Structure of 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God possesses a unique structure. The story is told in the context of a
"frame." The novel both begins and ends with two people, Janie and Pheoby, sitting on the porch
of Janie's house. Janie tells the stories contained within the novel to Pheoby during the course of
an evening. The novel begins with Janie telling her dear friend, Pheoby, about what has
happened in the years since she left Eatonville, along with reflections of her childhood. As the
story proceeds chronologically, however, the story is not a first-person narrative. Hurston takes
over the narrative with the use of third-person point of view. The reader encounters Janie's
experiences as Janie faced them, yet Hurston controls the story.

Within the novel, there are four units to the framework of the story. The first frame exists with
Janie's childhood and adolescent years with her grandmother, Nanny. The reader learns that
Nanny was forced to care for Janie after her own mother deserted her. This portion of the novel
is important as it details Nanny's wish for Janie that she have a better life than she did. This unit
also is significant because it emphasizes Nanny's protective love for Janie. It also explores Janie's
feelings and desires about love, a theme that continues throughout the novel.

The second unit serves as an interlude where readers learn Nanny's story as well as Janie's loss of
childhood after her marriage to Logan Killicks. Nanny's history proves noteworthy as it
reinforces her hopes for Janie. Nanny does not want Janie to repeat the mistakes of her mother.
She wants Janie to live a secure and comfortable life. Nanny is not as concerned about love as
Janie is. Perhaps that is because Nanny has never experienced the kind of love that Janie desires.
This unit also emphasizes Nanny's protective love for Janie.

Janie's years with Joe Starks fill the third section of the framework in the novel. This unit
represents Janie's early happiness with Joe as well as her later dissatisfaction with Joe as he treats
her like one of his many possessions. Janie suffers from Joe's possessive love as she is trapped in
a loveless relationship. Joe's control over Janie actually fosters her strength and autonomy.
However, it is also in this section that Janie gains the inner strength that she will use throughout
the rest of the novel.
The fourth and final section of the novel focuses on Janie's marriage to Tea Cake. Finally, Janie
has experienced freedom and independence following Joe's death. She meets the captivating and
charming Tea Cake and finds the love that she has desired since her adolescent years. He
satisfies her desire for love, and she experiences true happiness for the first time. With Tea Cake,
Janie is no longer the possession that she was to Joe, and the love that she feels is not based
solely on security and protection. This fourth unit brings the novel to the end of the frame.

The framework of the novel is complete as Janie's recollections and stories end and Pheoby
returns home to her husband. It is through Janie's eyes that the reader understands the story. Yet,
Hurston tells the story in third person to allow the reader to know more about the other
characters and their perspectives.

It is possible that Hurston chose to tell the story within a framework to give Janie a voice in the
novel. Had Hurston relied solely on a third person narrative, Janie would have had no voice.
Using first person narrative in this framework proves that Janie has gained strength and
independence as a result of her lifelong search for true love.

Figurative Language in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston uses many symbols and metaphors in Their Eyes Were Watching God to develop Janie's
story. Symbols stand for, represent, or suggest another thing. A metaphor, however, is a figure of
speech containing an implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily
used for one thing is applied to another.

One of the prevalent metaphors in the novel is the image of the horizon. As Janie climbs the pear
tree to see what exists around her, she sees the horizon. The horizon also plays a role at
sundown, a time when the porch sitters sit outside at the end of a working day to watch the sun
set. Janie wants to make a trip to the horizon, and her journey becomes a principal metaphor in
the story. At sunrise, Janie travels down the road to the train station to meet and marry Tea Cake,
hoping that this experience will take her to the horizon. The horizon is a symbol of Janie's
lifelong search for happiness. At the end of the story, Pheoby is anxious to seek her own horizon
with her husband, as a result of hearing Janie's story.
Another metaphor in the novel can be found in the working men and women and the comparison
to the mule. The men sitting on the porches have been working all day and have been treated like
mules throughout the working day. Only at the end of the day as they enjoy their leisure time on
the porch do they become human beings. In Hurston's interlude of the mule, the animal is given
respite near the end of his life, just as the hard-working men and women "mules" get respite at
the end of their working day.

