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Summary: more than a love story
Review: This book was awesome. it was a nice mixture of everything a book should have. not too much description, but enough to be interesting. not too much love, but enough to be interesting. not too much death, that would be depressing, but enough to be realistic. the best part of this book was that the main character was a partially black women, but the theme of the novel was not about her struggles as a black women, instead the book was about her life as a women. i think that zora neal hurston is an incredible women. if you like this book i also recoment "Dusttracks" her autobiography/play. it was really interesting and it helped relate this story to her life. it was a great book, and a great story too. i enjoyed reading it.
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Summary: Didn't really care for it
Review: I thought this book was slow moving at first, then it finally picks up towards the end. I did think that the male characters were interesting, and it was entertaining to see how many different personalities one woman can fall in love with. I recommend reading something else.
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Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God Review
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God was truly an inspirational novel. The novel showed the opression from racism, and also the hardships from sexism at the same time. Janie, an African American woman post Civil War, spent the first thirty years of her life within the boundaries her society had set for her. She was made to live below whites and men. She submitted to live a sheltered, confined existance, which brought her no happiness until love set her free. Tea Cake, a man many years younger than Janie, saw beyond what she was supposed to be. He saw into her soul and not only allowed her to live, but loved her for it. Tea Cake and Janie had a rare and pure love that people live their entire lives to find. They rebuked what was expected from them and followed their hearts. The couple made the best with what they had, and what they lacked they made up for with love. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that people of all ages and races can relate to. The humanity portrayed in this book is so simple that it is touching, showing Hurston's genius insight. The characters have many dimensions and are very realistic. The storyline has so many interesting conflicts that it captivates the reader throughout the book. This novel has so many messages and deals with many social issues that are still important today.
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Summary: It's not Dickens but it's almost as good
Review: When my AP English teacher announced we would be reading Their Eyes Were Watching God in place of A Tale of Two Cities, I was livid. I am a huge Dicken's fan and was looking forward to getting an easy A on a book I had already read twice. Then she said that we were reading the book not because it was particularly good but because it was written by a black woman and the AP test often asked questions about women or black authors. I was raging. In fact, I don't think I have ever been that mad in my entire life. I hate political correctness. But this is not a political discussion it is a book review. If you haven't guessed when I started reading this book I was less than excited. Luckily, I was pleasently suprised. The book is not bad in fact it is really good. The ending ALMOST made me cry (in case you were wondering I never cry, not even at my Grnadpa's funeral) You can't help but feel for the charachter's plight in this story and the ending is astounding. It is one of those books that just leaves you sitting their saying wow. This is one of those books that you keep thinking about for days after you finished it. I loved it even though it is not Dickens and I was determined to hate. So just think how much you will enjoy this book. Splurge a little, buy it because you will want to read it again and again
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Summary: Colloquialism in Their Eyes Were Watching God
Review: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston utilizes colloquialism to accurately portray the lives of African Americans and the oppression they had to endure at the time. Through this and other aspects, Hurston provides an inspirational novel for all to enjoy. The way a group conveys their ideas affects how others listen and the validity of their comments. Perhaps Hurston's decision to express her characters in Southern black dialogue came from this notion. With the exception of Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, most blacks in books expressed themselves much like a white person, even though the way they talked clearly differentiated them from the whites. From the old gossips on the porch to Janie herself, emotion seeps from their words, as if the hardships they have endured have harbored their effects on their language. Although the dialect may make the characters sound uneducated at times, Hurston succeeds at allowing deep thoughts and universal truths to come out of Janie, Tea Cake, Logan, and Jody. For instance, Janie voices her opinion on love and age differences when she says, "Ah'm older than Tea Cake, yes. But he done showed me where it's de thought dat makes de difference in ages"(115). This is an idea that many people are for and against, and Hurston is ahead of her time by addressing it through Janie. Tea Cake's intelligence shines through his cumbersome words as well. Younger and not near as well off as Janie, he has had to learn life's lessons the hard way. When Janie questions whether he really wants her to go to the Sunday School Picnic with him, he replies in his joking but sincere way, "Me scramble 'round tuh git de money tuh take yuh--been workin' lak uh dawg for two whole weeks--and she come astin' me if Ah want her tuh go!"(109). His refutation in regional Floridian talk reflects how hard he has had to work his whole life and how much Janie means to him. If all the men in Janie's past had treated her as Tea Cake does, her happines would have been fulfilled many years before. Though character dialogue can be hard to comprehend in Their Eyes..., the final feeling one feels after reading it is one of pride for the black race, while at the same time getting a taste of what it would be like to be black. Hurston deals with the hardships of African Americans superbly through her acute ability to write the way blacks talk in this classic novel.
