Their Eyes Were Watching God Questions and Answers
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What Does The Pear Tree Symbolize
Throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God, plants and flowers are repeatedly used to symbolize various aspects of the female characters. The pear tree, in particular, is symbolic of Janie's sexual...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the significance of the mule’s funeral in Their Eyes Were Watching God? What about the meeting of buzzards...
The mule that dies had belonged to Matt Boner, and Joe bought it to prevent further abuse. Janie had protested the townspeople’s harsh treatment, but Joe never shared with the townspeople that...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What does the title Their Eyes Were Watching God mean?
Hurston’s classic novel unfolds the story of Janie Crawford, who endures much hardship in her life. As her tale depicts a life of disappointment, rejection, abandonment, and betrayal, Janie finds...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
At the end of chapter 13 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses personification to describe Janie's soul....
The end of chapter thirteen features a bit of a test of Janie and Tea Cake's relationship. He has taken her money that she had saved carefully and gone and gambled with it. Janie has been...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
"She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her then she went inside there to see what it...
The "something falling off the shelf" is Janie's illusion/perception of Joe Starks. Up until this point, Janie has held on to her hopeful beliefs that Jody wanted to be a "big...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How long was Janie married to Logan in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
While the timing is not precisely stated (because the novel describes seasons rather than months), clues throughout chapters 2–4 indicate that Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks lasted between one...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What are three major ways Janie Crawford changes in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Janie Crawford changes in a number of important ways throughout the story. First and foremost, she becomes more independent. At the beginning of the story, it's fair to say that Janie has something...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In what year/time period is Their Eyes Were Watching set?
Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937 and is considered one of the most important works of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement in post-World War I African...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Chapter 16 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Mrs. Turner is very clearly prejudiced. How does Janie react to...
Chapter 16: 1) Mrs. Turner is very clearly prejudiced. How does Janie react to her? Janie humors Mrs. Turner and indulges the older woman's behavior. Janie doesn't try to change Mrs. Turner's views...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God,what does Nanny mean when she says "ah'm a cracked plate?"
In Chapter 2 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, thirteen-year-old Janie is seen by her grandmother as she kisses the tall and lean Johnny Taylor over the gate. Alarmed that Janie is becoming like the...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, how is Matt Bonner being teased, and how does he respond?
Matt Bonner is constantly teased about the fact that he doesn't feed his mule and often neglects it and overworks it. The people from the store would tell him that the mule is "bad off," and many...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is one quote that Tea Cake uses to show that he gives Janie "what the bee gives the blossom" in Their Eyes Were...
The concept of the bee giving to the blossom serves as a metaphor for rejuvenation, sexual activity, and emotional fulfillment. Zora Neale Hurston uses this idea in connection with the relationship...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the significance of the opening scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
The opening scene of Their Eyes Were Watching God provides the lens through which the narrative of the novel is viewed. The opening scene introduces us to Janie, an independent woman who has defied...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, who are the sitters referred to in this following quotation? "These sitters had...
The sitters are quite simply the people of Eatonville sitting on the porch in the evening. Since most of them are laborers during the day, they have essentially been rendered "tongueless, earless,...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the significance and meaning behind Zora Neale Hurston’s famous quote “So her soul crawled out from its...
At the end of chapter 13 in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston writes, He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Why is Tea Cake called Tea Cake?
Tea Cake explains that his real name is Vergible Woods and tells Janie, De name mah mama gimme is Vergible Woods. Dey calls me Tea Cake for short. We can infer that people called him Tea Cake...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston writes, "Like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed,...
At the start of chapter 2, Janie is a young woman living with her grandmother, Nanny. As she tells her life story in retrospect, Janie tells Pheoby that she sees "her life like a great tree in leaf...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What are examples of figurative language in chapters 2 and 3 of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Zora Neale Hurston portrays Janie as a philosophical, imaginative person through the use of vivid imagery, drawing on multiple senses. Janie feels deep connections to the natural world and, through...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, what does the word jooks mean?
A folklorist and anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston' Their Eyes Were Watching God is both an account of black heritage and her main character's journey to female individuality. In Chapter 14, for...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Why are the woman talking nastily about Janie as she returns to town?
We don't know this yet, but it's because Janie has abandoned the town in their eyes. She was the mayor's wife, and after he died, she left with a younger man. They feel she "ran off", & they...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In the following quotation from Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, what is significant about...
At the very end of Chapter 2 of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Nanny speaks to her granddaughter Janie as follows: "Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe de menfolks white or...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What are some similes in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
An excellent simile is used in chapter 5 to describe the behavior of Joe Starks. Joe makes a lot of the townspeople uncomfortable because he is always putting on airs and acting like he is better...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How did the townspeople feel about Janie going out with Teacake?
The townspeople were very critical of her choice to see Teacake. From an external point of view, the marriage of Janie and Joe Starks has everything required for success: wealth, respect, a...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How does the quote by Tea Cake in Chapter 11, "You got de keys to do kingdom," create an allusion to another kingdom?
In the final line of Chapter 11, Tea Cake tells Janie how much he wants to be with her and expresses his depth of emotion with the words, "You got de keys to de kingdom." This last sentence is a...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, what do the first two paragraphs suggest about...
