TITLE OF BOOK: Their Eyes Were Watching God
AUTHOR: Zora Neale Hurston
REVIEWER: Melissa Williams
SUMMARY
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, tells the story of an African American woman in her early forties named Janie Crawford who returns to her home in Eatonville, FL after a long trip. Janie tells the story of her life over the past twenty years to her best friend Pheoby, hoping that Pheoby can retell her story to the nosy community, setting to rest some of their curiosity and gossip. Her life has three main divisions, corresponding with her three very different marriages.
Logan: Logan Killicks is Janie‘s first husband, a marriage arranged by her well-meaning grandmother. Logan is older and a farmer who just wants a wife to keep his home and help on the farm. Janie dislikes life purely as a domestic helper rather than as a partner or a lover, and she runs off with a youthful, flighty Jody (Joe) Starks.
Jody (Joe) Starks: He takes her to Eatonville. Janie quickly realizes that life with Jody is no less stifling than life with Logan Killicks, just in a different way. Jody buys some land and builds a general store, hiring local people to help run it. He even is elected mayor. Before long, Janie knows that her role in Jody’s life is that of a trophy wife. He wants her for the prestige, the image of a perfect wife by his side. He wants her to run his store, but she is not allowed to engage socially with the locals who linger on the store’s front porch.
Tea Cake: Jody dies, leaving Janie financially independent, and now she is surrounded by men wanting to take her hand in marriage. Some of these men are notable men in the community or men with wealth, but she passes them up for a bit of a tramp named Vergible Woods (who is called Tea Cake throughout the story). She sells the store, and the couple marry and head to the Everglades. There they try to find work planting and harvesting beans. Although their marriage isn’t perfect, and they both have moments of jealousy, Janie finally has finally found love.
Towards the end of the book, the Everglades are hit by a huge hurricane. Janie and Tea Cake survive, but Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog as he tries to save Janie from drowning, and he contracts the disease. He ends up trying to shoot Janie with a rifle, but in the end, she shoots him in self defense. She is charged with murder and tried, but she is acquitted and throws Tea Cake an extravagant funeral following her acquittal. Following this, she returns to Eatonville to find the residents gossiping about her, and here the novel circles back to where the story begins with Janie retelling her life to Pheoby.
MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK
This is a book I taught to high school seniors, so I know it pretty well, and obviously, I don’t think it should be banned since I taught it myself! It takes a while to catch on to the dialect. It can be slow-going at first, but it is an entertaining read and like nothing else I’ve ever read. There is a sensuality about some passages but nothing that I would consider outrageous or too blatant to expect teenagers to read it. I feel it is handled subtly, especially by modern standards. The novel provides a rare glimpse into life as it was for some African Americans living in the Florida in the early 1900s, post-slavery. It was a time when African Americans in those circles were still navigating the transition between being treated as property and told what to do and how to live and being enabled to live independent, free, as individuals with lives full of potential, as well as risk.
WHY BANNED
The book was challenged for its “sexual explicitness” but ultimately was retained on the academically advanced reading list of Stonewall Jackson High School in Brentsville, VA in 1997! A parent objected to the novel’s language and sexual explicitness. When the novel first appeared, it was met with criticisms from Hurston’s peers, particularly prominent authors of the Harlem Renaissance. Some objected to her use of phonetic spellings of dialect, feeling it made a mockery of the blacks of African and Caribbean descent in the South in the early part of the 20th century. Others were bothered that Hurston revealed divisions between light and dark skinned African Americans.
CONCLUSION
Although the novel has received some light criticism recently and was poorly received among many of Hurston’s contemporaries, by and large it is recommended high school reading across the country. Hurston wrote largely from her own life and experiences, and so it's fair to assume that there is a great deal of accuracy and truth intermingled with her fiction, making it of cultural, historical, and literary importance.