|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Amazon
Of Hurston's fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God is arguably the best-known and perhaps the most controversial. The novel follows the fortunes of Janie Crawford, a woman living in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Hurston sets up her characters and her locale in the first chapter, which, along with the last, acts as a framing device for the story of Janie's life. Unlike Wright and Ralph Ellison, Hurston does not write explicitly about black people in the context of a white world--a fact that earned her scathing criticism from the social realists--but she doesn't ignore the impact of black-white relations either:
It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.One person the citizens of Eaton are inclined to judge is Janie Crawford, who has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them. Janie feels no compulsion to justify herself to the town, but she does explain herself to her friend, Phoeby, with the implicit understanding that Phoeby can "tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."
Hurston's use of dialect enraged other African American writers such as Wright, who accused her of pandering to white readers by giving them the black stereotypes they expected. Decades later, however, outrage has been replaced by admiration for her depictions of black life, and especially the lives of black women. In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston breathes humanity into both her men and women, and allows them to speak in their own voices. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding story,
By Michael Brown (Greensboro, NC, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of the best books that I've ever read. The book answered a lot of questions about life. We are faced with several conflicts in humanity with choices having to be made between Love, Good, Evil, Hope or reality, and Truth. It is a story about Janie, a young black woman, who tries to find herself through her grandmother's footsteps and eventually confronts herself to become the person she knows is of her own good. Taken along the memory lane in a small southern black town, "Their Eyes were Watching God" is a beautiful portrayal of the conflicts confronting Janie, not only about herself but also about how her society perceives her. Through an amazing creativity in characters, plot development, excellent narrative, lessons and dialogues and an easy ride through time, Zora successful made the reader to understand and appreciate black culture. This absolutely credible story is a highly recommended book to anyone with a taste for classic stories. THE USURPER AND OTHER STORIES,DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,THE GREAT GATSBY, UNCLE TOM'S CABIN are other fascinating and insightful stories
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Their eyes were watching God,
By Thomas Park (Detroit Michigan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
A must read for anyone interested in the black experience.Hurston's novel is a very interesting portrayal of the life of black people in the fictional black town of Eatonville. Set in the early 1900's Hurston is able to convey through a handful of characters the vernacular, and thinking of black folk in the early American south. The Language may require some getting use to but it is well worth it. The novel incorporates a myriad of oral performances- personal narratives, folktales, and sermons- and charts the comming to womanhood of protagonist Janie Starks. The novel is not for those who demand sex or high drama,instead it is a video of words that depict the entirety of the basic concerns of black folk in a new town of their own. There are ex- amples of black men that lived from"hand to mouth" everyday who casually gather around Janie's general store to "cut the fool" and talk of the subtle foolishness in their lives, and there is Joe Starks the talented negro with his plan to go to Eatonville with 300.00, his new bride ,and make a name for himself.The wo- men of the town tend their poorches every evening and anyone's business they can. Janie was married to an older man(Mr. Logan Killicks) through her grandmother when she was about 16, Mr Kil- licks could never satisfy the desires of his ambitious maidens heart,therefore Janie runs away with the dynamic,most ambitious Joe Starks who promises her everything except the loving she de- sires.At first Janie imagines this is the relationship she has dreamed of until Joe's male chauvinistic beliefs begin to stifle her ambitions. After 20 years of marriage,and the death of Joe, Janie meets a young "Jiggalo" named "Tea Cake" who helps her come to some self actualization which she is pleased with. Because citizenship, and racial equality were hot issues, Jim Crow was in full effect,and lynching of black men a regular Sunday outing durning this era in America, Hurston's novel was the target of much criticism from literary peers like Richard Wright because there was no voice of black militancy,or outrage at circumstances confronting black folk,and the issues seem to have been ommited from the story, with the exception of Janie discovering she was the child of a white rapist school teacher. I feel Hurston's millitant was Janie herself. She was a woman that was always told what to do, and when to do it. Most of her actions or lack of action throughout the novel were motoviated by submission, or liberation. As the vernacular thickened, and the climax is approached,Janie achieves the freedom of love,freedom of speech, and the liber- ation of her feminine conscious through her affair with Mr. Tea Cake. Reader besure, this is a great American fiction novel.It takes the reader to Main Street Eatonville, your black narrator delievers a story of the everyday struggles of a real people in a fictional town trying to find their way in a new living con- dition. Perhaps, Zora Neale Hurston's monumental accomplishment in "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is the creation of a literary language that captures a place in time.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Starts off dull but picks up,
This review is from: Their Eyes Were Watching God (Paperback)
When I started reading it, I didn't enjoy it too much but it wasn't to the point that I wanted to put it down. So I trudged through and found that it developed a lot faster than I thought. I think Hurston has a way with words and knows how to switch back and forth from modern English to the South.I know there are people out thee who may not like having to read a different dialect in English but there are interesting themes in the story that I think people can explore and learn from, maybe even discuss.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
