Their Eyes Were Watching God Identity Essay

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Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it”. Individuals spend a great amount of their life searching for their identity, and own voice. The journey may seem bleak as individuals search for it, but it is worth it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston the protagonist, Janie spends the novel searching for her own identity and freedom. The search for her life takes many turns, as she goes through several marriages. She goes through Logan, Joe, and Teacake as she searches for her identity. While the marriages are tough, they teach Janie important life lessons about her own identity and what it takes to achieve freedom. As Janie attempts to find herself,…show more content…
What made her such an amazing person is the guts she had to what she did. Especially in a time where the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere, and racism was at some of its highest points. One would think that writing a book like Their Eyes Were Watching God, about finding freedom and identity, would be praised upon. However, just like her book she gets a lot of heat for her work, and controversy. For example, in Gorman Beauchamp journal Three Notes on Their eyes were Watching God he points out that, “Probably the most frequently cited judgment on Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is Richard Wright’s from his contemporary review in New Masses-, “her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought” (73). Beauchamp attempts to dispel this myth by refuting it through quotations from the book, and the deep analysis he does with his English class on the quotation. Wrights argument is based merely on the novel. He clearly does not take into account outside factors of the book. Hurston writes this book during the time of a splurge of Harlem Renaissance writers. A lot of African Americans are showcasing their talents, as is she. If her novel supposedly carried no theme, would it be evident that identity is a

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