8/3/2019 Their Eyes Are Watching God

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/their-eyes-are-watching-god 1/2

Their Eyes Are Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston.

4 Key Symbols:

y  Braid= hair represents femininity.

y  Nature- The tree is blossoming.

y  Horizon- referenced throughout the text.

y  Hurricane- ended happiness.

Themes:

-  Power.

-  Gender.

-  Relationships.

-  Race.

The story:

-  Janie returns home. Retrospective.

-  Phoebe

-  Outcast from the community

-  Not the stereotype.

-  Childhood nanny doesnt realise her race until she sees her photo.

-  Marriage- Logan: wealth, respect.

-  Relationships changes- lack of love. Attentive slave ties hair back.

-  Oppression, superiority traditional [unwilling to conform to the stereotype]

-  Meets Joe (Whilst with Logan) - liberated. Choice, emotion individual.

-  She chooses to leave [yearning happiness]

-  Fulfilment.

-  Tea Cake- treats he as an individual (Decisions humane, when she shoots Tea Cake)

- 

TRIAL-  She isnt found guilty because she shot a black man, he wasnt white.

Night was striding across nothingness with the whole world in his hands

The seawalls to chain the senseless monster in this bed

The opening paragraph:

In with the tide

-  Represents moving forward

-  The ocean is like MASSIVE 

-  Cant be contained. Her views.

Ships at a distance

-  Everyone is stuck

-  Mercy

8/3/2019 Their Eyes Are Watching God

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/their-eyes-are-watching-god 2/2

His dreams mocked to death by time

-  Wishing

-  Time moves too fast.

-  Society is watching.

-  At the end she is watched and being judge by the court.

The dream is the truth

-  Aspirations are contained.

-  Retrospective

The skins felt powerful and human

-  Dont have the choice.

  H

uman: the person. The species.  Humane: Kind, gentle and caring, thinking about the others around you

How the extract links to the Wider Reading [Nelson Mandela]

-  Jainie was forced into marriage- denied her human rights, oppressed. Right to be a human being

and to make your own choices. Tries to re-discover her.

-  Individual voice- Road: Skin lad wants his own voice. The other characters are just happy

existing.

Model paragraph:

Both No Easy Road and Eyes explore the concept of individual identity being oppressed. In No

Easy Road the writer expresses how South African citizens have not had the opportunity to make

individual choices; he describes how they are deprived of their basic human rights, instead of more

freedom, repression began to grow in volume and intensity. The metaphor repression began to

grow is ironic as the citizens yearn to be free but here they are repressed. The noun volume and

intensity emphasises how despite their desire for change, they are oppressed. The image of 

growth could symbolise nature and his contradicts how South African Citizens are treated as they

are naturally respected as humans. Furthermore they writer may use the image of growth to

emphasise the strength of South African Citizens when unified in a collective identity.

This relates to the context of Nelson Mandela himself, going through the oppression, and himwanting equality, which relates to the symbol of growth, because a tree for instance could grow at

the same time as the other trees, but will always be individual, in some way. This relates to the novel

Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The central character Janie illustrates a sense

of oppression, through how society wants her to conform, but she wants to have an individual

identity.