A second image of a mule exists in the novel. Matt Bonner's mule also represents mistreatment
and betrayal. Perhaps Janie feels sympathy for the poor animal because she, too, suffers the
effects of abuse, just as the mule does. While the mistreatment that Janie endures is primarily
emotional, the abuse that the mule experiences is mostly physical. Regardless of the type of
mistreatment each faces, the mule exists as a symbol of the abuse that Janie encounters in her
marriage to Joe.

One of the most powerful metaphors in the novel is the blossoming pear tree. Janie is enchanted
by the beautiful tree in Nanny's backyard. As she climbs the tree and sits in its branches, Janie
realizes the meaning of true love when she sees the marriage of the bees to the blossoms in the
pear tree. The blossoming pear tree symbolizes Janie's emerging womanhood. Janie's image of
love, as she saw it in the pear tree, causes her to embark on her lifelong search for love.

Use of Dialect in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston uses dialect to bring the story as well as the characters to life. The use of dialect makes
the characters seem real; they are believable. After making some initial adjustments as a reader
to become familiar with the language, readers feel as if they were actually a part of the action.

It is worth noting that the dialect used in the novel is closer to a Southern dialect, rather than an
African-American dialect. Not only do Janie, Tea Cake, and their friends have similar speech
patterns, but also the guards who command Tea Cake after the hurricane speak in a comparable
dialect. Hurston's familiarity with the language of the South enables her to accurately depict the
dialect of the region.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is rich in dialect, known as the spoken version of a language.
Dialect is regional, and it has distinctive features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Early in the novel, Hurston tells her readers what to expect in the language of her characters. She
states that Janie will tell her story to Pheoby in "soft, easy phrases." Readers unfamiliar with
such phrases often see Hurston's language as a strange dialect and a barrier to enjoying the novel.
Once readers understand the dialect and its common features, the text becomes familiar and easy
to read.

The reader approaches both Eatonville and the muck as an outsider and soon discovers patterns
in the language of the characters. Initial and final consonants are frequently dropped. "You"
becomes "yuh," occasionally "y'all," a plural. "I" is invariably "Ah." Vowel shifts also occur
often. For example, "get" becomes "git." The final "r" is "ah." "Us" may occur as the nominative,
and verbs, especially auxiliary verbs, are generally left out. A double negative such as "Nobody
don't know" gives emphasis. Distortions of the past tense also occur. For example, "knew"
becomes "knowed." Because "–ed" is a sign of the simple past, it is logical in dialect to add "-ed"
to make a past tense verb. The reflexive pronoun "himself" becomes "hisself." A final "th" is
spoken as "f," and although the final "r" is softened in some words, it is added to others. In
addition to patterns of dialect, Janie and her friends speak a language rich in a vocabulary of
localisms and folklore references. These features are also characteristic of regional speech and
help make dialects distinctive.

The character of Tea Cake is to some extent characterized by his language. He is the only
character who consistently uses "us" as a nominative; perhaps it is Hurston's subtle way of
suggesting that Tea Cake is of a lower class than Joe or the porch sitters.

Major Themes of Their Eyes Were Watching God

The most prevalent themes in Their Eyes Were Watching God involve Janie's search for
unconditional, true, and fulfilling love. She experiences different kinds of love throughout her
life. As a result of her quest for this love, Janie gains her own independence and personal
freedom, which makes her a true heroine in the novel. Because Janie strives for her own
independence, others tend to judge her simply because she is daring enough to achieve her own
autonomy.
Throughout the novel, Janie searches for the love that she has always desired, the kind of love
that is represented by the marriage between a bee and a blossom on the pear tree that stood in
Nanny's backyard. Only after feeling other kinds of love does Janie finally gain the love like that
between the bee and the blossom.

