(Book review)
If you haven’t read “Their Eyes were watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, I highly recommend it. This has to be the most beautiful masterpiece of American literature. The skilled author uses the southern black dialect brilliantly, to tell a story rich in culture and where she portrays so effectively the legacy of the south. Far from being just a fictional novel, “Their eyes were watching God” reaches deep into some of the most debated issues in American society: Sexuality, race, class discrimination and religion, just to name a few. Zora Hurston’s genius reaches far beyond the boundaries of her time, because these issues are still very much alive today, yet she approaches every single one of these issues with art. The erotic scene under the pear tree where Janie finds her sexuality is art at its best.
"The thousand sister calyxes arch to meet the love
embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to
tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing
with delight. So this was marriage!… Then Janie felt a pain
remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid." (Hurston 11)
Nature is portrayed as something short of a Goddess and the author uses it to give an angelical, yet powerful holiness to her most important scenes. One of such meaningful scenes is when Janie meets “the end of her childhood”. After the pear tree experience, Janie now sees a “glorious being… Johnny Walker” (Hurston 11) “through pollinated air” (Hurston 11) after “the golden dust of pollen…beglamours his rags and her eyes” (Hurston 12) and lets him be the one to give her what is to be her first kiss.
Nature becomes Janie’s sanctuary and she carries it as a part of herself. To her, Nature and marriage are closely related and the two belong together. Every time Janie makes a new discovery, nature is usually there to help her understand it better. Nature is there when she discovers womanhood. Everything meaningful in her life has a vision of nature from the very beginning of her journey “Oh to be a pear tree -- any tree in bloom! with kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!” (Hurston 11). She searches the “garden field entire…seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found…answers…for all other creations except herself” (Hurston 11). This is the garden where her search for her own identity begins.
Janie is the product of her mother’s rape by a teacher, who has never seen either one of her parents. Raised by her grandma “and the white folks she worked wid”(Hurston 8) she grows up to be a beautiful girl with light skin and whose long black hair becomes a very significant symbol to the story, and only discovers she is black at the age of six, when she sees a photograph of herself among the white children she has lived with since birth. She now has conscious that she is different, not only because she is not white, but because she is not exactly black either. The other black children at school used to tease her “ ‘bout livin’ in the white folks’ back-yard” (Hurston 9) and she becomes acquainted with the first racial issues.
“Her conscious life had commenced at Nanny’s gate” (Hurston 10) when Nanny had caught her being kissed by Johnny Taylor. Aware that her little girl is now a woman, Nanny is in a hurry to marry her off to someone other than Johnny Taylor. She wants to die in peace knowing that Janie was going to be taken care of. So, Nanny picks a husband for Janie and forces her to marry Logan Killicks, a man who in Janie’s opinion, “look like some ole skullhead in the grave yard”(Hurston 13) yet she marries him just because Nanny told her to. But the “vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating (her) pear tree” (Hurston 14) and after Nanny’s death, she waits a “bloom time” (Hurston 25) and when the “pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things” (Hurston 25) Not sure of what but she also “knew things that nobody else had ever told her…the words of the trees and the wind” (Hurston 25) and she knew “the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether…that God tore down the old world and built a new one by sun-up”(Hurston 25). So nature was there again when she discovered that “marriage did not make love…(that her) first dream was dead…and when became a woman.”(Hurston 25).
When Logan leaves the house to buy another mule, so Janie can help him in the field, she goes to the barn to cut potatoes but “springtime (also) reached her in there” (Hurston 27) and she moves to “the yard where she could see the road.” That is how she meets Joe (Jody) Starks who is traveling on foot down that road. When she decides to follow him, again nature is there, holding her back because “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon…for change and chance”(Hurston 29) and she decides to take that chance and runs away with Jody. Nature was there again when she arrives at Joe’s side and says to herself: “from now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (Hurston 32) and she ventures out into the unknown to look for her pear tree.
Joe Starks is a bright and ambitious man who showers her with all the attention she has been lacking. They settle in Eatonville where Joe grows to be an important person with money to spare and becomes the town’s Mayor in no time. His ambitious and controlling nature makes her a submissive wife, just the way he wants her to be. Her beautiful long black hair must now be covered at all times at her husband’s demand, because he is jealous of the way other man look at it and long to touch it. She literally becomes something short of a slave under his rule and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to show her who is in charge by embarrassing her in public. He treats her like an object and Janie resents it but keeps quiet to avoid problems. Nevertheless, Joe slaps her whenever he feels like it and “reminds her about her brains.” (Hurston 72) On one of such occasions, Janie just stood where he left her “until something fell off the shelf inside her” (Hurston 72). What fell “was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered” (Hurston 72). She realizes that Joe’s image was never “the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over” (Hurston 72).
As she learns that there were “no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man” Hurston 72), she also learns to keep her feelings and emotions to herself. “She was saving up (those) feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an outside and an inside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.” (Hurston 72) But then Janie stands up to him and crushes his ego by telling him among other things: “when you pull down yo’ britches you look lak the change uh life” (Hurston 79) and that was the end of their marriage and of Jody’s life. He dies shortly thereafter of kidney failure and Janie regains her freedom. She puts on her expensive garments and veil for the occasion and again nature is present to witness the event when she sends “her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself…rollicking with the springtime across the world” (Hurston 88). Her search for the pear tree was not over yet.
