Zora Neale Hurston
"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however
hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb
upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.“
- Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen
Hurston's Words
 Students
will analyze how author’s
construct characters and how characters
affect theme
 Students will evaluate Hurston’s use of
dialect and its effects on the reader
 Students will connect historical and
biographical information with the text
 Students will apply appropriate critical
strategies to the text
 Writer, folklorist, anthropologist
 Rambunctious
• “Jump[ed] at the sun”
 Charming
• “Walk[ed] into hearts”
 Intelligent
 Confident
 Humorous
 Hotheaded
 Born
in Alabama, but Eatonville, FL was
home
 Relatively happy childhood until the
death of her mother. Hurston was 13.
• “That hour began my wanderings…in time…in
spirit.”
 Eatonville
provided a culturally affirming
environment amidst the prejudice and
segregation that was rampant in most of
the rest of the country
 10 years for an education



In 1925, her story, "Spunk,"
and her play, "Color Struck,"
won second place in a literary
contest
Studied anthropology at
Barnard College
• Conducted field
research—focused on the
folklore and culture of
African Americans
• Harlem, throughout the
rural south, Haiti
Used her own experience, her
research and her creativity to
create her work
• Responsible for preserving
the folk traditions and
cultural heritage of African
Americans

Charlotte Osgood Mason—wealthy, white patron



“guided” Hurston’s work
Provided both opportunity and restrictions
Advocated “writing for art's sake—contrary to
writers such as Locke and Du Bois, who urged
blacks to reflect a racial perspective, especially in
portraying relationships with whites.”
 Two failed marriages
• marriage was doomed "to an early, amicable
divorce"
• Career was priority
• Hurston is know to have written Sheen,
remembering the “idealistic dreams they shared
in their youth, regretting nothing because she
lived her life to the fullest”
 Died penniless and forgotten
• Grave unmarked until 1973
 Interest
in 1960
in Hurston and work renewed by
Alice Walker— “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”



One of the most significant
writers of the 1900s
4 novels, folklore, many short
stories, an autobiography, essays,
articles and plays
Influenced and inspired many
brilliant writers: Ralph Ellison,
Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones,
Alice Walker, and Toni Cade
Bambara
Their Eyes Were Watching God
 First published in 1937
 Largely ignored by male reviewers
 Reissued in 1978 to staggering popularity
 “There is no book more important to me
than this one.”—Alice Walker

The Great Depression
• “Land of hope and opportunity to land of despair”
Racism as strong as ever, especially in the
southern states
 The New Deal

• Gave black Americans opportunities lacked in the past
• Brought their struggles to light for the Northerners

The Federal Music Project, Federal Theatre
Project, and Federal Writers Project
• enabled black artists to find work during the depression
• art or stories which portrayed the historic and present
situation of blacks in the South.




End of WWI—middle of the Great Depression
“alienation, marginality, folk material, the use of the
blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite
audience”
W. E. B. Dubois coined the term “two-ness,” the awareness
of your identity divided in two: "One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder."
“More than just a literary movement: it included racial
consciousness, "the back to Africa" movement led by
Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the explosion of music
particularly jazz, spirituals and blues…”
 Based
on what you know of Hurston’s life,
why does she write Their Eyes Were
Watching God?
 What parallels can you draw between the
story and her life? The characters and her
life?
“Her placid childhood and privileged
academic background are often cited as
major reasons for her work's general lack
of stress on racism…” (Columbia Encyclopedia).
• What do you think? Does Hurston fail to
emphasize racism in There Eyes Were Watching
God?
• If racism is not the focus, then what is? Why? Is
Hurston doing a disservice by not focusing on the
racism that was so ubiquitous in society at that
time?
A writer's material is controlled by
publishers who think of the Negro as
picturesque. ... There is an oversimplification of the Negro. He is either
pictured by the conservatives as happy,
picking his banjo, or by the so-called
liberals as low, miserable, and crying.
The Negro's life is neither of these.
Rather, it is in-between and above and
below these pictures."
“I used to climb to the top of one of the
huge chinaberry trees which guarded
our front gate and look out over the
world. The most interesting thing that I
saw was the horizon.... It grew upon me
that I ought to walk out to the horizon and
see what the end of the world was like”
(Hurston).
• How might this interpretation affect our
interpretation of theme and purpose?
 African-American
vernacular, including
rhythm and word choice and oral features of
heard speech
 Colorful figurative language, in particular,
metaphors and imagery
 Personification
 Biblical allusions and religious imagery
 Contrast between diction and tone of
omniscient narrator and first person
speakers
 Italicized opening sentence for each chapter
 Name symbolism
 How
does each character contribute to
the theme of Their Eyes Were Watching
God?
 What does each character come to
represent?
 To
what extent does Janie acquire her
own voice and the ability to shape her
own life?
 How are the two related?
 Does Janie's telling her story to Pheoby in
flashback undermine her ability to tell
her story directly in her own voice?
 In
what ways does Janie conform to or
diverge from the assumptions that
underlie the men's attitudes toward
women?
 How would you explain Hurston's
depiction of violence toward women?
After Joe Starks's funeral, Janie realizes that
"She had been getting ready for her
great journey to the horizons in search of
people; it was important to all the world
that she should find them and they find
her."
• Why is this important "to all the world"?
• In what ways does Janie's self-awareness
depend on her increased awareness of others?
 How
important is Hurston's use of
vernacular dialect to our understanding of
Janie and the other characters and their way
of life?
 What do speech patterns reveal about the
quality of these lives and the nature of these
communities?
 In what ways are "their tongues cocked and
loaded, the only real weapon" of these
people?
• What is lost if their words are captured in the
“standard English” of the time?
"When I went about asking, in carefullyaccented Barnardese, `Pardon me, do you
know any folktales or folk-songs?' the
men and women who had whole
treasuries of material seeping through
their pores looked at me and shook their
heads. No, they had never heard of
anything like that around here. Maybe it
was over in the next county. Why didn't I
try over there?"
 Feminism
 Deconstruction
 Psychoanalytical
Evaluate: Which of the interpretations is
most valid? Explain and support your
answer
After reading the novel, learning about the
Hurston’s background, as well as analyzing
character and theme, what do you think was
Hurston’s main purpose in writing Their Eyes
Were Watching God?