Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting Glimpse
Review: I read this book because I was a substitute teacher for an 11th grade literature class that was reading the book. Though it is not a book I would normally read, I enjoyed the glimpse Zora Hurston gave me into early 20th-century African American culture in the south. The literature class I was sitting in on drew out the symbolism of the two husbands prior to Tea Cup. And how this symbolized black women at that time in history. I found this interesting. I also enjoyed the postscript on the life of Zora Hurston, and how obscure she was until several years after her death. While the students complained about the African American slang, I enjoyed it and found that it made the story more real in my mind. The author used a lot of similes and metaphors that made the book fun to read.
Rating: 
Summary: ENG 230-01
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that can be read and appreciated by women of all colors. Zora Neal Hurston deals with the emotions of one young African American woman, Janie, and the three men who have come into her life. The author keeps us in Janie's mind even when she is not in the first person. She starts out in flashback, girlfriend to girlfriend telling her story to her neighbor and best friend Pheoby. We women are more prone to share our feelings with another about things, especially our great and not so great loves. In this story, Janie had it all.
The first man was Logan Killicks, who is her older, unattractive but financially stable first husband. This was an arranged marriage by her grandmother. I tried to remember what I was like as a teen at her age and couldn't begin to imagine how I would accept being setup to marry an old man who was looking for free labor for his farm in the form of a wife. I put myself in Janie's place and I know that is the time of life when we have all these dreams about love and life and how that one special man is out there for us.
Even though we were born in different times and places, at her age I thought I was going to live a fairy tale with the man of my dreams as most girls do. Then life takes over and in her case it took over way too young. Janie dreams about the love she thinks may be in her future and then she gets married to this old guy. The young Janie struggles and tries to find some personal fulfillment in this loveless marriage but it does not happen. I had very mixed emotions about Janie at this point in her life. She acted spoiled and lazy and I had to keep reminding myself that she was acting like a normal teenage girl. She had all the temperament and emotion that goes along with a difficult stage of growing up.
The second man is Joe Starks who entices her with words, his dreams and his plans for the future. I started to believe this was going to be it for Janie. He told her that she would not work for him but rather have others doing things for her. I should have known that if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. While Joe was intelligent and aggressive and quite the entrepreneur I think Joe was worse for her. While he successfully provides for her, this relationship is not good. I would hate to be treated like a possession and a man talking down to me as if I cannot be his equal would be insulting and unacceptable to me. This is how Joe treated Janie. He is verbally abusive and jealous and he wants Janie to be seen and envied but not heard. What I like in this part of the book was Hurston starts to tell you what Janie is feeling and thinking. You start to rally behind her and I waited for her to just tell Joe where to go. I started to appreciate Janie's opinions and thoughts but wanted her to speak up more then she did. The physical abuse was intolerable to me. Violence towards women was common and accepted at the time. I wish that was when Hurston had given her the voice and courage to stand up for herself and liberate herself from him. That is easy for me to say being the reader who is not in danger and involved in a domestic dispute.
Her third marriage was with the fun-loving and wild Tea Cake. She shares more with him then the other two combined. He offers little in the way financial security, which was the opposite of the first two, but he offers much more in the way of sharing and introducing her to life experiences. You see more emotion in Janie when she is with him then throughout the first half of the book. While reading, I was not quite sure if he was a gold-digger out to woo a wealthy woman or if he was truly interested in Janie herself. Looking for the balance here, I would want the financial security Joe provided with the romance and fun experienced with Tea Cake. That would be perfect for all of us but not likely possible. Being a realist though I know that life does not work that way for most of us, and it did not for Janie. I know that when it is the right man, sometimes the rules go out the window along with logic and for Janie, Tea Cake was the right man and the life he offered her was what she accepted and embraced because she was with him. At least Janie got to experience the "love of her life" even though she had to go through a lot to get to that point. Read this book for an emotional roller coaster ride and watch a young girl grow and learn about the world and herself through her relationships along the way.
Rating:
Summary: Janie's life
Review: Janie doesn't feel hood wher the professor at her school takes her picture and she realizes for the first time that she is black . She feels like a tourist and her oan family-she doesn't belong . She was six years old when she made this discovery. She finds happiness with Tea Cake, her third husband, and she also comes to feel egual other people. Iike when Tea Cake serenaded Janie and she felt truly happy for the first time.I like in this novel about the Tea Cake and Janie.I like when Tea Cake and Janie olways they're together,They enyoyed many things a lot of. I like when Tea Cake go to the Janie's house and he played the quitar to Janie . They love so mach . They affrot good and bad thinks. I like that it.
