“Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction … Miss Hurston can write, but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phillis Wheatley. ![]() –George Stevens, The Saturday Review of Literature, September 18, 1937 No one has ever reported the speech of Negroes with a more accurate ear for its raciness, its rich invention, and its music.” Otherwise the narration is exactly right, because most of it is in dialogue, and the dialogue gives us a constant sense of character in action. ![]() The title carries a suggestion of The Green Pastures, but it is to this extent misleading no religious element dominates this story of human relationships … The only weak spots in the novel are technical it begins awkwardly with a confusing and unnecessary preview of the end and the dramatic action, as in the story of the hurricane, is sometimes hurriedly and clumsily handled. The few white characters in the book appear momentarily and incidentally. The town of Eatonville is as real in these pages as Jacksonville is in the pages of Rand McNally and the lives of its people are rich, racy, and authentic. “Whether or not there was ever a town in Florida inhabited and governed entirely by Negroes, you will have no difficulty believing in the Negro community which Zora Neale Hurston has either reconstructed or imagined in this novel. ![]() Walker’s 1975 essay, ‘ Looking for Zora,’ in which she chronicled her search for Hurston’s unmarked grave, was a particularly significant part of this effort.Ĩ3 years on from its publication, we take look back at some of the original reviews of Their Eyes Were Watching God. This, coupled with a growing black feminist movement, spearheaded by activist writers like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, helped create a space in which Hurston’s work could be rediscovered. Du Bois’ Uplift agenda. A decades-long wilderness period in which both the novel and its author fell into obscurity ended with the establishment of several Black Studies programs in universities across America in the 1970s and 1980s. After Joe Starks’s funeral, Janie realizes that “She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her.” Why is this important “to all the world”? In what ways does Janie’s self-awareness depend on her increased awareness of others?ġ0.Now considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God had to travel a rocky road to immortality. Initial reviews ranged from positive to condescending to downright hostile, as many in the African American literary community bristled at Hurston’s rejection of the Harlem Renaissance and W.E.B. Why is adherence to received tradition so important to nearly all the people in Janie’s world? How does the community deal with those who are “different”?ĩ. What is the importance in the novel of the “signifyin'” and “playin’ de dozens” on the front porch of Joe’s store and elsewhere? What purpose do these stories, traded insults, exaggerations, and boasts have in the lives of these people? How does Janie counter them with her conjuring?Ĩ. In what ways does Janie conform to or diverge from the assumptions that underlie the men’s attitudes toward women? How would you explain Hurston’s depiction of violence toward women? Does the novel substantiate Janie’s statement that “Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business”?ħ. What are the differences between the language of the men and that of Janie and the other women? How do the differences in language reflect the two groups’ approaches to life, power, relationships, and self-realization? How do the novel’s first two paragraphs point to these differences?Ħ. To what extent does Janie acquire her own voice and the ability to shape her own life? How are the two related? Does Janie’s telling her story to Pheoby in flashback undermine her ability to tell her story directly in her own voice?ĥ. ![]() How does Janie’s journey-from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades-represent her, and the novel’s increasing immersion in black culture and traditions? What elements of individual action and communal life characterize that immersion?Ĥ. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel’s final sentences in this regard?ģ. What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston’s characters watching? What is the nature of that God and of their watching? Do any of them question God?Ģ.
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