Their Eyes Were Watching God: Personal Relationships Essay -- essays r

Zora Neale Hurston, in keeping with themes dealing with personal relationships and the distaff lookup for self-awareness in Their Eyes Were Watching God , has created a heroine in Janie Crawford. In fact, the female perspective is introduced immediately. "Now, women forget all those things they dont extremity to remember, and remember everything they dont want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly" (Their Eyes 1). On the very first page of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the contrast is make between men and women, thus initiating Janies search for her own dreams and foreshadowing the "female quest" theme of the rest of the novel. "Detailing her quest for self-discovery and self-definition, it Their Eyes celebrates her Janie as an artist who enriches Eatonville by communicating her understanding" (Kubitschek 22). Janie is a Black woman who asserts herself beyond expectation, with a persistence that characterizes her search for the love that she dreamed of as a girl. She understands the societal status that her life has handed her, yet she is determined to bounce back this, and she is resentful toward anyone or anything that interferes with her quest for happiness. "So de white man swap down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he dont labor it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see," opines Janies gr...