Their Eyes Were Watching God

For the television film of the same name, see Their Eyes Were Watching God (film).

Their Eyes Were Watching God
1st edition
Author(s)	Zora Neale Hurston
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	J.B. Lippincott
Publication date	1937
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-093141-8 (Perennial softcover)
OCLC Number	46429736

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication, and has come to be regarded as a seminal work in both African American literature and women's literature.^[1] Time included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.^[2]

Plot summary

The main character, an African American woman in her early forties named Janie Crawford, tells the story of her life and journey via an extended flashback to her best friend, Pheoby, so that Pheoby can tell Janie's story to the nosy community on her behalf. Her life has three major periods corresponding to her marriages to three very different men.

Nanny, Janie's grandmother, was a slave who became pregnant by her owner and gave birth to a daughter, Leafy. Though Nanny tries to create a good life for her daughter, Leafy is raped by her school teacher and she becomes pregnant with Janie. Shortly after Janie's birth, Leafy begins to drink and stay out at night. Eventually, she runs away leaving Janie with Nanny. Nanny transfers all the hopes she had for Leafy to Janie. When Janie is sixteen, Nanny sees her kissing a neighborhood boy, Johnny Taylor, and fears that Janie will become a "mule" to some man. Nanny arranges for Janie to marry Logan Killicks, an older man and farmer who is looking for a wife to keep his home and help on the farm. Although Janie was not interested in marriage at that time, her grandmother wanted her to have the kinds of things she never had the chance to have, and by marrying Logan Killicks Janie's grandmother thought it gave her the opportunity to make this possible.^[3] Janie has the idea that marriage must involve love, forged in a pivotal early scene where she sees bees pollinating a pear tree, and believes that marriage is the human equivalent to this natural process. Logan Killicks, however, wants a domestic helper rather than a lover or partner, and after he tries to force her to help him with the hard labor of the farm, Janie runs off with the glib Jody (Joe) Starks, who takes her to Eatonville.

Starks arrives in Eatonville to find the residents devoid of ambition, so he arranges to buy more land from the neighboring landowner, hires some local residents to build a general store for him to own and run, and the people of the town appoint him mayor. Janie soon realizes that Joe wants her as a trophy wife. He wants the image of his perfect wife to reinforce his powerful position in town, as he asks her to run the store but forbids her from participating in the substantial social life that occurs on the store's front porch.

After Starks passes away, Janie finds herself financially independent and beset with suitors, some of whom are men of some means or have prestigious occupations, but she falls in love with a drifter and gambler named Vergible Woods who goes by the name of Tea Cake throughout the story. She falls in love with Tea Cake after he plays the guitar for her. She sells the store and the two head to Jacksonville and get married, only to move to the Everglades region ("the muck") soon after for Tea Cake to find work planting and harvesting beans. While their relationship has its ups and downs, including mutual bouts of jealousy, Janie now has the marriage with love that she had wanted.

The area is hit by the great Okeechobee hurricane, and while Tea Cake and Janie survive it, Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog while saving Janie from drowning. He contracts the disease himself. He ultimately tries to shoot Janie with his pistol, but she shoots him with a rifle in self-defense. She is charged with murder. At the trial, Tea Cake's black, male friends show up to oppose her, while a group of local white women arrive to support her. The all-white jury acquits Janie, and she gives Tea Cake a lavish funeral. Tea Cake's friends forgive her, and they want her to remain in the Everglades. However, she decides to return to Eatonville, only to find the residents gossiping about her.

Criticism

While today Hurston's book is present on many reading lists for African American literature programs in the United States, the book was not universally praised by Hurston's peers, with particular criticism leveled at her use of phonetic spellings of the dialect spoken by blacks of African and Caribbean descent in the South of the early 20th century (for example, "tuh" instead of "to" and "Ah" instead of "I"). Richard Wright called Their Eyes Were Watching God a "minstrel-show turn that makes the white folks laugh" and said it showed "no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction."^[4] Ralph Ellison said the book contained a "blight of calculated burlesque."^[5] Many other prominent authors that were a part of the Harlem Renaissance were upset that Hurston exposed divisions between light skinned African Americans and those who had darker skin ^[6] as seen in Mrs. Turner, as well as the more subtle division between black men and women.

Aside from common topics of race and gender roles and oppression Hurston's work has also been praised as well as censured for its artistic style and symbolism. Unfortunately, the amount of actual substantial criticism on Hurston and her work is scarce; however, there are some scholars who have taken liberty in discussing the author, especially in regards to her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Tom Wilhemus suggested that we "make a case that an appreciation of Zora Neale Hurston might begin by rejecting the politics of race and gender and overall yin and yang of the culture wars by concentrating more specifically on her individual character as a writer and by suggesting that in some ways that not even “art” (or the lack of it) is the issue so much in Hurston’s case as the life that animated it" ^[7] Hurston's work is, the majority of the time, a reflection of her own self and her experiences.

Adaptations for theater, film and radio

In 1983, the graduate repertory Hilberry Theater at Wayne State University produced "To Gleam It Around, To Show My Shine," which is based upon Their Eyes Were Watching God. The play was written by Bonnie Lee Moss Rattner, and was directed by Dr. Von Washington. In 1988, "To Gleam It Around, To Show My Shine" was produced by the Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The production was enhanced by an award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' Fund for New American Plays. Denise Nicholas played Janie, Novella Nelson played Pheoby. Rick Khan directed. Writing in the New York Times on October 16, 1988, in a review entitled "Luminous' Drama On Black Woman's Struggle," Alvin Klein said, of "the dialogue that is so pure and lyrical, it positively sings and pierces the heart. Out of an unutterably beautiful book, a luminous play has evolved." In 2003, "To Gleam It Around, To Show My Shine" a.k.a. "Eatonville" was to have opened at the ATA (American Theatre for Actors) in co-production with Amas Musical Theatre and Sage Hill Productions, with a score composed by Wynton Marsalis. (see "Wynton Marsalis Pens Music for Rattner's 'Eatonville'", Playbill, August 21, 2003.)

In 2005, the novel was adapted into a television movie of the same name starring Halle Berry and Michael Ealy. It was produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.

In 2011, the novel was adapted into a radio play for BBC World Drama, dramatised by Patricia Cumper. The play first aired on February 19, 2011. The radio adaptation was available for listening for 7 days since the first airing on BBC iPlayer.^[8]

Notes

1. ^ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (New York: Amistad, 1993), p. xi.
2. ^ "All Time 100 Novels". Time. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html. 
3. ^ "“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston". Plot Summary, Book Notes, Summary. BookRags.com. 18 Aug. 2010. http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tewg/SUM.htm. 
4. ^ Burt, Daniel. The Novel 100. Check mark Books, 2003. p. 365.
5. ^ Ibid., p. 366.
6. ^ http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Zora_Neale_Hurston
7. ^ Wilhemus, Tom. Without Color: Zora Neale Hurston The Hudson Review Inc., 1996. p. 673.
8. ^ "Their Eyes Were Watching God". BBC World Drama. BBC World Service. 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00dr4pm. Retrieved 2011-02-20. 

External links

• Describes Hurston's participation in the Harlem Renaissance; also summary, analysis, themes, and essays from "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Their Eyes Were Watching God at the Internet Movie Database
• Important Quotations from Their Eyes Were Watching God Analyzed by Medha Patel-Schwarz
• Their Eyes Were Watching God study guide and teaching guide - analysis, themes, quotes, mutlimedia for students and teachers