Summary:
Essay about Zora Neale Hurston's novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. She writes about a woman named Janie Crawford, who is the main character of the story, and her life. She is coming back from burying Tea Cake, one of the three men that she was with, but the only one she really loved. Janie starts telling her story to her friend Phoeby. How she grew up with her grandmother on the land of white people, how she never knew her mother or father, and then her life with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake. She was forced to marry Logan Killicks, then she ran away with Joe Starks, and later on, she ran away with Tea Cake. Janie is with these three men throughout the story and she goes from one to another. I believe that the reason for being with all of them is because she is trying to fill a void. She never knew her father or her mother. She is looking for someone to ease her pain. Someone just reading this story would just think that it is a woman trying to find someone to fulfill her idea of what love is like, sweet and pleasant. However, there is more to the story. A reader needs to look deeper into the story to see what Zora Neale Hurston's goal was in writing this novel. I believe that Zora Neale Hurston wanted to give women a voice in a male dominated society. While reading the story, one can see how hegemonic gender roles, the male-dominance over women, the black community, and religion all have their part in the story.
One of the themes that is in the story is Hegemonic Gender Roles. Hegemonic Gender Roles are the ideas that were established by Caucasian people during the time of slavery. It was considered to be the "correct way" of living and African Americans were not living the so-called correct way. They gave the ideas of what masculinity and femininity were. Hegemonic Gender Roles are what gave the idea that all women are fragile and that woman are supposed to take care of home instead of working outside the home or that men should be the head of the household. It is what gave Caucasians more power than everyone else, self-empowerment. The idea that the way they are living is the right way and that everyone else should try to do the same. During the days of slavery, slaves did not live up to these roles. Both the men and women worked, even some children. They were taken from their homeland where they did things a certain way and placed into a new setting. Hegemonic Gender Roles made African Americans non-hegemonic because it destructed the gender roles that were once known.
Hegemony played an important role in Janie's life. First, with her grandmother who had a baby by the owner of the plantation she lived on. She left that plantation and raised Janie's mother on her own. Then, Janie's mother was raped and that is how Janie was conceived. Janie's mother ran away and her grandmother raised Janie. Her grandmother and the Caucasian people whose land they lived on raised Janie and she saw the role of the Caucasian woman. She was around this Caucasian family, The Washburns, so much that she did not even know she was black.
According to Hegemonic rules, a child was supposed to have both parents to raise him or her. There was supposed to be a man that was ahead of the household. In Janie's case it was different, her grandmother was the head of the household, black matriarchy. Her grandmother even worked. As Janie grew up and was forced to get married so that someone can take care of her, hegemony played a role in her marriage to Logan Killicks. In the story he would ask her to do yard work, work that was supposedly for men. She thought she should stay in house, which she did. She saw Mrs. Washburn and her role in the household. When she got married, she wanted it to be the same way, but for black women it was never like that. Enslaved women worked right along with the men. Nevertheless, Janie did not want it to be that way. When Joe Starks came around he basically told her that she does not need to work, that someone should do the work for her. That sparked Janie's interest in him and she ran off with him. However, even with Joe Starks she ended up doing some work.
Another theme in Their Eyes Were Watching God is the establishment of social capital and the black community. Social Capital are the things that advantage the community. Before Joe Starks came to Eatonville, the town had nothing. As Joe Starks came to the town he noticed "the scant dozens of shamed faced houses scattered in the sand." The people were doing nothing to build there town up. There was no one taking initiative to build up the town. The people of the town felt they were powerless and there was nothing they could do about the conditions of the town. Joe Starks came in and built a store and a post office, he even put a street light up in the town.
Now there is a question of why they did not do anything about the town, why they did not try to build it up and make it better. Someone may say they were being lazy. However, when you get more into the book, you can see that Joe Starks becomes the big man that he wanted to be. He's controlling the town, everyone envied him, gave him praise for the things that he is did the community. People had both good and bad things to say about him. He made himself better than everyone else. It's possible that the reason none of the people from Eatonville did any thing to the community before is because they did not want anyone ruling over them. Maybe they wanted to do things freely. If they had built the town up, someone would've came and tried to take over. Keeping the town in poor conditions kept people from coming in and ruling over the town, mainly Caucasian people. It was their way of resisting the white people from coming in and taking over a town that looks hopeless. However, when a black man came in and took over the people were astonished that a black man could come and take over a town, become mayor, but soon, that black man changed and started acting like a white man. He separated himself from everyone else and thought he was better than the people of the town. He put his wife on a pedestal and would not let her associate herself with the townspeople because according to Joe Starks, a mayor's wife had no business associating herself with the townspeople.
This is the complete article, containing 1,162 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).
