Their Eyes Were Watching God – Blue Book Concepts
Explain the literary significance of the title of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Introduction:
When writing your thesis, be sure to address the question asked specifically.
In the Harlem Renaissance novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses the title
for a thematic purpose.
Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a great example of a title giving
meaning to the action of the novel.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston provides several situations that
give meaning to the novel’s title.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God three different situations demonstrate the thematic
significance of the title.
In Zora Neal Hurston’s Harlem Renaissance novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the
title’s thematic purpose is clearly demonstrated.
Each challenge in the novel evinces a universal theme: When faced with forces that are
beyond a person’s control, the person becomes defined by how he or she responds.
The title Their Eyes Were Watching God, proves to be thematically significant by
conveying the message that characters reveal their true selves in the way in which they
respond to powers beyond their control.
Topic Sentences:
Be sure that your topic sentence is focused on your thesis as well as the content of
the paragraph. It should also provide transition.
First of all, when Jody falls ill, he becomes bitter and hateful towards Janie.
After Janie is forced to marry Logan, she does not spend the rest of her life stuck in a
loveless marriage; she gets up and does something about it.
In the midst of a Hurricane, Tea Cake’s true character is defined by his unflinching
decision to protect Janie from the rabid dog.
The most significant defining moment occurs when Janie must kill Tea Cake, the man
she loves, or be killed herself.
Body Paragraphs:
Support your ideas with detailed explanations that demonstrate the concept
introduced in your topic sentence.
Integrate your quotes with thoughtful analysis. You should never have a quote in a
sentence by itself. Integrate and analyze.
Tea Cake says, “You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t fuh me, baby, cause Ah;m heah.”
When Tea Cake says, “You don’t have tuh say, if it wuzn’t fuh me, baby, cause Ah’m
heah,” he wipes away all the questionable behavior in his past.
The narrator says, “She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.”
It is after third-person narrator states that Janie “was too busy feeling grief to dress like
grief,” that the reader can see Janie as a woman free of all social constraints and
expectations.
Avoid over quotation- quotes should be integrated into your analysis, not in place of it.
Concluding Sentences:
Use the last sentence in each paragraph to come to a conclusion in the context of
your discussion. Avoid rote repetition of your topic sentence.
Janie’s decision to walk past the townspeople and tell her story to Phoebe alone shows
her to be someone who is independent from society, family and love relationships; a
lifetime of trials and she responds powerfully by standing on her own two feet.
Conclusion:
Your conclusion should go beyond your introduction to reference the author’s
literary or social achievement.
Hurston’s novel provides a blue print for how a character can go about achieving true
individuation.