Their Eyes Were Watching God
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The liberation of black consciousness and freedom of expression that occurred in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s is known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, an unprecedented flourishing of the arts occurred among African American writers, musicians, and artists. Common themes of art during the Harlem Renaissance were those of alienation, marginality, the blues, and racial consciousness. Zora Neale Hurston is generally considered one of the most significant literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance. HurstonÆs writing often encompassed an attempt to deal with the duality of being black and expressing an authentic voice in a white, racist society. As one historian says of HurstonÆs novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, ôWhile not overtly a protest or proletarian novel, [Eyes] contains incidents that reveal that Hurston does not avoid criticism of racism in the United Statesö (Cutter 657). The main character in Their Eyes Were Watching God embodies one of the central struggles expressed during the artistic flourishing known as the Harlem Renaissance, the struggle to find and express an authentic voice as a marginalized black woman in a predominantly white and racist society. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character, Janie, struggles to find her voice, express her sexuality, and discover her self in the context of three marriages. Whether it is racist society, politics of the era or the abuse from the
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ered as an African American female to bridge such worlds.
The experiences and treatment of Hurston in American society of the era were surely comparable to those of Janie, both from blacks and whites alike. Hurston, as a female, was also criticized by some black intellectuals for not making her works encompass a more active level of protest. One of these, Richard Wright, urged Hurston and other black writers to ôembrace a social realism informed by Marxist theory, which he believed offered æthe maximum degree of freedom in thought and feelingàfor the Negro writer'ö (Boyd 310). Despite such criticisms, however, and much like Janie, Hurston refused to defer her dreams and wrote to appeal to the universal humanism in all human beings and not to politicize particular causes or movements.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie also refuses to defer her dreams. However, she remains unfulfilled and not fully actualized until she finds the courage to express her whole self as she feels her self to be. After having to suppress her real self from years of being told what to do by relatives or the men in her life, Janie is finally able to recognize that she will never be happy or true to her self unless she follows her own path and stri
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1626
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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