Janie experiences many types of love throughout her life. With Nanny, her caring grandmother,
Janie experiences a love that is protective. Nanny yearns for Janie to have a better life than she
did, and she will do anything in her power to make sure that Janie is safe and cared for. This
protective love that Nanny bestows on Janie serves as the driving force behind Nanny's plot to
arrange Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks.

With Logan, Janie has attained a similarly protective love, much like that provided by Nanny.
Logan represents security for Janie, as he owns a 60-acre potato farm. For Janie, however, this
protective love does not satisfy her need for the love that she has always desired.

Joe Starks provides Janie with an escape from the protective and unsatisfying love of Logan. Joe
is a man with lofty goals and charisma. Janie feels for the first time in her life that she may be
able to find true love with this man who wants her to be treated like a lady, rather than as a
subservient farmer's wife. After being married just a short time, however, Janie realizes that she
is once again lacking the love that she has longed for. The love that Janie experiences with Joe is
a possessive love. Joe views Janie as his possession, his trophy wife. He expects Janie to follow
his orders, just as the townspeople abide by the laws he creates as mayor. Joe forbids Janie to
interact with the porch sitters or to play checkers on the porch of the crossroads store. Janie feels
trapped by Joe's love, but she remains with him until his death.

Following Joe's death, Janie meets the man who represents the true love of her life, Tea Cake
Woods. He arrives in Eatonville as a fun-loving man who quickly falls for Janie's beauty and
charm. Although Janie fears that she is too old for Tea Cake, she cannot help but fall in love with
this man. Janie leaves behind everything that she has ever known to embark on a new life with
Tea Cake. She adores him, as he adores her. After moving to the Everglades with Tea Cake, she
embraces this new life as well as her new friends. Finally, Janie has found the love like that
between the bee and its blossom. She declares that Tea Cake could be a "bee to a blossom — a
pear tree blossom in the spring."
In her search for love and in the losses that she suffers, Janie gains independence. Janie's
independence begins slowly in the novel. She holds a spark of independence when she gains the
courage to leave her loveless marriage with Logan in order to run away with Joe Starks. Her
independence grows, however, throughout her marriage to Joe. As Joe treats Janie as his
possession instead of his wife, Janie gains an inner strength. Her strength builds, and one day she
stands up for herself to Joe in the presence of the porch sitters. This act is Janie's first outward
sign of her inner strength. Her strength and independence grow as Joe becomes weaker.
Although he banishes Janie from his room, she visits him anyway. As Joe lies dying, Janie
reveals to him that he is not the man that she ran off with years ago. She tells Joe that he has
never been able to accept her for the person that she really is. Ironically, Janie finds strength in
Joe's death. Finally, she is free of the man who confined her in a loveless marriage. Janie exhibits
her freedom after Joe's death by removing the kerchief from her head to let her long braids drape
freely down her back.

Throughout Janie's quest for love and the independence that she gains in her journey, Janie
endures the harsh judgment of others. The porch sitters in the novel serve to judge Janie. As the
novel opens, they sit and comment about Janie's return and her present lifeless appearance. The
theme of judgment continues in Janie's life with Joe. He judges Janie, rather than accepting her
for what and who she is. He stifles her independence because he fears that another man may take
her away from him. Even Mrs. Turner, the bigoted restaurant owner, judges Janie. She questions
Janie's choice of Tea Cake as a husband, because he is "too black." Because Janie endures the
harsh judgments of others, she is able to gain independence and strength.

Janie's quest for love leads her along different paths. She gains strength from the protective love
of Nanny and Logan as well as the possessive love of Joe. Janie finds her desired love with Tea
Cake. Throughout her life, she also gains an independence and strength from these relationships
as well as by enduring the judgments made by others. As a result of her lifelong encounters,
Janie gains autonomy and learns the value of true love. As a character, Janie proves herself as a
heroine.

Hurston created the character of Janie during a time in which African-American female heroines
were uncommon in literature. In 1937 when the novel was originally published, females
experienced fewer opportunities than they do today. Hurston chose to portray Janie as a strong,
independent woman, unlike most African-American females of the early nineteenth century.
Perhaps Hurston characterized Janie as capable and courageous to empower her readers and to
show them that opportunities do exist for all women; they just have to embrace them.

