Rating: 
Summary: True Definition of Love is found
Review: The definition of love varies from one person to the next, however has the same median with everyone; trust and faith. In "Their Eyes Were Watching God" the definition of love is hidden until the lead character, Janie, finds out the meaning on her own. Throughout the book, Janie meets many men who she feels she is in love with. Her Nanny tells her that love really means the amount of possessions they owned, such as land, home and money, etc... and that is what Janie thinks love is too. However, as the book continues and Janie is not being treated approprietly by her leading men, she realizes that Nanny's meaning of "love" is not correct. By the end of the book Janie finds true love with a man by the name of TeaCake. This book was difficult to understand for the first few chapters due to the complicated southern dialect, but as the book picked up, it became easier to read and comprehend. It is a good book for all ages to read. Love is the universal language. It connects people in many ways around the world. In the book the true definition of love shines through and helps a young woman stand up for herself and realize who she really loves.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably Hurston's greatest gift to world literature
Review: "There Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston, is widely acknowledged as a beloved classic of American literature. This novel is truly one of those great works that remains both entertaining and deeply moving; it is a book for classrooms, for reading groups of all types, and for individual readers.In "There Eyes," Hurston tells the life story of Janie, an African-American woman. We accompany Janie as she experiences the very different men in her life. Hurston's great dialogue captures both the ongoing "war of the sexes," as well as the truces, joys, and tender moments of male-female relations. But equally important are Janie's relationships with other Black women. There are powerful themes of female bonding, identity, and empowerment which bring an added dimension to this book. But what really elevates "Their Eyes" to the level of a great classic is Hurston's use of language. This is truly one of the most poetic novels in the American canon. Hurston blends the engaging vernacular speech of her African-American characters with the lovely "standard" English of her narrator, and in both modes creates lines that are just beautiful. "Their Eyes" captures the universal experiences of pain and happiness, love and loss. And the whole story is told with both humor and compassion. If you haven't read it yet, read it; if you've already read it, read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Just Excellent
Review: As saddening as it is to say, the only reason that I read this book was because I had to for a grade in my English class. However, it was the most pleasant surprise that I have had in a long while. Going into english classes where the book you have to read is chosen by the professor and it is required reading....always makes you fear what the book will be about. I did just that, I thought that the book was going to reek of hidden meanings and things that I could not understand because I was not an English major.
After reading the book, I realized that the book was just that, a book of hidden meanings and metaphors. But, when I first read it it was just another story. The book is a little hard to get into as the language of the book is written in a deep southern African-American type speech. It is mostly the recounting of a woman's life to her friend. So much of the book is in her own words. Hurston was very smart to write the book in this manner as I think that it gets the point of the story across more clearly as well as making the book much more emotional.
Janie, who is the main character, goes through the story of her life using colorful imagery. She compares her life to that of a pear tree at one point which the author later reveals has a very significant meaning to it in the end. There is also a great deal of violence in the novel. Janie is married three times and two out of the three times both her husbands beat her to show possession. The book is written about the time right before the civil war and right after to emphasize the life of the slaves around this time.
The author, I believe had a very specific reason for doing this, although no specific date is given for the time period, it is made reference to several times throughout the novel. I think that the entire concept of this novel deals with individualism and freedom and what better way to incorporate that theme than to involve the character in a time period when it was very important, especially if you were black as the character is.
The book is a great pleasure to read as just a novel, but even more interesting to read when you find that there is meaning to the storyline as well as the metaphors that are used extensively throughout the book. I am not sure how much detail I can go into without ruining the story, because it is definitely one that you have to experience on your own. But it is a great book and very much worth the time to read it, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Zora Neale Hurston, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
Rating:
Summary: Janie's Journey
Review: Janie's retrospective story begins with her childhood and unfolds through her marriages to three very different men. As a reader, I was charmed by her girlhood dreams of love only to see them dashed by an arranged, albeit safe, marriage. I gradually began to understand her struggle against familial and social expectations in order to strike a fine balance between personal happiness and the type of love she has always dreamed of. She is unable to do so under the subjugation of her first two husbands. It is only with Tea Cake that she finally discovers acceptance of herself, the ability to exercise a good amount of free will, and as near an equal partnership as she has ever known.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is an interesting story because the narrative changes in an almost inconspicuous manner. There is a third-person narrative that is interwoven with Janie's personal telling of her story to her best friend Phoeby. The narrative changes succeed in not jarring the flow of her story which never ceases to entertain, amuse, and move the reader.
