Book Review Their Eyes Were Wat Ching God

Book Review

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neal Hurston

Drama

Credits

Readability Age Range

15 and up

Publisher

Beginning published by J.B. Lippincott Inc. The version reviewed was published by Harper Perennial Modernistic Classics and HarperCollins Children's Books, both imprints of HarperCollins Publishing.

Awards

Time's 100 Best English language-Language Novels, from 1923 to 2005

Year Published

2006

Book Review

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston has been reviewed past Focus on the Family'southward marriage and parenting mag.

Plot Summary

On a hot summer evening the residents of Eatonville, one of the starting time towns owned and run past blacks, are shocked to see a bedraggled Janie Sparks walking down the street. Janie is the widow of the town'south first mayor, but she left two years ago to marry a human being 10 years her junior.

Janie greets her old neighbors, but doesn't stop to talk. Instead, she makes her lone way to the house she formerly shared with the mayor. While the others gossip about her appearance and speculate on what events brought her home, her all-time friend, Phoeby, puts together a bowl of rice to take to Janie for dinner. Janie is grateful for the food and asks Phoeby to sit with her while she eats and soaks her tired feet. She and so tells Phoeby the story of her life.

A schoolteacher had raped Janie's mother, and she gave birth to Janie, before abandoning her. Janie grew up living with her grandmother, who she chosen Nanny. At the historic period of 6, Janie saw a picture of herself with the white children Nanny took care of. For the first time, she realized she was black. Nanny, who had in one case been a slave, dreamed of a better life for her granddaughter, ane that included a husband and security.

One day Nanny wakes from a nap to see sixteen-yr-old Janie kissing a swain over the contend. Nanny is convinced she needs to put her plan in motion right abroad. Janie pleads differently, but Nanny insists she marry a much older man, Logan Killicks, whom they know from their church. Nanny wants to die knowing her granddaughter will accept someone to protect and take care of her.

Janie convinces herself that once she is married, she will come to love her husband, but it never happens. Alone and lonely on Logan's farm, Janie dreams of a different life where she can be loved for the person she is, and non for her looks or the things she does around the house. Afterward a yr of marriage, Logan is no longer satisfied with Janie's dazzler. He wants her to help out more on his subcontract. He sets her to planting potatoes while he takes a trip to another town in search of a mule Janie can use to plow. While Janie plants, she spies a handsome stranger who is whistling as he walks down the route. The 2 strike up a chat that leads to flirting. The stranger, Joe Sparks, convinces Janie that marriage to a poor, old farmer is not what she deserves.

When Logan returns, he insists Janie aid him move a manure pile, but she refuses. She hints that she might leave him for a better life, only he laughs off her threat and tells her that if she did run abroad, she'd soon be back because she doesn't know how to work. Janie fixes him breakfast and and then runs abroad with Joe.

At first her marriage to Joe is a adept 1. He has coin and appetite and likes how Janie'southward practiced looks complement him. Joe takes Janie to a town in Florida, which is entirely owned by black people, only the two are disappointed with its poor condition. Joe immediately goes to the nearest landowner and buys 200 acres of adjoining property. He begins building a full general store and a nice house for himself and Janie. When the shop is finished, he hosts a party for the townspeople and makes a fancy speech. The locals elect him as their mayor.

Now that Joe has achieved his goal of running the town, he exerts his power over Janie. He insists she spend her fourth dimension working in the store. She must also proceed her cute long hair covered, every bit he doesn't desire whatsoever other man to touch it. He warns Janie non to go likewise friendly with the locals. She is the mayor's wife, and as such, is amend than them. Janie resents his interference in her social life, simply his abusive nature keeps her from reaching out to brand friends. The other women believe Janie to be prideful, just before long they, and the men who spend their days on the store's porch, notice how Joe berates her. Although the locals wonder at how practiced their wedlock is, only Phoeby tries to brand friends with Janie.

The porch sitters, as Janie refers to them, oftentimes make fun of ane man's onetime mule. When they spot the donkey wandering through town, they accept turns abusing it. The poor animal tries to fight dorsum, but the men beat information technology more. Joe overhears Janie'south whispered disapproval of their beliefs and, in a rare gesture of generosity, offers to buy the mule from its owner. The mule becomes a fixture in the boondocks with the porch sitters telling wild stories virtually how it spends its days. When the mule dies, the unabridged town shows up to give information technology a funeral, except for Janie, who has been ordered to mind the store.

After 17 years of marriage, Joe's health declines. Once robust and larger than life, he has begun to shuffle and grow an old human being's paunch. Janie, although almost forty, remains a beautiful woman. Jealousy seeps into Joe's already controlling nature, and he verbally abuses Janie even more than, peculiarly in front of the townspeople. She continues to silently have it until one day she snaps. With the porch sitters as witnesses, she points out Joe's physical faults. He strikes her and orders her to leave the store and not come up back.

