Book Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God

From Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale-Hurston:

Amazon

  Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."

Book Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God: 1937 novel by a too-long forgotten author who was a pioneer of Black, feminist, American stories. Here, she tells the growing maturity of a Black woman, using Black vernacular dialect that recalls Twain's Huck Finn. A-

After the jump, my full review.

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Grade: A-

I had never heard of Zora Neale-Hurston until I watched a PBS documentary, "Claiming a Space", documenting her life. In her life, she received two Guggenheim fellowships (for anthropology research in Florida and Haiti), she wrote dozens of scientific papers, two books on Black mythology, an award-winning autobiography, and four novels, the best of which is judged to be "Their Eyes Were Watching God." So, I just had to track it down and read it, even though she was forgotten for 30 years before being rediscovered by Alice Walker in the 1970s.

In "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Janie Crawford, an uneducated Black woman from Georgia, granddaughter of a former enslaved woman, grows to maturity, both in years and in wisdom, in relationships with three men. The first, Logan, was arranged for her by her grandmother when she catches young Janie kissing a boy across the back fence. The man picked for Janie was an older man Janie did not know, let alone love. Janie runs off with another man, Jody, one who woos her and who treats her well, at first but eventually proves controlling. The third, Tea Cake, Janie meets when she is forty years old. He's twelve years her junior, but loves her as much as she loves him. It's striking how in this tale Janie is always defined by the men she marries, but the tale itself is about how Janie becomes more and more her own woman, a strong woman. Her love stories become stronger and richer, accordingly.

The story is told mostly in the third person, as Janie told her story to her friend Pheoby. The dialog is in Black vernacular dialect, reminiscent of Mark Twain's style in Huckleberry Finn. Hurston is a master of dialog and symbolism, learned from her academic background of studying Black folklore and mythology in the field.

Great works of literature often have great opening lines. "Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board."

Much of the story is told by Janie's friend Pheoby, at least until Janie's independence grows. Janie says, "Ah don’t mean to bother wid tellin’ ’em nothin’, Pheoby. ’Tain’t worth de trouble. You can tell ’em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat’s just de same as me ’cause mah tongue is in mah friend’s mouf."

This novel is filled with great imagery. There's no better description anywhere of what it means to yearn for first love. "Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?"

Zora Neale-Hurston was an amazing talent, unappreciated in her chosen academic field of anthropology, she applied her groundbreaking research to fiction, where she still failed to break through until long past her death. Yet she created one of the strongest characters in American fiction, a strong Black female protagonist. That might have something to do with why Hurston's book was out of print for thirty years. The American public wasn't ready for strong, Black, female characters. I never came across Hurston until this year. That was my loss. Don't let it be yours.