Hurston's story is lyrical once you accept the cadence of Janie's voice. The author's acute sense of dialogue is really what embroils the reader in Janie's story. The dialogue between characters is a passport to a world where people sat talking on porches and seemed to live a hand-to-mouth existence. The use of this near-dialect by the characters, especially Janie, personalizes the story and draws us into their world of hard-living and simple fun. By the end, the reader will have lived through the story with no regrets just like its heroine.
Rating:
Summary: A True Gem
Review: I have read this book 4 or 5 times, and it gets better every time I read it. There are times when the main character, Janie, says something, and it just explains everything, things one has a hard time talking about with other people. For example my favorite quote from Janie is, "Love is like the ocean. It's different with every shore it touches."
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Prose and Powerful Insight Into Love and Hate
Review: While this book is now recognized as perhaps the greatest novel of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the classics of American literature, Hurston died in obscurity. She was popular in her youth and middle age, but then her writing was seen as not political enough during the forties, fifties and sixties. Her political messages are less overt than those of later African American authors such as Richard Wright (whose politically-minded negative review helped bring Hurston into her phase of obscurity) and James Baldwin, but she certainly deals with racism in her own way. A scene in which white corpses are collected for burial and black corpses are neglected in the wake of a natural catastrophe is gut-wrenching, and her portrayal of Native Americans without presuming to speak from their point of view is full of insight into the complexity of race relations in the Deep South during the early twentieth century.
In her description of a rabid dog and a man infected with rabies during the course of a devastating flood, Hurston seems to be saying that hatred is like a contagious disease as wild and destructive as any force of nature. She is not denying the political factors that shape hatred, but stressing that hatred is a chaotic force that comes over people like a blight and is not susceptible to reason.
The story of Janie Crawford's journey ever deeper spiritually and geographically into the heart of African American culture as she moves through relationships with different men is a profound reflection on the nature of love and hate written in some of the most beautiful prose in the English language. I don't know how anyone can fail to be hooked after reading the first two sentences, "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide." If any novel in the world has an opening that demands the reader's attention more compellingly than this, let me know.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding story
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of the best books that I've ever read. The book answered a lot of questions about life. We are faced with several conflicts in humanity with choices having to be made between Love, Good, Evil, Hope or reality, and Truth. It is a story about Janie, a young black woman, who tries to find herself through her grandmother's footsteps and eventually confronts herself to become the person she knows is of her own good. Taken along the memory lane in a small southern black town, "Their Eyes were Watching God" is a beautiful portrayal of the conflicts confronting Janie, not only about herself but also about how her society perceives her. Through an amazing creativity in characters, plot development, excellent narrative, lessons and dialogues and an easy ride through time, Zora successful made the reader to understand and appreciate black culture. This absolutely credible story is a highly recommended book to anyone with a taste for classic stories.
Also recommended: DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, THE GREAT GATSBY, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Rating:
Summary: A Growing Thread
Review: The story begans with Janie's return home. She begins to tell a story to one of her acquaintances from the town in which she left. She begans to spin her tale of times in which she lived with her grandmother on a white family's land. She tells of how her grandmother wanted her to marry before she died. Janie quietly protests her end of innocence and with the obedience of a child quietly marries and old field hand who had acquired much in the eyes of her grandmother. She later becomes smitten by a young man with a dream, and quietly sneaks off and makes love to him while her husband is at work. She later while frying corn pone or some type of bread for her husband decides to meet her lover and make his dreams her dreams. While doing this she lives a financially priveleged life of quiet abuse and loveless nights. Her husband dies and later Janie finds herself over a substantial estate and businesses. She is lonely and finds time to reflect. Later, while enjoying her quiet freedom she happens upon a sharply dressed drifter by the name of Tea Cake who captures her heart. Once again, she abandons her present life in search of adventure and fun.
