Republic of the Philippines

BILIRAN PROVINCE STATE UNIVERSITY

(formerly NAVAL STATE UNIVERSITY)
ISO 9001:2015 CERTIFIED
School of Teacher Education

LITERARY CRITICISM:
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Submitted by: France Xavier S. Villagonzalo
Submitted to: Dr. Maribelle Zipagan

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

Author: Zora Neale Hurston

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God contains several

structuralist ideas to consider. The binary oppositions directly show how
they were treated by the White man as slaves. As Nanny, the
grandmother of the main character Janie stated, they were abused by
the white men and tagged as slaves until it was abolished. At that time
Jaine is also conceived due to her mother Leafy being raped and
abused by her teacher and then leaving her. Which made Janie think
that the only love she had experienced is from her Nanny. The novel
delves into themes like Love, tragedy, racism, and culture, but the theme
that really sticks with me is racism due to the number of passages
inferred to black people in the story. The words of Martin Luther King Jr.
come into my mind when reading the text, “Darkness cannot drive out
darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love
can do that”.
 There are more quotes that entertain such passage of racism
throughout the course of the story, symbols that can be used in a line to
deconstructionism. “We’se uh mingled people and all of us got black
kinfolks as well as yaller kinfolks,” Janie argues here against Mrs.
Turner's bigoted conviction of Black people's inferiority. Mrs. Turner
would want to separate mixed-race people like herself and Janie from
Black people with darker complexions. Janie points out that because she
and Mrs. Turner are mixed race, their families include both lighter and
darker colored people, proving Mrs. Turner's reasoning incorrect. Mrs.
Turner never reacts to this point of contention. “Anyone who looked
whiter folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria,
therefore it was right they should be cruel to her at times…. Like the
pecking order in a chicken yard”. Mrs. Turner accepts Janie's snub
because she considers such behavior to be right, according to the
narrator. Mrs. Turner feels that Black people are inferior, and so believes
that Janie, as a lighter-skinned person, has the right, if not the obligation,
to treat her unfairly. Ironically, Janie avoids Mrs. Turner because Mrs.
Turner does not appreciate Janie's husband, Tea Cake, a darker-
skinned Black guy. “They’re mighty particular how dese dead folks go
tuh judgment…. Look lak dey think God don’t know nothin’ ’bout de Jim
Crow law.” Tea Cake says these comments while assisting in the
burying of the deceased following the disaster. He observes that simple
wood coffins are supplied for white dead but not for Black bodies. The
burial team was directed to make certain that no whites were mistakenly
buried among blacks, and vice versa. Tea Cake posits that because Jim
Crow laws do not exist in paradise, the authorities feel compelled to
assist God in determining who is Black and who is white by offering
external indicators.

Going back to the flow of the story, Their Eyes Were Watching
God follows Janie's journey from repression to spiritual satisfaction as
she struggles with the demands placed on her by others. Janie raises
marriage and love in her mind as the ultimate achievement, inspired by a
revelation she gained as a youngster after seeing a union between a
bee and a flower, but this idea was tainted when she married Logan and
Jody, two men she does not love and who prolong her loneliness.
Janie's goal for self-satisfaction via sexual and romantic fulfillment
dwindles when Logan and Jody both quit making presentations to her in
rhyme.

After Jody's death, Janie abandons the worldly goals of her

previous two husbands and falls in love with Tea Cake, a younger and
poorer guy. Tea Cake introduces her to the pleasures of a caring
relationship, one in which they generate a lot of laughing out of nothing.
Janie learns to speak up for herself when Tea Cake leaves for days at a
time or flirts with other women, an act that is received with an apology
and discussion from Tea
Cake rather than silence. Janie's ultimate search for self occurs after the
hurricane when Tea Cake succumbs to insanity as a result of the rabid
dog attacking him during the storm. Caught between her love for her
husband and her fear that Tea Cake will murder her, Janie chooses to
shoot him dead, marking the moment she exerts herself in the face of
her most difficult situation yet. Janie thought Tea Cake's death would be
too much for her to take, but by choosing to spare her life, Janie
confirms what she has been striving for since her discovery under the
pear tree, or self-actualization born of real love.

Janie's journey was not simple; it was fraught with years of grief
and emptiness until she discovered a momentary pure live love in tea
cake. All three of her spouses have contributed to her realization that
being at peace is preferable. She returned to Eatonville, having already
lived her dream; she had been to the "horizon and back," and she knows
the people will gossip behind her back, but she doesn't care. Their Eyes'
final ending.