what you say.” Zora Neale Hurston. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora uses the empowerment of Janie's speech to reflect and address current issues. Words are powerful when used right, knowing when and when not to use them and which words to use is what lends the power of those words to their owner. Hurston is a professional at this technique, her words lend Janie power over the people around her and into the mind of Hurston’s audience. Janie is the ultimate Christ figure in Hurston’s writing. Many
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Culminating Essay Prompt #5 Throughout her timeless masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston employs a myriad of symbolic elements to assist in the establishment and understanding of Janie’s identity as a character. Although the types of symbolism used throughout both the novel and the movie vary greatly, they effectively convey Janie’s development. A few of these symbols include Janie’s hair, the pear tree, Janie’s use of firearms, and Janie’s
progression of what was called the Women’s Movement caused separation of equal gender roles which later weakened woman’s dominance. Similarly, one of these few advocates, or better to say feminists, is an American anthropologist and author under the name Zora Neale Hurston. Out of all the eighteen novels Hurston wrote, one book depicts juxtaposition between women and men that highlight several themes. The
moving. Only God knows if I could get back up after yet another beating. Silence is not an option. These were the painful feelings that raced through Janie’s head. One toxic relationship after another, all with different men from different backgrounds and different morals, each of them changing her into the resilient woman she is today. She had to scream, she had to leave, and she had to change to survive.
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1934, is a unique and heartfelt Modern novel that follows the love life of a light-skinned African-American woman, Janie Crawford, during the early 1900s. Hurston includes multiple different types of relationships in the novel, all of which represent Janie’s personal development and search for independence while she looks for true love. This novel is an important piece of feminist literature, being one of the first novels to introduce
wait on the whims of men, they lose their sense of self in the duty of gender. If one were to factor in how women are perceived to act, and include race, position in history, & economic status in the description of a woman’s gender role it would be revealed that there is a hierarchy to a woman’s world, and African-American women skim the bottom of it. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses the character of Janie in an explicitly emotional way through depictions of male
people in society’s history. To dig a little deeper the black woman has been the most oppressed in society’s history. Countless accounts of unfair treatment and unfair judgments have been a proverbial cloud over the black woman. Hurston’s novel “The Eyes Were Watching God”, W.E.B. Du Bois’’ “The Damnation of Women” and today’s society provides ample evidence of the oppression of women. Culturally, women have been marginalized within their own marriages, subjugated, and dehumanized.
The Changing Roles and Freedoms of Women in the 1920s Before the turn of the 20th century, women were considered the property of their husbands. Women were expected to be wives and mothers. Women were limited in their ability to be educated, to earn and keep their wages, to own property, and to vote. Women could only hold positions in the most limited of professions. There were few exceptions, but beginning in the 1840s this slowly began to change as women became involved in the reform and suffrage