Janie’s three marriages are key to her development and to the plot
of Their Eyes Were Watching God. How do the men and marriages differ
from one another? What does Janie learn from each experience?

Janie, the protagonist of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, is often
identified as a feminist character. While she is certainly an independent woman who believes in
the equality of the sexes, Janie does not lead a typically feminist existence throughout the novel.
Largely because of her relationships with the three key men in her life, Janie is often beaten
down, silenced, ignored, marginalized, and even physically abused. Yet it is these episodes of
disempowerment that strengthen Janie’s feminist identity. She suffers at the hands of Logan,
Jody, and Tea Cake, but she emerges from each marriage stronger and more sure of her own
identity. Paradoxically, the times in her life during which she cannot be a feminist are what
ultimately make Janie an exemplar of feminist strength.
Janie marries Logan Killicks, her first husband, not because she wants to be with him, but
because she wants to please her grandmother and hopes that she will learn to love Logan
eventually. Janie’s decision to marry Logan is not illogical, but it is a capitulation. Rather than
following her instincts and insisting on retaining her independence, Janie defers to the wishes of
others. Her marriage brings more forced capitulations. Logan, a well-meaning but oppressive
man, wants to keep Janie under his thumb. He calls her spoiled and insists that she labor in the
fields alongside him. In addition to this attempted physical oppression, Janie suffers from the
emotional oppression of being trapped in a affectionless marriage. But if surrender and
oppression characterize Janie’s first marriage, it is exactly these conditions that give Janie the
courage to skip town. Because she is so fed up with Logan and his domineering ways, Janie
musters up the courage to leave behind the only home she has ever known—something she
almost certainly would not have done had she not married Logan in the first place.
Janie’s relationship with her second husband, Jody Starks, is more substantial and complex than
her relationship with Logan. It is also more damaging. Jody, who is powerful and charming,
imposes increasingly strict demands on his wife. He does not allow her to speak in public to
large groups; he dislikes it when she socializes with other men; he insists that she hide her
beautiful hair; he berates her when he believes that she is performing badly at work; and when he
is enraged, he beats her. Those readers searching for evidence of Janie’s unflagging feminism
might be dismayed by Janie’s willingness to put up with Jody. Despite flashes of rebellion, for
the most part she behaves like the subservient wife Jody wants her to be. For years, she follows
his orders, silences herself, and sticks around after he hits her. In Chapter 8, however, Hurston
indicates that Janie’s suffering has imbued her with extraordinary power. When she finally gives
voice to her thoughts and tells Jody what she thinks of him, he dies, as if brought down by the
force of her rage. Years of mistreatment give Janie the power to fell men with her words. They
also give her an outsized appreciation for her freedom. Because she knows what it means to be
ground down by a man, Janie appreciates her single life far more than she could have had she
never experienced real unhappiness.

With Tea Cake, Janie enjoys a fulfilling relationship characterized by intellectual, emotional, and
physical compatibility. Tea Cake is not just a good match for Janie. He is also proof of the self-
knowledge that can result from difficult and demeaning circumstances. Only because Janie
suffered through two bad marriages can she know that Tea Cake is the right man for her. Despite
the happiness Janie feels with Tea Cake, Hurston makes it clear that she has not found an ideal
man. Tea Cake disappears. He gambles. He hosts raucous parties with money stolen from Janie.
He flirts with other women. He even beats Janie in order to prove that he controls her. Janie’s
relationship with Tea Cake is challenging and perplexing. Hurston forces us to acknowledge that
despite Tea Cake’s numerous flaws, Janie is truly happy with him. Further, Hurston makes it
impossible to argue that Janie has regressed, turning back into the meek creature she was with
Logan and Jody. Janie’s willingness to shoot and kill Tea Cake in order to save herself, and the
peace she achieves at the end of the novel, prove that she has progressed and gained power and
independence.