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Summary: Easy to read, but not easy to forget.
Review: By combining the elements of suppression and faith along with the endless search for self, Zora Neale Hurston created a most enjoyable novel: Their Eyes Were Watching God! The book covers the trials and tribulations of the main character, Janie, as she attempts to find personal happiness and her purpose in life through multiple marriages. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses the husband figures as building blocks, creating distinguishable similarities and dissimilarities between the characters in order to keep the flow of the book from episode to episode. Using the husbands as the backbone to the novel, Hurston progresses the book to a climax, making her developing character, Janie, complete. Not only is Hurston a wizard of literary structure, but she is also well-deserving for having produced a thought-provoking narrative with lasting effects.
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Summary: Slightly Disappointed
Review: I found the book to be a pleasant read, however I felt it lacked in a few areas. For one, I felt it lacked a certain element of surprise. I thought it to be too similar to any other book written on the same subject. I also thought that Hurston could have done a better job connecting the readers to Janie. Naturally you wanted things to go well for her, but I simply felt as though I was being told her story. I never got the feeling that I was there, with Janie while everything was happening to her. The characters never came alive to me, they remained flat throughout the story. I wouldn't disagree with teaching this book in a high school english class. I think it has a good message, and I believe that there are people who could connect with Janie on a deeper level.
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Summary: Unbelievably good
Review: You read this book and wonder why it isn't taught in every highschool in America. You read this book and marvel at the sheer beauty of Hurston's writing. You read this book and question how one woman's insights in the 30's were so advanced for the time and are still true today. You read this book and your blood boils when you think of how Hurston was rejected as a credible author. You read this book and put it in a special place. You read this book years later and it's like visiting an old friend. You read this book and want to tell everyone you know about it and that it is unbelievably good.
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Summary: One of the best African American Classics out there.
Review: Initially, I was on of those who downgraded this book due to me having to work my way through the dialect. Then, I remembered that the author herself worked among these people to bring their story to the mainsteam, and after reading this again just recently, I found it to be one of the best, as well as one of the most empowering books way ahead of its time. If you read some of the books about and by African Americans women at that time, they usually ended up in bad circumstances. In this book, she shows how Janie, although she ended up being married three times, she really never gave up on what she really wanted, which was the love of a good man, and though things didn't work out like she wanted, she still was her own woman. To me, Ms. Hurston was way ahead of her time in that regard. I plan to introduce this book to my daughters when they get of age.
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Summary: A poor woman's lives a full life.
Review: After reading Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, I came to expect all African-American fiction to focus, at least partially, on exposing and protesting racism. This was and is a worthy cause, but, I must confess, it makes reading more laborious. Surely, I thought, there was more to the pre-civil rights black story than simply fighting against the injustices of whitey. This book is a celebration of southern black culture, not black oppression, or black resistance, though these are not completely absent. This is the story of a mildly privileged black woman in the south who must decide between the comforts of a stable but loveless marriage and the less certain prospects of true love with a drifter. If you find the paragons of the black canon a bit too preachy, this will be a breath of fresh air. This is my favorite book written by a female author.
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