.” Here Hurston describes Janie’s oppression. Due to Joe’s totalitarian authority over Janie, she had to suppress her voice, which was what she yearned for in the novel. This situation is similar to the Harlem Renaissance. The movement lacked a female voice until Hurston filled that void. Hurston gave African-American women a voice in a society where they were the most oppressed. Like the Harlem Renaissance, Janie found a voice. Once Joe died, Janie stated that she felt relieved. Her oppressor was finally gone. When Janie meets Tea Cake, her voice that she thirst for finally came into fruition. Dr. Ashley L. Cohen is an English professor at Georgetown University. Dr. Cohen wrote, “Janie’s voice flourished with Tea Cake as he stimulates her and engages her in conversation. She could not love Logan and Jody because they repressed her, she could not feel love until she found her voice.” Here Dr. Cohen vividly describes how Janie found love when she found her voice. Voice is an important thing to have in life. Zora Neale Hurston gave the Harlem Renaissance a female voice and Janie found her own voice. Janie’s search for a voice proved that the only way for her to find a voice was by following God rather than other humans.
The 19th Amendment to the United State's Constitution was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920. The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. This achievement took decades of protest. Beginning in the mid-1800s, generations of woman suffrage supporters protested for years to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change to the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see the ultimate triumph in 1920. Janie in particular was oppressed like the women of the early 1900s. Joe required her to cover her hair, serve him, and silence herself. In the society of that time, women were seen as inferior to men thus Joe and Logan treated Janie accordingly. The motif of Matt Bonner’s mule symbolized the bondage and victimization of the women in that era. Women were viewed as the lowest creatures used by others like the mule was used to slave in the fields and plow the Earth. The mule also serves to illustrate the tense relationship between Janie and Joe. The mule does not correlate solely to Janie, but to any black woman struggling for independence. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston wrote:
“Honey, white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out…So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule of de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”
Here Janie explains the “food chain” of society. White men are on top, black men below them, and finally black women under the black men. This quote exposes the hypocrisy of and women in general were not legally allowed to vote until 1920, despite their disproportionate contribution to society. Throughout the novel men display their feelings of superiority to women. If their spouses act out of line, the men would beat them. Many of the men felt that the women were extremely unintelligent and needed to be instructed on what to do all of the time; a view that encourages their belief that their men are superior to their female counterpart. Dr. Sarah Freebuss is an English professor at the University of Virginia. Dr.Freebuss writes,“Janie’s gender plays a greater role in how she is viewed by society. She, and often women in general, has the misfortune of being known only in reference to her husband.” Here Dr.Freebuss explains Janie’s lack of a distinguishable identity set apart from Joe’s. Janie represents women in general during the early 1900s. Women wanted their own identity in a world that was dominated by men. Janie and women in general were able to find that identity they longed for. Hurston used Janie to prove that people could gain independence by following God rather than other humans. Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of Needs model in 1940s. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a motivation theory that argues five interdependent levels of basic human needs must be satisfied in a strict sequence starting with the lowest level. Physiological needs for survival and security are the most basic and most pressing needs. They are followed by social needs for love and belonging and self-esteem needs. The final and highest level needs are self-actualization needs.The Hierarchy of Needs theory remains important to understanding human nature. Janie undergoes many changes in her life and her needs changes correlate to the change of her environment and position in society. Dr.Marcel Pope is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr.Pope writes,“Janie, reveals the evolution of her needs from primitive physical needs and the need of safety in the first marriage to love in her second marriage to, finally, her needs reach the level of esteem in her third marriage.” Here Dr.Pope explains the three distinct needs that Janie moves through in her life. With each marriage she satisfied a need but still lacked other needs that prevented her from achieving self-actualization. It can be argued that Hurston implied that Janie achieved self-actualization when Tea Cake passed away. That was when Janie fully understood life. The Hierarchy of Needs model can most be seen in Janie’s marriage with Joe. The marriage was very unfulfilling for Janie. Joe was a tyrannical husband that led in a domineering fashion. Joe provided Janie’s primitive needs but unsuccessfully provided her with love. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston writes,“She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him [Joe].” Here Hurston metaphorically describes how Janie fell out of the inauthentic love she had with Joe. This is the point where Janie realized that Joe could not satisfy her need for love. Janie’s two unsuccessful marriages helped her to realize that a person can not move up the Hierarchy of Needs unless a person by follows God rather than other humans. Their Eyes Were Watching God is in no way a biography, but it does contain autobiographical elements.
There is a great amount of correlation between Janie’s life and Zora Neale Hurston's. They both were raised by their grandmothers because their mothers passed away. Additionally, Janie has close relationships with a white family during her time as a child, to the point where she does not even think that she is black. Another point of correlation is the fact that Janie left Logan for Joe. Despite Janie’s lack of a formal divorce, her marriage mirrors Hurston's in the fact that both marriages lasted only a short period of time and both left because their husband had little left to offer. The most influential correlation can be found in their perception on marriage and men. Dr.Charlotte Holmes is the Associate Professor of English & Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Dr.Holmes
writes:
“Janie marries Logan in order to be provided for and have a good life, but she does not love him. When the love never came into fruition, Janie took the offer from Joe Starks. She has no reservations about leaving Logan. This shows that she shares Hurston's opinion about men because Hurston divorced her husband after a matter of months because she said he brought her work down.”
Here Dr.Holmes explains the correlation between Janie’s values on marriage and Hurston’s. They both shared very similar values. Both Janie and Hurston refused to be subservient to men in a time where a subservient nature was almost required of women. This bravery and independence helped to make Janie and Hurston inspirational to many women of the era. Another autobiographical element in the story is the character Tea Cake. Percival Punter was Hurston’s real life Tea Cake. Punter was 21 years younger than Hurston but that did not hinder their love. In an interview, Hurston said:
“He was tall, dark brown, magnificently built, with a beautifully modeled back head. His profile was strong and good. But his looks only drew me in the beginning. I did not fall in love with him just for that. He had a fine mind and that intrigued me. When a man keeps beating me to the draw mentally, he begins to get glamorous.”
Here Hurston describes her lover Punter but could easily be Janie’s description of Tea Cake. The correlation between Janie’s life and Hurston can really help to explain some of the misunderstood views that Janie has throughout the novel. The correlation also helps to prove that Janie and Hurston believed that people could gain racial and personal independence by following God rather than other humans. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston used style and literary elements to prove through Janie that people could gain racial and personal independence by following God rather than other humans. The historical background of the Harlem Renaissance, the plight of slavery, women’s issues in the early 1900s, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and the correlation between Janie and Hurston’s life all help to prove that theme. Hurston also used many motifs, themes, and symbolism to emulate the plight of the time. Their Eyes Were Watching God is an eternal American classic. Zora Neale Hurston’s style of writing and her historical significance helped to create an incredibly influential piece of literature.