Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel

their eyes were watching god is an emotional roller-coaster. the main character, janie, is an incredible protagonist who you can find yourself relating to frequently, for better or for worse. this story, despite being a journey about love, happiness, and self-discovery, is gutwrenching when it wants to be the prose is the highlight of the book, in my opinion! it's written using a mix of southern dialect and african american vernacular english, which only enriches the setting further the first bit might be a little slow to some, but once the story begins to progress, i had a hard time putting my copy down. it's not a super long book, either! in short, it's a beautifully-written book that knows what it's trying to portray from start to finish. i am trying to avoid sharing plot points to not give too much away... but, i highly recommend to anyone who enjoys classic literature!

Why did it take me so long to read this beautiful book? It also took me too long to write this review because I finished this book about a month ago. During this time, I have not forgotten Janie or Tea Cake. They are characters that will stay with me. The story is Janie’s, her journey through life and towards happiness. Written decades ago, it feels timeless. The writing is seamless. Not a spare word, but at the same time there were stunningly vivid descriptions of people and places that brought out every sense. My dad, an avid reader and writer, has always said that the most talented authors can say it all in fewer words, and that she does, writing with intention and purpose. I did not find the dialect hard to read, perhaps because I live in the south, but also it is consistent throughout, and it added so much to the authenticity of time and place in the story. As I mentioned above, Janie is very much on a journey. The first chapter foreshadows that she’s been on a journey that’s not gone well, and she’s now home. For the entire book, I thought I knew what that journey may have been, how it went with Tea Cake, and I was entirely wrong. I loved every bit of that because the journey was a complete surprise to me. Through a series of marriages, she finds her true love, and through him, love for herself. I have to mention the hurricane Janie and Tea Cake experience. Having lived through several myself, I never had to experience on literally on the ground, on foot, running to escape the winds and rising waters. I felt like I was alongside them as they make their treacherous escape. One of the biggest messages in the story is that people are complex and imperfect. You can love a person and not love everything they do. When characters are drawn this way, as they are in this book, they become living, breathing real people, and that’s exactly how I felt the entire time I read this book. I’m disappointed with myself that I didn’t write this review sooner after reading because I think my feelings would have flowed better. If this is a classic you haven’t read, it’s more than worth the read. Between the spare writing and shorter length, it’s a quick read, too. As many of you know, I hardly ever re-read, but this is one I will re-visit because I know I will get even more out of it the next time. As it is, I highlighted dozens of beautiful passages. Zora Neale Hurston was an immensely talented writer, and this book was not given the recognition it deserved during her lifetime. I look forward to exploring her other works.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, is a powerful read for all. It teaches both men and women, adults and children, the power of respect, equality, love, and freedom, especially for women. This book is a solid 4 out of 5 and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great story, that is not overwhelming to read. In my opinion, the book starts slow and is sometimes difficult to read on, however don’t give up on it. About a quarter of the way through, my eyes were glued to this book. I felt a connection to Janie and I wanted to see how her life panned out. When I reached the final few pages, I was actually sad it was over (which shocked me because I was so bored in the beginning). This book originally grabbed my attention because it was narrated by a strong female character. Janie is a fair-skinned African American woman who grew up in poverty with her traditional grandmother, Nanny. Stuck in the time before “equality” existed, Nanny wanted Janie to live a life of leisure, something she was unable to have. She married Janie off to Logan Killicks at a very young age. Janie then left Logan to venture to a new town with Joe Starks who offered her a grandiose and comfortable life, where she didn’t have to work and he could show her off. In a naive way, she believed that Joe loved her and wanted nothing but the best for her, however as he became more obsessed with his store and his town, she became more oppressed by his harsh words and head kerchiefs he forced her to wear. As Janie moves onto her third marriage to Tea Cake, she finally finds the relationship she is looking for. She knew “he could be a bee to a blossom--- a pear tree blossom in the spring.” This was something she dreamed of, having a relationship wear she could lay under a pear tree and simply be in love. This book sends a powerful message about the importance of an equal relationship. Janie is oppressed by Logan and Joe, leaving her sad and lonely. When Tea Cake comes along and takes her to picnics, hunting or fishing, and teaches her to drive she realizes what she has been missing for years. He even chopped down a tree she didn’t like, along with “all those signs of possession” in Joe Stark’s house. Despite the strong relationship they have, Tea Cake still has control over Janie. He takes her money and goes off spending it without her permission, but she can’t say anything about it. This made me very angry. He also whips her when she talks to another man, though nothing was going on between them. He believes that “being able to whip her reassured him in possession.” She doesn’t let these things affect her because she loves Tea Cake and believes God is working in her life. When she comes to terms with this, she finally finds peace. At the end of the novel, when she is completely free of all relationships and ties to people, Janie is truly a happy woman. She is described pulling in “her horizon like a great fish-net” and “calling in her soul to come and see” the life in its meshes. At this moment her life is fulfilled. This book hit all emotions. I was sad and felt empathy for Janie, I was happy, and I was angry beyond belief. Sometimes I laughed, while other times I wanted to tell one of the characters off. This story that Hurston created is so relatable that I felt aspects of Janie’s life in my own, even without the many years of experience she had. I truly believe that I could go back and read this book in a couple of years and learn a whole slew of new lessons.

