Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Introduction

Their Eyes Were Watching God can be regarded as one of the most famous works of Afro American writer, Zora Neale Hurston. The novel recounts main character Janie Crawford's maturity from a lively, but unvoiced, teen girl into a woman who is trying to make her own destiny. The story of the novel revolves around central and southern Florida near the beginning the 20th century. The novel memorizes us the time of Klu Klux Klan when white racism was prevailing in the American society.

Discussion

The central character and storyteller of the work is Janie Crawford, who is a woman of forty years, is African American, which tells the story of her life and travels through the hotel in a flashback (Hurston, 1995). The phases of her life are taken as indication points separating her three marriages in different scenario. Janie's grandmother was a slave who became pregnant to a white man and gave birth to a baby girl. Janie's mother was raped as a teenager and as a result, Janie was born. Janie was brought up by her grandmother, as her mother ran off and never came back. Nanny (Janie's grandmother) wanted to avoid the glimpse of Janie's and her own past into Janie's life and therefore wanted to marry Janie as early as she could. For that, she married Janie at the age of 16 to an old man naming Logan Killicks. However, Janie is not happy with her marriage to an old man. Logan due to his age is unromantic and pragmatic. His treatment with her is also not nice. Even if he had been nice, Janie would have not been able to bear him due to the huge difference in their age. Janie does not like the man who married ...