Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
“A Black woman's quest for selfhood told in the most beautiful English prose of the 20th century — dismissed by critics, buried for decades, then resurrected to become essential.”
At a Glance
Janie Crawford returns to Eatonville, Florida, after burying her third husband, Tea Cake, whom she shot to save her own life. She tells her story to her best friend Pheoby: two loveless marriages — to the old farmer Logan Killicks and the ambitious mayor Joe Starks — then a third marriage to the younger, joyful Tea Cake, which ends in the Florida Everglades when a rabies-maddened Tea Cake tries to kill her. Janie has lived fully and returns to herself.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Published in 1937 to mixed reviews — dismissed by Richard Wright as 'quaint' and by many Harlem Renaissance critics as insufficiently political. It went out of print and Hurston died poor and forgotten in 1960. Alice Walker found her grave in 1973 and wrote 'In Search of Zora Neale Hurston' (1975), which began the rediscovery. The novel was reissued in 1978 and has not gone out of print since. It is now among the most taught novels in American universities and is regularly listed among the greatest American novels of the 20th century.
Diction Profile
Radically dual: Hurston's narration is formal, dense, metaphor-rich; her dialogue is transcribed African American Vernacular English. These two registers operate simultaneously and are equally valid.
Extremely high in narration. Metaphor-based, not simile-based. The pear tree, the horizon, the mule, the head rag, the 'inside and outside self'