Rating:
Summary: Three books
Review: Three books that must be read if you're interested in race,the South, and the conflict within the human heart: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, and this one, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. All three are similar with their well-defined characters and descriptions. I was amazed at the similarities in these books, as well as Sue Monk Kidd's SECRET LIFE OF BEES.
Rating: 
Summary: I got through it atleast
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God is basically a story of an African-American woman's trek through life. She marries several times and when she finally ends up with the person she loves, but in the end she ends up alone again. She is happy. There really isn't anything bad about the book. There really isn't anything amazing about the book. Nothing really stands out as amazing but nothing stands out as bad either. Of course, it was a bit predictable, but I don't think that took away from whatever enjoyment of the story there was. If you're in the mood for a story of struggles and hardships, with a happy ending, this is it. But don't expect too much or you'll be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God is a captivating tale of a woman's quest for happiness and self-discovery. It is the tale of Janie Crawford, an inspiring black woman living in the Deep South during the 1930s. The story and its characters entice and entertain the reader with every word, from the beautifully written poetic metaphors to the radical southern dialect.
Janie is the novel's utterly admirable and believable protagonist. She is pushed into marriage at an early age but is unable to find happiness in it. The story recounts her marriages and her quest for companionship, her findings and her losses. But it is her reaction to the losses that truly shapes the story. Where another tale would be a tragedy, this is a story of optimism and remembrance; where another would mourn in the darkness of the night, Janie remembers the brightness of the light. "The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on the porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations though their mouths. They sat in judgement." (chapter 1, pages 1-2)
Rating:
Summary: Hurston's Work of Art
Review: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is a beautifully written piece of art. Hurston expresses her characters by use of authentic Southern black dialect, which reminds me of Mark Twain's dialect for Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although this dialogue takes time to decipher and is occasionally hard to follow, this novel would not be as good as it is without it. Other contributing factors to the greatness of the novel are the beautiful metaphors and similes as well as the descriptive imagery and symbolism of nature. The imagery especially does the book justice by painting pictures in the readers' minds of (the main character) Janie's accounts of the world. Whether the dialogue, the metaphors, the similes, or the imagery and symbolism of nature, all literary factors used in the creation of this novel contribute greatly to the excellence of it. Their Eyes Were Watching God is an inspirational novel that is not only well written but is also very captivating. I enjoyed following Janie's person journey as she searches for love and fulfillment. Her experiences teach her about her own identity and about what she wants in life. I am very impressed that Janie's story did not end happily, though I did find the conclusion satisfying. It makes the whole story more realistic, because in real life nothing ends with everyone living happily ever after. I enjoyed this novel for many reasons, but most importantly because it made me think.
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Summary: This book inspired me.
Review: I learned so much from this book. I never expected to be anything but annoyed by the african-american dialect, but the author has turned it into poetry. There are phrases that stand up to Shakespeare. I also learned some important things about the experiences of black women, and the complexity of relationships in the black community.
The thing I loved most about this book, however, is the main character. She is utterly believable, heroic and flawed. Her odyssey is somehow universal. In the end she proclaims that we much eash learn how to "go tuh god" and live for ourselves. This is the quest we are all on, the path to adulthood, and it crosses flimsy boundaries of gender, race, and nationality. I think Janie managed to find "god" or "good" in loving someone completely. She learned to live for herself by ignoring the negative opinion of her community about this love, and following her heart. If only we could all be so brave, there would be no room left for hate in a world so overflowing with love and courage.
Rating:
Summary: Searching for happiness
Review: Janie is a black and beautiful. She lived in the pre-WWI years, and this would make her among the most oppressed people in the country, quite contrary to Janie's mistaken notion "well, you know whut dey say, 'uh white man and uh nigger woman is de freest thing on earth.'" That this is so is Huston's assertion, and is embodied in Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, Janie's one-time suitors. Were Janie uglier (or "common"), she would not have been so sheltered, so jealously guarded by the men around her. This pitiful fate is worsened because those very men are afraid of sharing their feelings with Janie, simply because she is so beautiful. These men are intimidated by her person. Tragically, these tendencies seal Janie's desire for a free-life-experience, and imprison her in a suffocating jar. Tea Cake frees her from these and brings her joy and love. However, I think Janie ultimately realizes salvation from within, and not from any man.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This is a great novel about the segregated South. Words don't do this book justice. It tells an incredible story and the plot and characters make it so that you can't put the book down! It is just incredible. I highly reccomend this novel.
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