I’ve said it before: a great book is one that makes me wish I were back in the classroom so I could teach it. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is one of those books.
I read this for the first time in college, and I’ve now read it twice this year. I think the busy-ness of college combined with the fact that, as an English major, I was reading 3-5 books a week meant that I just didn’t get from Their Eyes Were Watching God all it had to offer back then.
Reading it for pleasure and with my book club was very different. Several of us describe Their Eyes Were Watching God as a near-perfect novel. It has everything: an engaging narrative, unforgettable characters, vividly drawn settings, lyrical language, and rich thematic exploration. And just as I’d love to do, one of our members did have the joy of teaching this to her AP Lit class. As you might expect, we had a fantastic discussion that even continued the next day via text with members who couldn’t attend the meeting.
Here are some of the highlights of our discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Thematic Discussion Points
1. Starting with the strongest part of the whole novel – Janie: her sexuality and comfort with who she was; she didn’t care about what others thought of her or mind their expectations (unlike Jody & Tea Cake), ex, leaves with Tea Cake dressed to the nines but returns in overalls, working in the field to be with Tea Cake.
- “She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” (Page 23)
- “Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage…The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom…She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him.” (Pg. 102)
2. All the various aspects of race and (maybe more so) skin color: Mrs. Jenkins, the attitude of the Porch Sitters toward Janie, the impact it had at the trial & how the white gallery vs. the black gallery viewed Janie. Janie’s harshest critics are the porch sitters.
3. Comparison between Janie‘s jealousy of Nunkie with Tea Cake’s jealousy of Mrs. Turner‘s brother: Janie did nothing to bring it on, Tea Cake was a participant – to what degree we don’t know. The conclusion of both fits of jealousy ends physically, the first with sex & then with abuse.
4. “Horizon” metaphor throughout: Janie’s looking to the future, not held back by circumstance or expectations. (See Final Thoughts below.)
5. Gender disparity and the abusiveness of both Jody and Tea Cake:
- Tea Cake seems to regret his but he can’t escape what the community expects of him. Tea Cake appears to love Janie – he saves her during the storm. He treats her as an equal, teaching her to shoot a gun (irony!) and how to play checkers. (“Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession.” Pg. 200)
- Jody likes what having a wife who looks like Janie can do for him. (“(H)e didn’t mean for anybody else’s wife to rank with her. She must look on herself as the bell-cow; the other women were the gang.” Pg. 62). But then “Janie had robbed him of his illusion of irresistible maleness that all men cherish…she had cast down his empty armor before men and they had laughed, would keep on laughing…Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store.” (Pg. 114)
6. The strength of setting: the porch, the store, the hurricane, the “muck”
7. The horror and sadness in what happens to Tea Cake and what Janie has to do.
8. Significance of nature & animals: the mule, the cow, the dog
One critique was pacing in Jody’s story – felt like it slowed down.
Other Literary Devices
- Porch sitters = Greek chorus (“They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment…They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.” Pg 2)
- Use of the storm/hurricane as the end of Act III/Climax.
Writing Style
- Dialect – spot on, providing the story in the voice of the characters as they really would have spoken; while very heavy and may “look” intimidating, very readable; the audio version is also wonderful for this reason
- Language is just beautiful, lyrical. She has perfect phrasing to describe life and humanity:
- “The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky.” (Pg 1)
- “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” (Pg 35)
- “It was the next day by the sun and the clock when they reached Palm Beach. It was years later by their bodies.” (Pg. 226)
About Their Eyes Were Watching God, the Book
- Alice Walker & her influence on the “rediscovery” of Zora Neale Hurston in 1975 when Ms. magazine published “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”; Walker sought out and found Hurston’s unmarked grave to put a grave marker there.
- Their Eyes Were Watching God was criticized by Richard Wright, who wasn’t ready for a Black female to be so strong and comfortable with her sexuality. (Great article on that here: Why Richard Wright Hated Zora Neale Hurston | The Root.)
About Zora Neale Hurston: sad that even though she was so talented (first African American graduate from Barnard) she died in poverty, basically unknown.
Final Thoughts
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
“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.” (emphasis mine)
So much about the entire book is set up in these opening paragraphs. The ongoing metaphor of the horizon and the exploration of the differences between men and women. There is a whole discussion to be had about how the first paragraph describes Jody and Tea Cake and the second describes Janie.
Verdict: One of my top five favorite books of all time has just been dethroned. I don’t know which one it is, I just know that Their Eyes Were Watching God is now on the list.
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