We hear it in Janie: “Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. In a Mark Twain-esque form that Hurston makes her own, every characters’ speech is written in precisely the way they would speak. Hurston integrates the Southern dialect and expressions of Black people at the time into her novel.
In fact, what the novel is perhaps most famous for is the dialogue.
“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. While Hurston’s novel was indeed revolutionary for 1937 ( a story of Black love and independent female mindedness was far from the norm), the earnesty with which it was written, the thoughtfully simplistic prose is what enchants us still to this day. And deservedly so, because perhaps for the first time a Black woman was not just written, but shown as a layered, strong, thoughtful, and mighty individual. More than all this, however, in Janie Hurston wrote into existence a heroine who did the unthinkable: dared to seek self fulfillment and her own happiness.īecause of this, Hurston’s novel (despite being poorly received upon release) became a staple of feminist and Black literature. In her elegantly simplistic style Hurston takes us through the innovative and happy all Black community of Eatonville, and then the charming paradise that was the Everglades. With Janie, Hurston brought to life a Black heroine at a time when there were largely none written. The novel begins in Northern Florida, and goes on to tell the story of Janie, a resilient Black woman who suffers two unhappy marriages, life in a deeply segregated South, as well as an unfortunate tragedy of circumstance.
Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ serves as the vivid reminder we did not know we needed. It is easy for us today, living in an age of rapid movement and constant innovation, to forget how far we have come, especially in recent years. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against cruel walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. “Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands.
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