Their Eyes Were Watching God

Hurston uses two distinct languages in this novel: a formal, lyrical narrator voice and transcribed African American Vernacular English in dialogue. What is she arguing about language by keeping these two registers separate but equal?

Richard Wright dismissed the novel as 'quaint' and said it didn't address the 'real' problems facing Black Americans. How would you respond to Wright using evidence from the text?

Nanny says 'De nigger woman is de mule uh de world.' Is the novel an argument against this statement, a confirmation of it, or something more complicated?

Janie's pear tree vision is the novel's governing metaphor. Find three moments where the pear tree is explicitly or implicitly invoked. How does each reference measure Janie's current relationship against the original standard?

Joe Starks silences Janie in public, makes her cover her hair, and prevents her from joining the porch storytellers. Why is each of these acts of control significant in this specific community and culture?

Tea Cake hits Janie once — and the community sees it as a sign of his love for her. How does Hurston handle this moment? Does the novel endorse this reading, or critique it?

Janie shoots Tea Cake to save her own life. At her trial, she is acquitted by white men while Black community members want her convicted. What is Hurston saying about justice, community, and race?

The novel was written in seven weeks while Hurston was on anthropological fieldwork in Haiti. How does the book read differently knowing that the dialect was collected from real speakers, not invented?

Trace the 'horizon' metaphor from the first paragraph to the last paragraph. How does the meaning of the horizon evolve across the novel?

Compare Janie's three husbands as three different models of what marriage can be. What does each marriage give Janie, and what does each take away?

The hurricane section is one of the most powerful in American literature. Hurston was documenting the real Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928, which killed 2,500 mostly Black migrant workers. Does knowing this context change how you read the scene?

Hurston was trained as an anthropologist who studied Black folk culture. Is Their Eyes Were Watching God a novel, an ethnography, or both? What does it mean for fiction to document a real community?

Alice Walker found Hurston's unmarked grave in 1973 and placed a marker. Then she wrote the essay that rescued the novel. What does this story tell us about how literary canons are formed — and who they exclude?

The title 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' comes from the hurricane chapter. Who are 'they'? Who is God in this novel? Does God answer?

Janie says at the end that 'you got to go there to know there.' But she's telling Pheoby the story — communicating experience she says can't be communicated. Is this a paradox? Or is it how storytelling works?

Mrs. Turner, a light-skinned Black woman, despises Janie for marrying Tea Cake (who is dark-skinned) and tries to introduce her to her lighter brother. What is Hurston saying about colorism within the Black community?

The porch in Eatonville is described as a site of storytelling, community, and folk wisdom. Joe Starks forbids Janie from participating in it. In what sense is the porch the most important place in the novel?

Hurston was criticized by male contemporaries for writing about love instead of race. But Janie is a Black woman whose right to choose her own husband, to be heard, to live fully — these are racial questions. How does the novel make the personal political?

Compare Nanny's vision for Janie ('a prop tuh lean on all yo' bawn days') and Janie's vision for herself (the pear tree, the horizon). Is there any way both visions could be right?

Tea Cake dies, but Janie doesn't. How is the novel's ending different from a tragedy? What does it mean that Janie survives, returns, and tells the story?

Hurston wrote this novel while in Haiti studying voodoo religion. Does the title suggest that she was thinking about theodicy — the question of why God allows suffering — throughout?

The novel ends with Janie 'pull[ing] in her horizon like a great fish net.' What has she caught in it? What has she lost? What does it mean to pull in your horizon rather than continue chasing it?

If this novel were written from Joe Starks's point of view, what story would he tell? What would he believe he gave Janie? Is there a version of events where he is the hero?

Hurston was an anthropologist who insisted that Black folk culture was not primitive but sophisticated and internally coherent. How is the novel itself an argument for this position?

Compare Janie Crawford to Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. Both are women who are desired and constrained by the men around them. What is different about how each novel treats its female protagonist?

Hurston never uses the word 'dialect' in the novel — she just writes the way people speak. What is the difference between a novelist who translates dialect into standard English (adding 'she said in her warm Southern accent') and one who transcribes it directly?

Matt Bonner's yellow mule is the subject of extended storytelling and even a mock funeral. What is the mule doing in the novel — both literally and as a symbol that runs from Nanny's speech through the entire text?

The novel was dismissed in 1937, rescued in 1978, and is now taught everywhere. What does this arc tell us about what 'good literature' means and who gets to decide?

Janie's hair is a recurring motif — Joe forces her to cover it; she reveals it after his death; Tea Cake revels in it. What does Janie's hair mean in this specific cultural and historical context?

Hurston died broke in 1960, was buried in an unmarked grave, and did not live to see her novel become a canonical text. How does this biographical fact change your relationship to reading and studying her work?