Hurston continually interrogates the conventional wisdom about what it means to be a strong,
successful woman. By giving her protagonist three husbands, and by ending her novel with Janie
alone and content, she suggests that happiness does not always involve one husband, children,
and a settled existence. And by portraying the bursts of independence that follow Janie’s
episodes of subservience, she argues that great strength is sometimes the direct result of real
weakness.

Discuss the role of conversation in Their Eyes Were Watching God. In

particular, discuss the effect of Hurston’s narrative technique of
alternating between highly figurative narration and colloquial dialogue.

One of the most interesting aspects of Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston’s interweaving
of Standard Written English on the part of the narrator and early twentieth-century Southern
Black vernacular speech on the part of her characters. The extended passages of dialogue
celebrate the language of Southern Black people, presenting a type of authentic voice not often
seen in literature.
In addition to asserting the existence and richness of Southern Black culture, Hurston’s use of
dialogue articulates thematic concerns of the novel. For example, Hurston uses language to
express the difference between Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake and her relationship with
Jody. When Janie meets Jody, we do not hear her speak to him; instead, the narrator tells us, in
Standard Written English, that they talk, giving us few of their actual words.

Janie’s interactions with Tea Cake, on the other hand, are full of long passages of vernacular
dialogue, a reflection of their genuine connection and mutual respect for each other. Throughout
the novel, Janie struggles to find her own voice; Hurston demonstrates the importance of this
quest with her use of dialogue as a narrative device.

Explain the significance of the book’s title. How does it relate to Janie’s
quest and the rest of the book?

One important feature of the title Their Eyes Were Watching God is that the first word is plural,
which anticipates the issues of community and partnership with which the novel concerns itself.
As much as the story is about one woman’s quest, it is also the story of how that quest is
achieved both through and against community and partnership. The title is drawn from a moment
in which three people act together against a threatening force—the hurricane, in Chapter 18—but
soon afterward, Janie and Tea Cake split up with Motor Boat, and Janie is later forced to shoot
Tea Cake. The “Their” in the title seems a fragile construct.
The novel’s concept of God, the other pregnant word in the title, is most clearly articulated when
the narrator describes Mrs. Turner’s obsession with white features and social norms. Gods, the
reader is told, require suffering, and this suffering is the beginning of wisdom. The lesson that
the hurricane seems to offer is that God is all-powerful and will damn the proud like Tea Cake,
who believes that his mastery of the muck will allow him to weather the hurricane. The novel’s
overall tenor, however, is hardly one of awed submission and humility. Janie is focused on
understanding herself, not God, and exhibits a high degree of autonomy in achieving this goal.
Though external forces and circumstances may demand sacrifice and suffering, Janie herself still
determines the course of her life.

Why is Janie initially attracted to Jody? Why does this attraction fade?

Jody comes along at a transitional period in Janie’s life. She is still partially under the spell of
her grandmother’s philosophy, prizing material wealth and status, but at the same time has begun
to search for something greater. She is unsure what that something is but knows that it involves
more than what she has with Logan Killicks. When Jody arrives, full of bluster and ambition, he
reconciles Janie’s upbringing with her desire for adventure. His talk of power and conquest
soothes Janie’s disenchantment while his ambitious social climbing satisfies the values that
Nanny has imparted to her.

Janie’s interest in Jody ultimately wanes because she discovers that the role he wants her to fit
offers her no fulfillment. She learns that there are two reasons that Jody will never help her
achieve her dreams. First, Jody’s quest is for material and social gain. He wants wealth, power,
and status. No accumulation of such things, however, will help Janie in her spiritual quest.
Second, Jody defines himself through his control of others, especially through his silencing of
Janie. Their marriage fails because Janie refuses to tolerate Jody’s inflated sense of himself any
longer. His egotism, based on power over others, demands that he control and dominate Janie,
which prevents her from exploring and expressing herself.
Is Tea Cake a good or bad person?