After a period of loneliness she meets Teat Cake “the son of the evening sun” (Hurston 189) as she calls him. When Tea Cake challenges her to play a game of checkers, she doesn’t know how and he sets up to show her. “Janie finds herself glowing inside…somebody thought it natural for her to play” (Hurston 96) That night “she sat on her porch and watched the moon rise” (Hurston 99). In the days that follow, Tea Cake takes her fishing and dancing; he borrows a car so he can teach Janie how to drive; he even teaches her how to shoot a riffle. He plays with her and brings her back to life. He fulfills her in every way and makes her happy. She finds in Tea Cake her beloved pear tree and is determined to follow him until the end of the world. When the town begins to notice and criticize her for it, she simply says to Phoebe “Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). They move to Jacksonville to start a new life and get married on the way. They have their ups and downs, but more ups than downs and they are happy together. Janie’s long search for her own identity is finally over and she now lives in her garden with her pear tree (Tea Cake), her pollen and kissing bees, just like she had always dreamed. They go to the muck in the Everglades to work and Janie feels very proud of her overalls. When she recalls her life in the big old house, she would “laugh at herself” (Hurston 134) just thinking about what “Eatonville (would say) if they could see her now in her blue denim overalls and heavy shoes” (Hurston 134). Janie and Tea Cake become the life of the muck. He played the guitar and everyone would gather around them to laugh and have a good time. When Janie learns the pain of jealousy, because another woman was trying to attract her Tea Cake’s attention, nature is there again because a “little seed of fear was growing into a tree” Hurston 136).
Again racism comes into the picture when Mrs. Turner reveals “Negroes” to be her “disfavorite subject” (Hurston 140) and tries to instigate Janie to leave Tea Cake because he is so dark skinned. But Janie loves her man and tells her that Tea cake is her life, and she can never live without him; that “he kin take most any lil thing and make summertime out of it when times is dull. Then we lives offa dat happiness he made till some mo’happiness come along (Hurston 141). She finds a sad Tea Cake in the kitchen after Mrs. Turner leaves. He heard everything but is not worried about Janie ever leaving him. They trust each other and that’s what matters.
Then that dreadful storm came and had to ruin everything for her and Tea Cake. As everyone starts moving to higher ground, they decide to stay and face the storm together with their friend Motor Boat. But the strength of the thunder “woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to roll in his bed” (Hurston 158). As the storm strengthens and thunder becomes louder, they “huddled closer and stared at the door” (Hurston 159) not knowing what to expect. When the “wind came back with triple fury and put out the light” (Hurston 160), they sat together “staring at the dark but their eyes were watching God” (Hurston 159). Then they decide to venture out into the storm to get to a safer place. The river was following them and they find themselves swimming for their lives. Then the rabid dog appeared and on top of the cow Janie was holding onto. Tea Cake jumps in to her rescue and finds himself fighting the dog to save his Janie from its powerful jaws. But the dog’s teeth sink into his flesh before he manages to kill it. They survived the storm, but Tea Cake falls fatally ill from rabies and by the time the doctor comes it’s too late to save him from madness. Janie has to do the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. Put Tea Cake out of his irreversible misery and save her own life in the process when in his madness he pointed the gun at her with firm intent to kill. She shots him before he shoots her and he dies. Janie is arrested and has a trial by Jury, but is acquitted of all charges. Before going back home, she holds a funeral for her Tea Cake. “Tea cake rode like a Pharaoh in his tomb” (Hurston 189) to his final resting place. “No expensive robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.” (Hurston 189) She goes back home to plant the little packet of seed Tea Cake left on the kitchen shelf intending to plant it sometime. Janie will plant it for him “for remembrance.” (Hurston 193) She tells Phoebe that she “done been tuh de horizon and back” (Hurston 191) and she is ready to settle back in her house. Now it won’t be as empty as it used to be before Tea Cake came along. It’s filled with his memories now and that’s enough for her to live with. “Love is lak the sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and its different with every shore.” (Hurston 191) She ends by telling Phoebe that there are “two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” (Hurston 192) She sat down by the window and thinks of
"Tea Cake with the Sun for a shawl…he could never be
dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.
The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light
against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her
horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around
the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder." (Hurston 193)
And so nature was there until the end. Nature saw her through her journey and nature brings her back again to rejoice on what she has learned. She has lived enough beautiful horizons to last her a lifetime and she intends to live the rest of her life with those memories.
Works cited
Hurston, Zora Neale “Their Eyes were watching God”. (Philadelphia & London:
Lippincott, 1937. Perennial Classics. Harper Collins Publishers Inc.,1990 New York NY
Washigton, Mary Hellen “Foreword” Their Eyes were watching God. ”. (Philadelphia &
London: Lippincott, 1937. Perennial Classics. Harper Collins Publishers Inc.,1990 New York NY