The two opening paragraphs of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God are as follows: Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the significance of the allusion, "The thing that Saul's daughter had done to David"?
As my colleague mentioned above, the allusion is a biblical one. In 2 Samuel, Chapter 6, King David is so happy about bringing the ark of God to the city of David that he can't help dancing for...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How does society's expectations affect Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Society's expectations deeply affect Janie, the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God. In a very general sense, she is subject to the judgments and biases of American society as an African...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the description of Tea Cake from the book Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Tea Cake's real name is Vergible Woods. He meets the heroine Janie after she has had two less than fulfilling marriages. Tea Cake is twenty-five years old and is not wealthy, but he has an inner...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What does Janie learn from her three marriages in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"?
Through her three marriages, Janie learns that equality in marriage is not possible, especially for a woman dually limited by race and gender. However, when she is in her youth, Janie fails to...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In what way could Janie be considered a feminist? What weaknesses or flaws might a feminist see in her? I need help...
Janie could be seen as a feminist character or a character admired by feminist readers and critics, because by the end of the novel, she is confident and independent, comfortable in her own skin,...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is Janie's situation at the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
By refering to the beginning of the novel, I am assuming that you mean the start of the story rather than the beginning of Janie's life, which of course is part of the middle section of the story...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Chapter 11 of Their Eyes Were Watching God,what does Janie wish for herself? What does Janie wish for herself?
In Chapter 11, we see the true beginnings of a relationship between Tea Cake and Janie developing. However, after all of her years in Eatonville with Joe, Janie is suspicious of her own feelings...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the main conflict in chapter one of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Their Eyes Were Watching God is largely told as a prolonged reflection on the events of many years leading up to Janie Crawford’s arrival in Eatonville, which opens chapter one. When Janie was...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Can you explain the following quote from the very end of the book? "She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net....
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God begins and ends with the horizon. The horizon is the line between the sky and the earth, or sea, and is the maximum distance that an observer can...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Choose one quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God that represents either Janie's American Dream or that of the three...
There are lot of powerful quotes in this novel that represent Janie’s American Dream. At the beginning of the story, Janie is not too certain what she wants out of life. But as time passes and she...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the relationship between Nanny and Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston?
Nanny is Janie's grandmother, raising her after her mother, Leafy, leaves. Nanny's influence is significant early in the novel, as Nanny is seeking to protect Janie from the types of oppression...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, what are the differences between the language of the men and that of women?
The most important passage in this entire novel that is relevant to language and the way in which men and women communicate, actually occurs in the first two paragraphs of the novel. This expresses...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Describe and analyze 1.) Janie’s relationship with Logan Killicks, and 2.) Janie’s relationship with Joe Starks....
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie marries three times, and her relationship with each husband contributes to her character development toward becoming an independent, confident woman. Logan...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How important is Hurston's use of dialect to our understanding of Janie and the other characters and their way of life?
Zora Neale Hurston uses dialect to help her characters appear to be real people with actual cultural backgrounds. A character's dialect is a large part of who they are as a person. It can show...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What role does God play in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
There are a lot of religious—particularly Christian—themes in Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God. The figure of God is a bit ambiguous throughout the novel, but Hurston portrays...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Analyze how Janie's tension between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the work in Their Eyes...
The tension between outward conformity and inward questioning is the very heart of Their Eyes Were Watching God, as Janie's character's iconic status comes from her journey of self-actualization....
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What 5 literary devices are used in chapter 5 of Their Eyes Were Watching God?
There are numerous literary devices used throughout Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. In chapter 5, Janie marries her second husband, Joe Starks, but learns that this relationship...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the purpose of the pear tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches. Thus begins Chapter 2 of Zora Neale Hurston's...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Why do you think Janie decides to run off with Joe Starks?
The narrator tells us why Janie choose to run off with Jody. He represents "change and chance", a distinct contrast to her boring and predictable life with Logan. As a young girl, Janie dreamed of...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, how do the novel's first two paragraphs point towards differences in the language...
The famous first two paragraphs of this novel immediately establish the novel's perspective on gender difference and its importance to the story as a whole. In particular, what is notable about...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How is Eatonville in Their Eyes Were Watching God shown as heaven for Janie and the citizens? I understand that...
The town of Eatonville could be seen as a kind of heaven in multiple ways. As you suggest, the all black town is a kind of haven for African Americans where they can live and thrive is a place...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What is the significance of the quotation below, from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God? When Janie...
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, decides to abandon her first husband, Logan Killicks, and run off with Joe (Jody) Starks. Her elopement with...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, what are differences between Janie's three husbands?
Each of Janie's three husbands has a different personality and social class/profession, and each man helps Janie to develop a sense of her own identity and what she truly wants from her life and...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What do you think Janie means when she says, "Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes...
Janie is a resilient person who continues to seek a loving relationship even after enduring misery with both Logan and Joe. She understands love as a force, like the ocean’s waves, that will...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
What does Joe Starks symbolize in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
Joe Starks symbolizes for Janie the horizon that Zora Neale Hurston references throughout the novel. The horizon, the farthest point one can see, is a place that holds Janie's hopes and dreams. In...
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