Not long after Jody’s death, Janie marries Tea Cake, and soon realizes that he has many
concerning traits. He steals the money she hides from him, spends it entertaining other women,
and gambles in an illegal and dangerous dice game to get it back for her. Tea Cake’s principal
concern is for himself, and he often disguises his selfishness under the guise of love for Janie.
For example, when they move to the Everglades to work on the muck, Tea Cake tells Janie she
“betta come git uh job uh work out dere lak de rest uh de women,” claiming he misses her too
much to go a full work-day without her.

One of his most concerning traits is the jealousy he allows to cloud his judgment, resulting in
him physically assaulting Janie to relieve “the awful fear inside him” when a potential suitor
visits the muck. Tea Cake’s egotism prevents Janie from being a truly equal partner in their
relationship, which desecrates the vision of perfect unity she has attached to marriage since her
pear tree revelation.

Despite many examples of reckless behavior, Tea Cake’s motivation could also be interpreted as
purer and more child-like than it appears at first glance, and Janie actually has quite a bit of
autonomy in their relationship. In describing her new love to Pheoby, Janie claims “Tea Cake
ain’t draggin’ me off nowhere Ah don’t want tuh go.” After two soured marriages, Janie knows
what she wants and makes her choice to marry Tea Cake fully informed of the risks involved.
Tea Cake makes a habit of showering Janie with praise, and while his exact intentions cannot be
certain, the reader sees Janie’s love grow for him each time, often “allowing their bodies to
express the inexpressible,” physically communicating a love she never felt for Logan or Jody.

Hurston depicts Tea Cake as not simply a good or bad person, but instead as a real person who is
complicated and not easily understood. At times, Tea Cake is motivated by pride, as when he
refuses to leave the Everglades at first sign of the impending hurricane, prioritizing money over
safety for Janie. However, in the middle of the storm, Tea Cake saves Janie from a rabid dog,
ultimately sacrificing his own life in this act of love-driven heroism. After his death, Tea Cake’s
memory remains unsoiled for Janie, and she believes he can never be fully dead “until she
herself ha[s] finished feeling and thinking.” All in all, Tea Cake is a complicated man who is
beloved by Janie and cannot fall into easy categories such as “good” or “bad.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God and Black Feminist Literature

Their Eyes Were Watching God is best understood as the precursor to a major literary movement
in the United States: writing for and about Black American women. Hurston drew upon the
tradition of storytelling and folklore in Black communities, which she extensively studied as part
of her anthropology work while in college. Their Eyes Were Watching God was released in 1937,
long after the literary experimentation of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s story of a Black
woman’s quest toward independence stood in stark contrast to the “social realism” novels of the
1930s, which were typically marked by gritty portrayals of the social injustices in the world.
While her novel was harshly criticized as being too romantic by many prolific social realist
writers, including Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston’s work was brought into the Black
American canon by feminist writers in the 1960s and 70s. Hurston’s work inspired other Black
writers, particularly women—such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison—who built upon
Hurston’s desire to present everyday Black life as worthy of being captured in literature, while
also dealing with the oppression the community still faced and the civil rights they sought.

The Harlem Renaissance

Zora Neale Hurston played a significant role in the Harlem Renaissance, a period in the early
20th century in which the New York neighborhood of Harlem became a Black cultural mecca.
Black writers, visual artists, musicians, actors, and other cultural figures flocked to the area and
created works of art that celebrated the survival of African-Americans, as well as the
community’s potential to rebirth the arts. The seeds of the Renaissance were planted when the
Great Migration occurred, a time in which millions of African-Americans moved from the South
to the North, often settling in Harlem, which most white families abandoned. By the 1920s,
Harlem was firmly established as a vibrant and thriving Black community. The now-famous
artists who joined it—including Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, and Hurston
—influenced each other in the creation of masterpieces of Black art.
What does the title mean?

Hurston’s title comes from Chapter 18 in which Janie and Tea Cake take shelter from the raging
hurricane. Hurston writes that they waited to see how nature would determine their fate: “They
seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” With this line, the
characters recognize the lack of control they have over their own lives, and realize they can only
be spared from the cruelty of nature if God sees fit to save them.