This book truly deserves a place among the great books in American literature. It is well written in wonderfully rich, lyrical prose with frequent quotable epigrammatic insights into our lives. ("There are years that ask questions and years that answer.") It is the fictional biography of a poor black woman written by a brilliant, black, female writer which speaks so universally to our individual human needs that it appeals even to an old white male like me! It is a book about life and about people which just happens to have a poor, black, female lead character. The language of the book may be off putting to some because Hurston attempts to graphically reproduce a rural Floridian dialect just after the turn of the 20th century. At first it helps to read aloud --even while alone, but it isn't too difficult to master and soon becomes part of the book's character and charm. It would be a fun book to read aloud with others as part of a book club or drama exercise. Despite her dialectical storytelling, her prose are brilliant and lyrical, and her use of imagery and metaphor is as ingenious as any of Garcia-Marquez' best stuff. She has a similar ability to sum up a whole character in a few well chosen images. E.g. her description of mayor Joe Starks, "He can’t help bein’ sorta bossy. Some folks needs thrones, and ruling- chairs and crowns tuh make they influence felt. He don’t. He’s got uh throne in de seat of his pants.” A whole character summed up in one brilliant image! You feel you know the man and could predict his behavior based on this one word picture! This story is wonderful and wonderfully told from start to finish. Hurston's characters are rich and human and Janie, the main character, is well developed and grows from each of her significant relationships over the course of her life. The storyline serves to develop the characters who exist to show what it is to be human; to love, to lose, to feel and to be both crushed and exhilarated by simply living our lives as they come rushing at us.

Janie's lives, I say live because she seemed to live three or four from what I read, were so different but it was the same person living them. I loved this book and will absolutely read it again and recommend it whenever asked about this author and genre. I love the peak into the 1920s American South too. The way black folks spoke to each other and about each other, they way they spoke to and about white folks in that region, at that time was very interesting. I can't wait to read more from the incomparable ZNH.

This is a fantastic story. I loved the plot. It's complex, yet easy to understand (once you get used to the colloquial dialect). SPOILER ALERT - I like how the story unfolds. All the poor black people are finally done with work, so they sit on their porches and watch Janie as she comes home. Everybody gossips and wonders where she has been and what has happened to her. Her friend Pheoby goes to ask her, and Janie tells Pheoby all about what has happened in her life. She tells Pheoby about what Nanny said. What happened was that when Nanny saw Janie kissing a boy, she (Nanny) decided to tell Janie that she always wanted to see Janie get married, instead of ending up like her (Nanny). She tells Janie that she (Nanny) was a slave, and that the overseer was the father of Janie's mom, and that the overseer's wife said she was going to see her (Nanny) punished for having a baby with her husband, the overseer. So one night Nanny and the baby (Janie's mom) escaped. Eventually they were taken in by nice white people who helped put Janie's mom through school. Then Janie goes on to explain that one day her mom literally crawled back home to Nanny. It turns out she (Janie's mom) was molested by a schoolteacher, of all people. That's how Janie ended up coming into the world (she never meets the schoolteacher, who is her natural father. He's out of the story. He's just barely mentioned). Anyway, Nanny said that she didn't want any of that sort of thing to happen to Janie. So Janie met Logan Killicks and married him. At first he was nice to her, but then he treated her like dirt, so she left him for another smooth-talking guy named Joe Starks, who was also called Jody. Joe was very ambitious. He married Janie, then made himself become the mayor of the town, and of course, Janie became the mayor's wife. At first, Jody was nice to her, but then he was less and less kind and sweet as time went on. For example, he didn't let her wear her hair down. He scolded her about every little thing. They ran a grocery store, but he always told her she was doing everything wrong. Also, he didn't like to see her talking to anybody. He was very bossy and controlling. After about 20 years, Janie became hardened and eventually told him off. She didn't hate him or anything, but she didn't let him mistreat her anymore, especially when she noticed that he was not as handsome as he used to be, and he had begun getting saggy and flabby and frail and weak. He soon died from poor health After about eight or nine months, Janie was visited by another smooth-talker whose nickname was Tea Cake. They started hanging out together, and cooking fish and corn bread and eating together, and going hunting and fishing and to the movies. Eventually Janie and Tea Cake got married. Tea Cake wasn't a bad guy at all, although he was mainly good for only gambling (and winning), and growing beans. Growing beans is what he did when they moved to the Everglades in Florida. Then there was a terrible hurricane. Tea Cake and Janie seemed to be watching the sky (but "their eyes were watching God", to see what God would do about the hurricane, and to see whether God would let them live). While trying to escape the hurricane, Tea Cake got bitten by a dog when he was trying to prevent the dog from attacking Janie as she hung on to the tail of a cow in order to survive the hurricane floods. Eventually, Tea Cake ended up getting rabies (it wasn't specified in the book, but the symptoms of rabies were described---for example, Tea Cake could no longer tolerate water). When he lurched toward her with a gun in his hand, she had to end up shooting him dead. She went to trial and was found innocent. After the trial, she picked herself up and went back home, and the story ends with her telling her friend Pheoby that this was the way things happened.