Joe'southward health continues to refuse, but he refuses to let Janie telephone call a medico. Instead, he puts his religion in local medicine men. He suspects Janie of poisoning him, and the townspeople gossip that it might be true when they acquire that Joe won't even sleep in the aforementioned chamber as his wife. By the time Janie gets a real doctor out to encounter him, it is besides late. Joe dies of kidney failure. Although she no longer loved Joe, she spares no expense for his funeral. She keeps the store but now refuses to article of clothing the head rags to comprehend her hair. She also hires someone to assistance mind the store and then she can socialize with the porch sitters when she wants. Many men court Janie for her money, merely she enjoys her newfound independence.

One day a handsome and charming boyfriend known as Tea Cake visits the store, while most of the boondocks is attention a ball game. Shocked that she doesn't know how to play checkers, he offers to teach her the game. Janie resists her growing attraction to Tea Cake, fearing not just the disastrous cease of her ii previous marriages, but the 12-year age difference betwixt them. Tea Cake is persistent and patient; he assures Janie that she is a beautiful and desirable woman.

The townspeople gossip about their relationship, believing that the younger Tea Block is just later on Janie'due south money. Phoeby cautions her friend, but Janie insists that Tea Cake has money of his own and loves her for herself. She follows Tea Cake to Jacksonville so they tin can marry. Tea Cake finds the $200 she hid inside her apparel only in instance things didn't work out between them. While she'south asleep, he takes the money, leaving her to worry that he's left her. He returns that dark and assures her of his love. He couldn't resist throwing a party for all the men he worked with down at the railroad. He is surprised when Janie tells him that she would have liked to nourish the party. He thought his friends weren't in her social grade, and so he didn't include her. She convinces him that she doesn't hold to that kind of prejudice; his friends are her friends. Tea Block wins Janie'due south money dorsum past gambling, and the 2 head to the Everglades to work the sugar cane and bean fields.

Janie sets upwardly house while Tea Cake works in the fields. Their abode becomes a social place for the other migrant workers who get together at night to hear Tea Cake play the guitar and tell stories. When Tea Cake repeatedly sneaks off the job to encounter Janie throughout the day, she asks him why. He tells her it's because he misses her so much. Janie asks if she can get out in the fields with him, and he readily agrees. Janie is presently accustomed among the other migrant workers every bit they can meet the deep love she and Tea Block share for each other.

Janie and Tea Cake share two years of marriage together before a hurricane hits the Everglades. The couple fights the rising waters and driving rain to seek shelter on college ground. At one betoken, Janie is swept abroad past the water only to observe safety by holding onto a cow. Although a wild domestic dog on the cow'due south back tried to force Janie to let go, Tea Cake comes to her rescue and stabs the dog, but not earlier information technology bites his cheek. 3 weeks subsequently, while they are trying to put their dwelling back together, Tea Cake becomes sick. He is feverish and unable to consume water. Janie calls a doc and receives the devastating news that Tea Block has rabies. The doctor agrees to try and get Tea Block medicine, but warns Janie to stay abroad from her hubby as it may exist too late and he may become fierce. Janie refuses to take Tea Block taken to a infirmary and restrained, insisting that she can have care of him until the medicine arrives to heal him.

Unfortunately, Janie is wrong. When Tea Cake stumbles outside to go to the bath, Janie finds a loaded pistol under his pillow. Afraid he'll get angry if she hides the gun, she removes iii of the bullets and makes sure the loaded chamber is empty. Her worst fears are realized afterward that nighttime when Tea Cake, in a fit of rabid paranoia, pulls out the pistol and tries to shoot her. Janie must have a burglarize and impale her hubby in self-defence force.

The local white population is much kinder to Janie than the migrant workers she has called friends. The police force, doctor and judge immediately put Janie on trial for murder, as the law demands, but they know they will not convict her. Tea Block's friends want to testify most his peaceful nature, not believing that he would ever harm Janie. The court refuses to hear their arguments, and Janie is constitute not guilty. When Tea Cake'southward friends come across how Janie arranges a funeral to rival an Egyptian pharaoh's, they forgive her, knowing she must have truly loved him to give him such a send-off. Janie tries to live alone in the house she shared with Tea Cake, simply cannot bear to be in that location without him. She decides to make the long trip back to Eatonville to live in the house Joe Starks left her.

Janie finishes telling her sad tale to her friend Phoeby, who agrees to tell the townspeople what has happened. Janie'due south story of dearest inspires Phoeby to be kinder to her ain husband. The friends role for the evening. As Janie prepares to get to bed, she realizes she has plant contentment with her life. Fifty-fifty though she misses Tea Cake deeply, she is grateful for the time they had together and for all the life she experienced while with him.

