Pre-Reading

For high school students, begin a discussion by asking:

• If you could travel anywhere in the United States by car, where would you want to go and why?
• Who would be the one person that you would most want to take with you on the trip and why?
• What difficulties would you expect to have on your trip? 

THEN GO HERE

Jack Kerouac Bio

As you read this book you should be aware of a few things:

1) Zora was an Anthropologist who immersed herself in the folklore, music and religion (including Voodoo - or Hoodoo) of Southern African-American Society. You should read "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" as an introduction to her, and look up one of her pieces of forklore - she published two books of folklore during her life. One of them happened to include Voodoo in Haiti and zombies. Her fiction arises from her folklore collecting.
2) Zora grew up in Eatonville - the town in THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD.
3) She claimed to have written the book in one month after the break-up of a relationship. She claims to have poured all the love and heartache of the relationship into the novel. You might look up Eatonville on the web (NOTE: It's outside of Orlando - I moved to Orlando and worked at Disney because of this novel. I had to see Zora's hometown).
4) Zora lied about her birth. She was ten years older than what she claimed. This would have made her about 45 when she wrote THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD.
5) She was a member of the Harlem Renaissance - considered the greatest writer of the Renaissance by some, but her books weren't published until after the renaissance was over - and even after some of the members of the Renaissance (poor Wallace Thurman) were dead. She and Langston Hughes wrote a play together and were good friends, but something happened between them and so when she left New York in the 30s her connection with the Renaissance was gone. If you know nothing of the Harlem Renaissance you need to do some brief research.
6) Think about why she uses a Southern African-American vernacular. Think who tells the story. Is there an American Dream here? Mark her imagery, symbolism and metaphors. Think beyond them. What about the title?

Okay - I've read every book Hurston wrote and Their Eyes Were Watching God both as an undergrad and as a graduate, and I helped teach a college course on The Harlem Renaissance. So - you're going to have fun!


Note - we'll be focusing on meaning of the title; author's life; structure of book; central symbols and central themes.


For those of you using the hurricane in Zora's Biographical section, you might want to look at the following:

The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane is the hurricane presented in THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD. It is considered the 3rd most deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. coast (greater than Katrina); it killed over 4,078 people. 

 

You might want to read up on rabies on wikipedia -- for a general overview go HERE

These question could be used to help direct your dialectical journals if you need help, or to make you glad that you're not answering other people's questions on the text (you're asking and answering your own! - wow, think about that).

NOTE: I didn't write these questions (except question 1), but I don't quite remember where they came from.

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God has been compared to Huck Finn in its use of a journey to discover self. Do you see a connection? How does this work?

2. Why does Janie choose to tell her story only to her best friend Pheoby? How does Pheoby respond at the end of Janie’s tale?
3. Did you like Janie? Do you admire her?
4. Hurston uses nature – the pear tree, the ocean, the horizon, the hurricane – not only as plot device but also as metaphor. How do they function as both?
5. The novel’s action begins and ends with two judgment scenes. Why are both groups of people judging her? Is either correct in its assessment?
6. Many readers consider the novel a coming-of-age novel, as Janie journeys through three marriages. What initially attracts her to each man? What causes her to leave? What does she learn from each?
7. In the novel, speech is used as a mechanism of control and liberation, especially as Janie struggles to find her voice. How does she choose when to speak out or to remain quiet?
8. 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?
9. What are the differences between the language of the men and that of Janie and the other women? How do the differences in language reflect the two groups’ approaches to life, power, relationships, and self-realization? How do the novel’s first two paragraphs point to these differences?
10. The elaborate burial of the town mule draws from an incident Hurston recounts in Tell My Horse, where the Haitian president ordered an elaborate Catholic funeral for his pet goat. Although this scene is comic, how is it also tragic?
11. How does the image of the black woman as “the mule of the world” become a symbol for the roles Janie chooses or refuses to play during her quest?
12. Little of Hurston’s work was published during the Harlem Renaissance, yet her ability to tell witty stories and to stir controversy made her a favorite guest at elite Harlem parties. Can you think of some of the passages of wit and humor in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
13. What do the names of Janie’s husbands – Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods – tell us about their characters and their relationships with Janie?
14. What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston’s characters watching? What crucial moments of the plot does the title allude to? Does this God ever answer Janie’s questioning?
15. How do the imagery and tone of the last few pages of the novel connect with other moments in the novel? Does Janie’s story end in triumph, despair, or a mixture of both?
16. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel’s final sentences in this regard?
17. How does Janie’s journey – from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades – represent her, and the novel’s increasing immersion in black culture and traditions?
18. 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?
19. 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?
20. What is the importance in the novel of the story telling on the front porch of Joe’s store and elsewhere? What purpose do these stories, traded insults, exaggerations, and boasts have in the lives of these people?
21. Why is adherence to tradition so important to nearly all the people in Janie’s world? How does the community deal with those who are “different”?
22. 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?