Their Eyes Were Watching God

Rating:
Summary: Through Pain And Loss
Review: Through Pain and Loss comes this exceptional piece of literature, that though a classic within itself can be read many times over and find something new to capture your attention.
This is a one of a kind,special and intrigueing novel about the difficult past in Harlem.
Also recommend: Nightmares Echo, Color Of Water and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Rating:
Summary: The most beautiful opening paragraph ever
Review: "Ship's at a distance have every man's wish on board".

You might never read a better opening sentence in a novel, but you need to read the rest of the paragraph to comprehend the brilliant and poignant insights of that simple and elegant opening. By the end of that first paragraph, I knew I was reading a greater talent than I had read for a long time. I don't exaggerate when I write that tears filled my eyes from the beauty of those first few lines. They can not be surpassed.

Elegant, insightful writing that makes one thank god they can read.

Michael P. Sakowski
Author "The Enterprise Zone"



Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This was an exceptional story of the life of a young woman. She begins her life with a man that will provide her security, respectabilty and with enough wealth that she will be able to have a good life. There is no love or passion, she marries him to make her grandmother happy and relieved that her loved grand-daughter will be taken care of and so she can die in peace, which she does.
A short time later, Janie finds a man who is exciting and lively, she runs off with him and he becomes very prosperous and very restrictive. Janie is not allowed any friends, she's made into a mighty high lady, not by her own choice but it is forced on her by her husband's grand ambition. When he dies, she is left very wealthy but she is still treated with distance, as if she were not part of the society but above it.
One day a young, handsome man appears and their relationship developes into absolute true love. She runs off with him and they truely live-it's probably the first time she has been "alive" since she was a child. All the doubts and fears still pop up--why is this young man so in love with me?, he must be after my money? That's what everyone she knows thinks, but it is love. This is a wonderful book. It may not have a Disney ending but it's just as good.


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.