This story is beautifully written in an unusual venicular. I thoroughly enjoyed it and at parts of this book I even cried. I was stunned by the similarities of this character with life as well as the life of others in whom I call friend. I noticed the singular thread that was so well woven in the life of Janie. She did not attain true freedom until she really understood and knew herself. I can understand that her grandmother did not want to leave her "uncovered" after she was gone (meaning without anyone to care for her). She wanted Janie to have better covering than and security than she presently had. The author's choice of title was not by fluke, it was apparent that in the midst of the storm that all she and Tea Cake could do was keep their eyes upon God. It was through the storm that affirmed their love and it was because of the storm that tore them apart.
The thread that I mentioned earlier was apparent even more after she married her first husband. My discernment was that the character still enjoyed her freedom, but out of a certain desire for security was uncertain as to exactly what freedom that she longed for and desired. I feel that after she met her second husband the young go-getter. She felt that at last her dreams could be fulfilled. But later there is disappointment by way of physical and verbal abuse.
There seems to be a thread a growing thread and throughout the book it is woven and finally connected into a final bow. In the last segment we see how life changes Janie. Through her circumstances and through her own personal "storm" she this time chooses a rainbow in which her life though tumulous at times still has signifies magnificent growth and intense meaning.
Rating:
Summary: They were searching their personal voices
Review: Language is the biggest drawback that a contemporary reader may face when he/she starts reading Zora Neale Hurston's most famous novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God". The narrative gravitates towards two different kind of speech -- both not easy to read. The first we can find is a very literary narration, slow and sometimes meditative; the second device is the use of the rural Southern black dialect.
However, the use of both structures has an important raison d'être. By alternating the two different voices, Hurston is exploring and exposing the culturally rich voices that inhabit the novel protagonist's world. At the same time, these voices also represent Jane in the quest for her own voice. So, speech has a very important role in this book, and for enjoying and understanding this narrative, the reader must get the hang of it.
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" tells the story of Jane Mar Crawford, a woman ahead of her time. Her strong personality insists on finding love and freedom, but both things never come together and it takes her almost the whole novel to realize so. Before that, she will face awful marriages and relationships, prejudice against gender, age and color, among other things.
It is very likely that many other writers would be very preaching when telling such a story, but Hurston avoids this tone. And however she touches upon issues like racism, never is it by all means the main theme of the novel. This point is subtly raised throughout the narrative. Therefore, the novel is more about the human condition in general rather than a distinctly African-American one. Like Alice Walker once wrote, "I think we are better off if we think of Zora Neale Hurston as an artist, period-rather than as the artist/politician most black writers have been required to be."
By the way, if nowadays Zora Neale Hurston is regarded as an important American writer, this is thanks to Alice Walker -- who brought us her text and pointed out its importance to the world literature. And however Hurston and her works are associated with the Harlem Renaissance, her books can be discussed in another context.
The biggest criticism that the writer faced when she published the novel was that "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was not a political novel. And despite the fact that many people thought it by that time, nowadays the fact of not carrying a political or moral message proves the strength and beauty of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: Janie, the heroine of Their Eyes Were Watching God, sees something important when she is sixteen years old:
"She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation."
So she knows what a marriage is, or should be. Later, she knows that her first marriage does not measure up, and neither does her second. But then she meets Tea Cake, a young man who shows her the world and the good people in it. Janie is uneducated and speaks in the dialect of poor Southern blacks in the early twentieth century, but her speech is powerful and poetic.
The Perennial Classics edition includes a chronology, a bibliography, and a nice afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In the afterword, Gates describes Their Eyes Were Watching God as the first Afro-American feminist novel, and he outlines Zora Neale Hurston's legacy to writers of our generation like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. For example, he quotes Alice Walker as saying that Hurston had "a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings," a sense that Walker herself has too. I was happy to encounter Hurston through this lovely, unsentimental novel, and I'll be reading more of her.
|
