Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston offers the portrait of a black woman in the South who chooses to live her life in a way she finds fulfilling regardless of society's expectations or consequences. However, the road to her fulfillment is not an easy one and it is a road that leaves her physically alone at the end. But whether she is truly alone is a question Hurston leaves to the reader's interpretation. What does remain uncontested is that Janie's decision to live with Tea Cake and possibly her decision at the end of the novel to sequester herself with Tea Cake's memory demonstrate her decision to affirm her own liberty by living by her own rules.

Underlying all of Hurston's novel is the intersection of sex, gender, and race in American culture. Hurston appears to be particularly interested in the role of the black woman as sexual object and individual subject. Janie serves as the sexual object of all the men in her life. For Logan Killicks and Joe Starks she serves as a trophy. Only with Tea Cake does the sexual appetite appear to be mutual. However, Janie is always aware of herself as an individual subject even if she only arguably asserts that individuality during and after her relationship with Tea Cake.

At the end of Chapter Nineteen, one of the black men following Janie's trial says: "Well, you know whut dey say `uh white man and uh nigger woman is de freest thing on earth.' Dey do as

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d women and the material evidence of affluence as well as the use and trade of drugs, crime and violence. McCall explains the popularity of a movie such as "Superfly," in which a black man beats the system by dealing cocaine: "In the end, [Superfly] did what he set out to do. He made his money selling cocaine, kicked whitey's ass, and rode off into the sunset in his shiny Eldorado" (102). McCall makes it clear that he and his peers believed there was no place for them in the economic and social structure of America outside of the black community. In fact, that larger structure actively sought to keep them out. Consequently, they operated in a way adversarial to that structure because, in a way, they did not really have to play by its rules. McCall does not condemn the blacks who operate illegally. Rather, he describes their actions very matter-of-factly. For him, their actions are almost a natural progression from the situation in which they have been placed. However, throughout the book, we see him struggling between the life his peers represent and the life he knows his parents would prefer him to lead. He attempts to get jobs and follow the paths his parents advocate, but he is constantly discouraged and disgusted a
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Approximate Word count = 3201
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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