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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

Start date: May 1, 2013

Finish date: May 31, 2013

Why we're reading this: Their Eyes Were Watching God, you get to meet one of the greatest philosophers of love: Janie Crawford. T…more
[close] Their Eyes Were Watching God, you get to meet one of the greatest philosophers of love: Janie Crawford. The God in the title refers to these divine forces throughout the world, both beautiful and threatening, that Janie encounters. Her quest is a spiritual one because her ultimate goal is to find her place in the world, understand who she is, and be at peace with her environment.

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May 30, 2013 Alexa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fab-13

A glorious novel, with beautiful prose. I’m amazed at how funny and heartwarming it was. I expected a heavy tale of injustice and perseverance, but instead I got a funny love story. Yet so real, so immediate. It also amazes me that she can use dialect without ever hiding the intelligence or humanity of her characters. Two things quite surprised me. First, how infrequently white folks appear in the tale. Was it possible to live such an isolated life? Or was Hurston deliberately ignoring most of t ...more

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May 03, 2013 Francene Carroll rated it it was amazing

*spoilers

This book deserves 5 stars for the language alone. Hurston's lyricism and use of the African-American vernacular of the period is just brilliant. I've never read a book where the characters and time are so vividly rendered through speech. The blending of the narrator's voice and character's perspective was masterful.

While race is very important in the book Hurston was not overtly political and this was one of the reasons she fell into obscurity. Her themes about freedom and love are uni *spoilers

This book deserves 5 stars for the language alone. Hurston's lyricism and use of the African-American vernacular of the period is just brilliant. I've never read a book where the characters and time are so vividly rendered through speech. The blending of the narrator's voice and character's perspective was masterful.

While race is very important in the book Hurston was not overtly political and this was one of the reasons she fell into obscurity. Her themes about freedom and love are universal but she also provides many insights into different forms of oppression, particularly of women. Her characters are not defined by the relationship to white society and she explores life in a black community in all its facets, showing both the positive and negative sides of this community. I thought it was very poignant when Janie admitted to herself that she hated her grandmother because her limited worldview, shaped by the experience of slavery, meant she couldn't dream of anything more for her granddaughter than a loveless marriage.

Janie wants more from life and she's willing to risk everything to find it. It's ironic that her first attempt at freedom lands her in a gilded cage and it's only after her second husband dies that she finds real love through Tea Cake. Their time together is the happiest of her life and his terrible death confirms how much they meant to each other. I did find it a bit annoying that they had to do manual labour in the Everglades because Tea Cake refused to live off her money and his conversation with the other men about beating her was very disturbing but realistic.

Throughout the book Janie is defined by her marriages and I really wanted to know more about her life after Tea Cake died. Did she carry on as an independent woman or was she infected by rabies when her bit her and destined to follow him to the grave? There was never any mention of her taking serum but as the doctor witnessed the bite maybe we are supposed to assume that she did.

Overall a fascinating, enjoyable read. ...more

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Jul 02, 2018 Mae rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018

Interesting story about a young black woman (Janie) in the 1930s - married three times, three different challenges against the backdrop of bigotry, financial and emotional need and the struggle for validation and independence. Although I found the story compelling, I found the use of the phonetic dialogue (for lack of a better descriptor) annoying to the point that it disrupted the flow of the book for me.

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