Their Eyes Were Watching God

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...