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Critical Essay

April 7, 2009

Critical Essay: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Moral and emotional development is shaped by outside influences such as genetics and surroundings. Genetic influences are beyond one's control, but environmental influences (which we can control to a certain degree) have the greatest impact on a person's development. Throughout life people we come in contact with will, in one way or another, influence who we become.
Zora Neale Hurston was a timely twentieth century Afro-American feminist author who was reared in a predominately black community which gave her a distinctive perspective on race relations, evident in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In keeping with themes relating to personal relationships and the quest for self-awareness Hurston drew on her on experiences as a feminist Afro-American female to create a story about the miraculous transformation of Janie, from a young insecure girl to a prosperous woman.
Zora Neale Hurston was the daughter of a Baptist minister and an educated scholar who still believed in the intellect contained within the common southern black dialect. In fact, the female perspective is introduced immediately. “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.” (Their Eyes…12)
On the first page of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the distinction is made between men and women, thus initiating Janie's hunt for her own dreams and predicting the “female quest” theme of the rest of the novel. “Detailing her quest for self-discovery and self-definition, it [Their Eyes] celebrates her [Janie] as an artist who enriches Eatonville by communicating her understanding”.
Janie is a black, full-figured woman with big breasts, firm buttocks, and long hair. The men look at her with yearning. She asserts herself beyond probability, with a perseverance that characterizes her search for the love...