Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

          I really enjoyed reading the novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston.  Once I started reading this novel, I had a hard time putting it down.  This was a novel that kept me interested but at first I didn’t think that I was going to like it.  One theme that I noticed in this novel was love and relationships versus independence.  In this novel Janie reaches a strong sense of self and comes to value her independence.  Janie’s journey toward enlightenment is not started alone. The gender differences that Hurston promotes require that men and women provide each other with things that they need but do not have.  Janie considers fulfilling relationships as equal and based on mutual respect.  Janie demonstrates this by her relationship with Tea Cake which uplifts her into equality noticeably absent from her marriages to Logan and Jody.  Relationships are indicated to be necessary to a satisfying life, but Janie’s search for spiritual fulfillment is basically a self-centered one.  Even though Janie is alone at the end of the novel, she seems to be very content.  Janie frees herself from her horrible and difficult relationships with Logan and Jody.  Logan and Jody delay her personal journey.  Janie experiences true happiness and insight with Tea Cake and she becomes secure in her independence.  Janie feels a deep connection to the world around her and at the end of the novel she even feels the spirit of Tea Cake with her.  She may be alone in the world physically but she doesn’t feel alone.  Throughout this novel, Hurston makes reference to Janie’s hair.  I believe that her hair is a symbol of her power and unusual identity.  Her hair represents her strength and individuality in many different ways.  First of all, her hair represents her independence and disobedience of unimportant community standards.  At the beginning of the novel the town criticizes her hair and says that it is inappropriate for a woman of Janie’s age to wear her hair down.  Janie refuses to bow down to their norms which clearly reflect her strong, rebellious spirit.  Her braid is continuously described in phallic terms.  It is a symbol of male power and strength which distorts gender lines and thus threatens Jody.  Her hair was very straight and it symbolized whiteness.  Mrs. Turner loves Janie because of her straight hair and other Caucasian characteristics.  Her hair contributes to the normally white male power that she carries which helps her disturb traditional power relationships (male over female, white over black) throughout the novel.  I enjoyed reading this novel because it really was a wonderful love story.  The language was a little hard to understand but once I got the hang of it I was able to understand it.        

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Their Eyes Were Watching God.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 12 March 2011.