Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
  The story of two sisters, Celie and Nettie, are told almost entirely through letters addressed to each other and to God. Celie, repeatedly raped by her father, is married off unwillingly to a brutal man named Albert as she attempts to protect her younger sister. Nettie marries and spends almost thirty years in Africa as a missionary. She writes to Celie, but Albert hides Nettie’s letters. Albert’s mistress, a blues singer named Shug, provides Celie with love, encouragement and Nettie’s letters.
• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  A classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a lawyer named Atticus Finch who defends a black man charged with raping a white woman. Told through the eyes of Atticus’s children, Scout and Jem, the story explores the attitudes toward race in the Deep South during the 1930’s. With humor and unwavering honesty the story deals out lessons in honesty and tolerance.
• Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying (1993)
  Set in Louisiana in the 1940s. Jefferson who is black, mentally slow and barely literate, is the only person left alive after an armed robbery in which a white man is killed. Despite being an innocent bystander, he is condemned to death. His godmother, determined that Jefferson shall die like a man, sends teacher Grant Wiggins to Jefferson and both men are transformed by the relationship.
• Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1953)
  A literary sensation when first published, the novel is set in a small, unnamed Southern town in the late 1930s. Singer, a deaf-mute, is the center of the novel who loses his best friend to institutionalization for mental illness. Ironically, Singer becomes a sounding board for other characters as they struggle with their problems.

Major Character List

 Their Eyes Were Watching God

• Janie Crawford – The novel’s central character. When her fearful grandmother spies her sharing an innocent kiss with a local boy, Janie is forced to marry a much older man in the hopes she will have a stable future with someone to take care of her. This first marriage launches a journey toward self-identity and allows her to find true love and ultimate independence.
• Tea Cake – Janie’s guitar-playing, fun-loving true love. Ten years her junior, Tea Cake arrives in town after the death of Janie’s second husband Joe and ultimately sweeps her off her feet, something no other man has done. He invites her to run away with him to the Florida Everglades, where they start a new life.
• Nanny – Janie’s well-meaning grandmother; a former slave, who raises her from infancy then forces her into a loveless first marriage, unintentionally becoming the first of a series of characters who limit Janie’s voice.
• Logan Killicks – Janie’s much-older first husband; an unappealing farmer who appreciates Janie’s beauty, yet resents her just the same.
• Joe Starks – Janie’s second husband, a confident, ambitious man who falls in love with Janie and moves with her to a community where he establishes a town. Ultimately, though, he becomes threatened by her beauty, which attracts the attention of the other men in town. He becomes a cruel abusive husband, discouraging her from becoming her own person, just as her first husband had done.
• Phoeby Watson – Janie’s dearest friend and confident, to whom she relates the events of her life.

Discussion Questions

Their Eyes Were Watching God

1. In the beginning of this novel Hurston writes of a long braid that hangs down Janie’s back as she walks through the town. Would you agree that Janie’s hair, which she is forced conceal under a scarf during her marriage to Joe, is a symbol of freedom?
2. Why does Janie find her most satisfying relationship the one with Tea Cake, even though their romance is an unlikely one? What is it that makes their match unlikely?
3. It seems that Janie harbors a hatred or resentment of Nanny for forcing her into an early marriage. Does she ever forgive her grandmother? Why do you think she does or doesn’t?
4. For most of her life, people have made judgments about Janie based on her appearance. Her beauty might be a blessing as well as a curse. How so?
5. Janie is striving to understand her true self, although she might not realize it. How does she ultimately find her voice and become her own woman?
6. Some scholars have referred to Janie as an early feminist. What evidence do you see that supports that characterization?
7. The book’s title, Their Eyes Were Watching God, might suggest Christian fiction as its genre, but it is hardly that. What do you think the title means?
8. Some of Hurston’s early critics blamed her for perpetuating unfavorable stereotypes about African-Americans. What basis might someone have for such a conclusion, real or imagined?
9. Most of Hurston’s work blended biblical and folkloric themes she had gathered during her work as an anthropologist. Could you pick out those elements in this novel?
10. What is symbolic about the blossoming pear tree, mentioned early in the novel, where 16-year-old Janie goes to pass her idle moments?