Their Eyes Were Watching God: Personal Relationships Essay -- essays r

Zora Neale Hurston, in keeping with heads dealing with personal relationships and the female search for self-awareness in Their look Were Watching God , has created a heroine in Janie Crawford. In fact, the female situation is introduced immediately. "Now, wo men forget all those things they dont want to remember, and remember everything they dont want to forget. The dream is the truth. and then they act and do things accordingly" (Their Eyes 1). On the very set-back page of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the contrast is made between men and women, thus initiating Janies search for her own dreams and foreshadowing the "female quest" theme of the rest of the novel. "Detailing her quest for self-discovery and self-definition, it Their Eyes celebrates her Janie as an artist who enriches Eatonville by communicating her understanding" (Kubitschek 22). Janie is a Black woman who asserts herself beyond expectation, with a intentness that characterizes her searc h for the love that she dreamed of as a girl. She understands the societal perspective that her life has fleeted her, yet she is determined to overcome this, and she is resentful toward anyone or anything that interferes with her quest for happiness. "So de white man throw down de lading and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he dont tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see," opines Janies gr...