Christian Beliefs

Phoeby's start hubby says that most people go to church so they'll be certain to ascension on Judgment Day. They want to be present when other people's hush-hush sins are revealed. Nanny prayed every day for Janie, particularly that she would find a decent husband. Nanny tells Janie she is waiting for the angel of death to appear and take her. She as well claimed the Lord protected her when she hid from a vindictive mistress.

A character mentions that people should ever welcome a human being and his wife by comparison the strangers to Isaac and Rebecca. When Joe brings the showtime street lamp into Easton, he says a prayer over it. Another adult female leads the townspeople in a hymn. Joe closed his store on Sundays. A flirtatious woman is said to know why God gave women eyelashes. A man tells her that information technology must be recess in heaven considering St. Peter let out the angels.

After Joe hits her, Janie puts an icon in the bedroom to correspond the Virgin Mary. A person is described as existence as one-time as Methuselah. Janie'south berating of Joe is compared to Michal chastising David for dancing in the streets. A hymn is sung when Joe dies. A person is described equally having the face of a cherub from a church tower. When the hurricane hits the Everglades, the people left behind are said to wait on the mercy of the Lord. Equally Janie and Tea Cake listen to the storm exterior, they compare God to a "Big Massah" cartoon His chair across the floor.

The title of the book comes from the scene where Janie and Tea Cake are looking into the dark of the hurricane, but their eyes were really on the Lord. Tea Block asks Janie if she'south sorry she came down to Florida with him, and she tells him no, that God opened a door for her and showed her the light. When Tea Cake is forced to aid bury the victims of the storm, he remarks that the white people seem overly concerned with how the dead people are going to judgment. The white people as well don't seem concerned that God might know near Jim Crow laws. Janie questions God and His reasons for allowing Tea Cake to contract rabies. Back in Eatonville, Janie philosophizes that everybody has to exercise two things in their life: learn how to alive and get to God.

Other Conventionalities Systems

When the town mule dies, one homo says he has gone to mule heaven where he can look down on his erstwhile owner, plowing fields in hell. A friend escaping the hurricane tells Tea Cake and Janie that if he doesn't run into them again on Earth, he'll meet them in Africa. Those waiting out the storm talk near Big John the Conqueror who did great things on Globe and and then went to heaven without dying. He played guitar with the angels, beat them in a race around Jericho and passed out water in hell.

Lake Okeechabee is described as a monster stirring in its bed. Janie remarks that luck is a fortune when she learns that one of their friends survived the tempest. When Tea Cake wakes up delirious from rabies, Janie thinks peradventure a witch is choking him.

Potency Roles

Nanny is the person who reared Janie. She is loving but shortsighted. Because she was born a slave and taught to have smaller dreams, her just goal for Janie is to take a decent married man, while Janie wants to experience life and find a human being who loves her. Janie's first two husbands were controlling; they demanded that she act equally they prescribed. Joe, particularly, did not want Janie to gain any conviction in her own abilities.

Profanity & Violence

The words h—, d–n and b–ch are used, forth with the n-word. God'due south proper noun is used in vain with knows, give thanks and d–north. As well the name Lawd is used with expert. Coon-d–k is used as a name for liquor. Other objectionable words are butt headed, fanny and buttocks.

When Nanny confronts Janie virtually kissing a male child, Nanny slaps Janie several times. Nanny tells how a schoolteacher raped Janie's female parent. Joe strikes Janie on several occasions. When another woman tries to get Janie to exit Tea Cake to appointment her son, Tea Cake beats Janie to show she is his possession. Several men get in a drunken brawl at a eating place. Delirious with rabies, Tea Block tries to shoot Janie. Fortunately, she has emptied the beginning three chambers of the pistol. She kills Tea Cake with a rifle before he tin burn down a fourth shot.

Sexual Content

The men ogle Janie's body as she walks down the street. 16-year-old Janie observes the sensuality of nature every bit she watches the bees pollinating the trees. It arouses her own sexuality, and so she kisses a human being across the gatepost. Nanny tells her she wants to see Janie married to a decent homo rather than allow one man and so another buss her and experience her body. Janie's female parent was the product of a relationship between Nanny and her master. Janie and Tea Block fence violently. Their physicality leads them to making love on the floor of their house.

Discussion Topics

Boosted Comments

Smoking: Joe smokes a cigar.

Gambling: Tea Block is a expert dice gambler.

Booze: Several characters drink alcohol throughout the volume. Janie is told her mother started drinking afterwards Janie was born. Several of the migrant workers become in a drunken ball at a eating house.

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Volume reviews embrace the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to determine whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book'south review does non constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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