alyssapolis 's review for:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

4.75

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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Beautifully written book I didn’t understand on my first read. Filled with nuance, can’t simply take it at face value. Gorgeous. Loved the author more than the books itself, Hurston’s way with words is just perfection.

It was heavily criticized by black contemporaries for not being a protest piece. I personally loved that it was about a black character not defined by the fact she’s black or the history of the south, but defined as a woman, as a human. I’m so happy Hurston pushed through and wrote the story she wanted to write, not the story society wanted her to write.

Janie’s abuse was difficult on my first read, when I just plowed through for plot. I didn’t find her particularly inspiring, and she never seemed to stand up for herself. Even Tea Cake abuses her. But, as I read somewhere, Janie isn’t supposed to be a role model, she’s simply an actualized human being. My first read, I was waiting for the obvious character development and I missed her become her own person, which was a beautiful and honest process. I had also read criticisms that Janie fails to find her own voice, but Alice Walker pointed out that she chose to find a communal voice. So much of this book works against what one would expect, but is equally as valid. And there is a statement to be made as to why these alternative perspectives don’t tend to be considered as valid? Why does a woman have to find an individual voice to find her power? There is power in community, and even greater power in knowing yourself. Janie knew herself, she knew what she wanted, and she didn’t have to explain herself to anyone. She didn’t care how things looked, she didn’t care what people thought, and that was from the start. Why would she have to voice this to anyone, if she knows it to be true?

I also admired how she had great love for Tea Cake, but she ultimately chose to live without him rather than die with him, and didn't shy away from that fact.

I also love how hopefully it ended. Tea Cake fulfilled Janie’s dream for love, now she is open to experience any kind of new dream. I don’t believe she’ll look for love again, I believe she’s satisfied and seems excited to just experience life.

Hurston has an absolutely stunning way with words and imagery and metaphor - it can be so deep or so funny or so expressive, and all so unique. Some of my favourite quotes/excerpts:

“The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sit- ting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.”

“It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again”

“Her voice began snagging on the prongs of her feelings”

“De day and de hour is hid from me, but it won’t be long.” (About death)

“Put me down easy, Janie, Ah’m a cracked plate.“

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

“He never made his own head. You talk so silly.”

“Ah don’t keer who made it, Ah don’t like de job.“ 🤣

“There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought. Nanny entered this infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees. Towards morning she muttered, “Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you.”

“Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”

“Janie took the easy way away from a fuss. She didn’t change her mind but she agreed with her mouth.”

“Like the piece of string out of a ham. It’s not ham at all, but it’s been around ham and got the flavor.”

“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered.”

“She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. ”

“When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.”

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”

“she woke up in time to see the sun sending up spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark. He peeped up over the door sill of the world and made a little foolishness with red. But pretty soon, he laid all that aside and went about his business dressed all in white.”

“It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you”

“He was a vanishing-looking kind of a man as if there used to be parts about him that stuck out individually but now he hadn’t a thing about him that wasn’t dwindled and blurred. Just like he had been sand-papered down to a long oval mass.”

“She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.”

“Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

“She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder.”