This was such a beautiful yet heartbreaking love story! Janie and Tea Cake endured so much, yet they were so beautiful together! I am glad that I took a chance on this novel and read it. It truly is a beautifully written piece of literature.

To appreciate this novel one has first to place it in its historical context: the 1930's, at the core of the Harlem Renaissance, known then as "The New Negro Movement." Or does one? Nature speaks to Janie Crawford, Hurston's heroine, nature and its open spaces; so when her grandmother forces her into an arranged marriage, Janie feels locked into a place that turns her dreams into ashes. Leaving her husband in order to widen her horizons and following her vision is indeed a revolutionary act in the Black America of the 1930's. What if I sliced off the adjective in the sentence? Would that make the act revolutionary? How about the country? Indeed any woman leaving her husband in the 1930's would commit an act of undeniable courage. But Janie assumes this dream is linked to another man, that she cannot dream alone. At the time, that may be true. Still, if her ambitious and authoritarian second husband uses her as the continuation of his dream, he also makes her a rich widow. What has been crushed and repressed in Janie has not necessarily died, however; there is a phoenix somewhere ready to fly out from these ashes. At first, this phoenix looks like Tea Cake, a charming man younger than Janie as well as a gambler not keen on rational thinking. With him she will let her hair free, assume her womanhood. Although Tea Cake is the winner in this trio of husbands, he does hit her, if only once. Hurston could have chosen to have a completely gentle character here. Her lucid eye, albeit compassionate, compels her to honesty. There is a lot of progress to be made when it concerns respect toward women, be it in Black or White culture. Even the best men are prisoners of that culture. Although Janie discovers love with all the moments of joy that passion can convey, she never completely finds herself while living her adventurous epopee with Tea Cake. This said, during all these years of struggle that will culminate with the flood that eventually kills Tea Cake, Janie builds herself. And her return to her place in men overalls and amidst waves of female nasty gossip is a triumph of sorts. They can say what they want. She has finally found herself. Because she dared to take the journey. And so did Hurston. For the novel, with its subject, metaphors, and singular pacing, makes for a great act of valor. The author does not hesitate to portray a black racist among her bunch, a business owner who would rather serve white or light colored people than people her own color. A woman in constant need of bleaching out her own identity. This is a profoundly tragic character, brainwashed by the domineering culture and denying her own self. One can understand why the great Alice Walker played the phoenix here, that is brought Hurston back to life in the mid 1970's. With her flowing use of the vernacular, her compassionate yet perspicacious view of human nature, Walker is a brilliant Hurston inheritor. What Hurston brought to the literary scene can make the Harlem Renaissance proud, but like Janie herself who despises limits, her work goes beyond borders, as the universality of Watching God in undeniable. Women know Janie Crawford the minute they meet her. They understand the way she talks to nature, the way she dreams her space, the way her reality is beyond definition. Defining the undefinable and universalizing a theme while maintaining the identity of a culture, is a tour de force that only a central author could achieve. So thank you, Ms Walker, for kicking unjust oblivion you know where and placing Zora Neale Hurston right where she should be.

A remarkable book from a member of the Harlem Renaissance. The book describes the life of a woman and her marriages with her desperate search for a satisfying relationship. The book was particularly interesting in its description of life in Central Florida and the Lake Okeechobee area in the early 1900s with a dramatic description of the 1928 hurricane that caused so much flooding and loss of life.

Incredible novel with such depth and beautiful prosody. The timelessness of the themes are so universal, yet the era of writing and setting are completely foreign to me … making an enthralling read.

It's amazing novel.

Worth reading this. So emotional and heart-wrenching...a journey of self-discovery, love, and independence. The prose sings with rhythm and wisdom, turning everyday life into something almost mythic. I was surprised by how alive Janie’s voice felt...fierce, funny, and heartbreakingly real. It’s one of those rare books that feels both timeless and freshly alive every time you read it.

yea