Josh Willis
Mr. Zarda
English Survey 2a
1/17/10
Their Eyes Were Watching God Book Review
I’ve never been married before, but author Zora Neale Hurston made me feel as
though I had been through marriage as it is told in this novel. In a small town in Florida,
a young, attractive, black woman named Janie tells us the story of her long and hard life
of rough relationships in which she learns some of the bittersweet lessons of life and
love but also the memories she will never forget.
The reason this book is so deep is the way Janie tells her story of her three
relationships and how she comes of age through her experiences. In the beginning, she
only cares about the gossip going around town. She also thinks of getting out and seeing
the world like all other teens dream of. But through the book, she comes to understand
that the gossip in the town really has no affect on her life and that they would gossip
just because she lived an adventurous life and they did not.
Janie, who lived in the backyard of a white couple with her grandmother who
she called Nanny, is a black girl who has grown up around whites. At age 6, she looked
at a picture taken of herself and asked, “Where is me? I don’t see me.” She asked this
because she had always thought of herself as one of the other white children she played
with. When Janie was 16 years old, Nanny finds Janie kissing a boy named Johnny
Taylor. Scared for what may happen to Janie, Nanny sends her off to marry a wealthy,
middle-aged farmer named Logan Killicks.
When living with Logan on his farm for a year, she notices that she does not love
him and that she probably never will. He starts making her do manual labor because he
says that she is spoiled. One day, when Logan has gone out to a mule, Janie notices a
good-looking black man. He notices her and they start to flirt. She finds out that his
name is Jody Starks. This goes on everyday for two weeks until he says that he wants her
to leave Logan to marry him. Later that night, Janie and Logan get in a fight and Janie
mentions the thought of running away. Logan feels as though she is threatening him and
he acts in anger by insulting her. After the fight, Janie meets up with Jody and they get
married as soon as possible and left to find a new town to live in.
With Jody, Janie is happy for a while because he treats her with respect and is
nice to her. He buys a town named Eatonville and becomes major. He is highly
respected through-out the town but after a while Janie does not think that Jody is the
man she loved when they were first married. Years pass in there marriage and Janie
notices how old and decrepit Jody really looks. Jody notices it too but just takes it out on
Janie, beating her harder than he ever had. Now Janie kind of foreshadows that Jody
will die by making him see a doctor. The doctor says his kidney has stopped and he will
die any day now. Right before Jody dies, Janie goes to see him and they get in there last
fight. Janie gets so mad she tells the dying Jody that he will soon move on. Jody starts to
sob and in moments, he dies.
She goes through about 6 months of morning before she meets this tall, dark,
and hansom man whose nickname is Tea Cake. They meet at the shop one afternoon
and he flirts with her and asks her to play checkers. This is the spark of a new and
interesting relationship for Janie. After a while, Tea Cake tells her that he has feelings for
her. She doesn’t believe him but ends up feeling the same way for him. They leave
Eatonville for Jacksonville where they get married. One day, Tea Cake finds 200 dollars
hidden in Janie’s coat. He spends it all on a big dinner party with his friends and
coworkers. Janie is mad at him, not for stealing the money, but for not inviting her to
the party. After that, they move to the Everglades to so that Tea Cake can find work.
Janie loves the Everglades and quickly gets comfortable. They both start working in the
fields and soon there house turns into the main part of the town. One day, a group of
people decide to leave the Everglades. When Janie asks them why they leave, they say
that there is a hurricane coming and they must leave to higher ground. The news
spreads like wildfire through the town and in a couple days almost all of the residents in
the muck have left. Tea Cake decides to stay.
Tea Cake finally decides that he should leave for her safety of Janie and himself.
They walk for a while until looking behind them to notice that the Okechobee’s dikes
has spilled open and the water is running over everything in its path. They mush on, and
at one point have to start swimming. Then something happens. Janie goes for a piece of
roof cover for shelter and is blown into dangerous waters. She grabs for a cow for safety
but a dog on top of the cow starts to attack her. Tea Cake jumps onto the dog and beats
and stabs him to death. The dog didn’t die without a fight though, biting Tea Cake in the
cheek. Weeks later, after all the destruction of the flood is in the rebuilding stage, Tea
Cake gets very sick from the bite. He tells her it was a rabid dog and that rabies will soon
take over. He orders medicine to help the disease and when Janie sneaks off to get it,
he accuses her of meeting with another man. Tea Cake has gone so crazy that he now
has put a gun under his bed. One day, when he comes back from the outhouse Tea Cake
gets mad at Janie and threatens her with the gun. He fires but he only has 3 bullets and
the first three shots are blanks. After the first shot Janie grabs a rifle to try to scare him
but he fires once more. This gives Janie no choice but to fire on her beloved husband.
She is put on trial but does not get prosecuted. After court, she gives Tea Cake a
proper burial. Because the Everglades only hurt her because she can only think of him
there, she moves back to Eatonville with nothing but a bag of seeds in remembrance of
Tea Cake. She knows that her story will be the gossip around town for a while but she
does not care. She knows that she has come of age through her experiences and that no
one else has really lived like she has.