The Savvy Pen

“Her Eyes Turned Towards God”           

            Zora Neale Hurston is a remarkable twentieth-century African American writer, whose stories draw great influences upon her personal experiences in life.  Growing up in the predominately black community of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston has a unique prospective on the interactions of different people which stood out in the Harlem Renaissance.  Hurston’s thoughts as a feminist were also bold and daring and many of her colorful experiences in life can be seen reflected in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.  The events that transform the character Janie and her experiences from a sheltered person to a successful woman is only one detail that Hurston covers, and can be related to parts of her biography Dust Tracks on a Road.  When viewing Hurston’s life through her background and culture, traces of her experiences can be seen through Janie, the people she meets, and personal events in Their Eyes Were Watching God.               

            In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the people that Hurston creates are similar to individuals that she was exposed to in her youth.  The main character, Janie, appears to represent Hurston and her thoughts and complexities as she is followed throughout the story.  Janie is a bright woman who shows that she holds a spiritual personality and one that is open-minded to people and ideas.  In Hurston’s Dust Tracks she speaks about the pride that she harbors for her people, but she comments on seeing “…there [is] stress and strain inside as well as out.  Being black was not enough.  It took more than a community of skin to make your love come down on you” (“My People” 190).  Some of these harbored feelings come from Hurston’s distinct background when she lived in the equal city of Eatonville.  Not suffering from discrimination, Hurston was sheltered from other realities outside of Eatonville.  In the novel, Janie is also hidden from many of these truths and growing-up nurtured by her grandmother and integrated with the white ‘folks’, she did not understand racial differences until she had her picture taken and remarks, “…Ah couldn’t recognize day dark chile as me…” (Their Eyes 9). 

            Janie’s indifferent attitude towards appearances is something that is special, but not appreciated.  Such characters like Mrs. Turner believe in the segregation of people and says to Janie, “…But you know whut the ole folks say ‘de higher de monkey climbs de mo’ he show his behind’…” (Their Eyes 142).  The outlook Mrs. Turner has towards her own people and Janie’s idea of no discrimination for others may come from Hurston’s experiences from living in a black town “…that was the first to be incorporated, the first attempt at organized self-government on the part of Negroes in America” (“Birthplace” 1).  Mrs. Turner shows the type of person who believes in supremacy and the examples of the classic monkey that Hurston uses to demonstrate this, while Janie is simpler and believes in what’s inside a person rather than their skin color.

            Not all of the characters from Their Eyes Are Watching God are fixated on one person, whether it is based on Hurston or others that she knows.  For example, Hurston’s father John Hurston may represent multiple personalities.  His ability to provide, as Hurston remembers during her childhood was that “…there were plenty of orange, grapefruit…and we never went hungry” (“Birthplace” 12).  Hurston’s father can be associated with Tea Cake who provides for Janie and makes sure that she has plenty to live on overwork herself.  And abiding to Tea Cake’s philosophy of not abusing his wife and brushing aside when his friend’s say,”…All you can do is treat her cold whenever she comes round…” (Their Eyes 144).  Being the type who is seeking and opportunistic, John Hurston became the mayor of Eatonville for three terms and wrote the laws.  Janie’s second husband Joe Starks was the mayor of Eatonville and similar to Joe Clarke who was the town Marshall, the people of Eatonville often gathered at his porch to socialize.  However, Hurston’s father is not the only character who may have inspired others in the novel, but people such as her mother and grandmother played an important role for their development, too.

            In recalling her childhood and exuberant personality, Hurston’s nurturing mother claimed that, “Zora is my young’un…I’ll be bound mine will come out…” (“My Folks” 14).  Her mother encouraged her creativity and did not want to bind her daughter to stiffness and no exploration.  Her father, on the other hand, did not believe so much in the free will as her mother, and her grandmother despised the imaginative stories that Hurston would often make up.  As a child she was a visualize person and a dreamer, but Hurston’s grandmother was often suppressing when she would hear her stories about ‘fish and things’ swimming underneath her, calling her a liar.  Free will and ability to think is something that Janie was often denied in the novel.  Janie’s grandmother was one who truly loved her, but wanted her to live a life of benefits and did not care much for feelings.  Hurston’s mother can be depicted as one who allows for the self-expression her daughter, and her right to exploration can be seen in the relationship that Tea Cake and Janie shared.  Tea Cake was one who allowed Janie to search and experience what life has to offer.  The characters resemble the various people whom Hurston met and interacted with in her life, but they only constitute one part of an interwoven tale.

            The beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God presents much of the ‘backbone’ that reoccurs throughout the novel and comes back again to the beginning.  Hurston’s thoughts as a feminist and believer in the human spirit is brought out with the connection that she traces from the sun on the horizon and to the lives’ of men and women.  From Hurston’s childhood her mother was a person who exhorted her children to “…jump at the de sun…[while] Papa did not feel so hopeful…” (“Birthplace” 13).  In Hurston’s novel she begins to say that “…women [were] to remember the envy they had stored up from other times…so they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish…” (Their Eyes 2).  This can also be associated with Hurston’s Christian background, which may explain her references to religion and its positive effects.  The thought of moving on is seen in strongly in Janie who, returning to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death, decides that, “…She pulled in her horizon like a great fish net…and pulled it form around the world and to her shoulders” (Their Eyes 193).

            In many instances, Janie moves on in life quickly and is willing to find adventure and yearns to be fulfilled in her quest to gain satisfaction and happiness.  Her travels are important as they reveal her experiences from her home to Eatonville, then towards the Everglades and back to Eatonville again.  From Janie’s time spent in Eatonville, the formation of the predominately black community can be traced back to Hurston’s roots in a similar setting, too.  After Janie decides to leave her first husband, Logan Killicks, she wants to chase opportunity that she sees in Joe Starks.  Janie, like Hurston, settles in “…a pure Negro town—charter, mayor, council, town marshal and all” (“Birthplace” 1).  In such a town Janie and Hurston had associations that made them important to Eatonville and the citizens.  The porch of the general store and Joe Starks’ house was also a major area of conversing that Janie was often denied participation in.  In fact, Hurston may have drawn from her pastime of running errands or walking past Joe Clarke’s store porch, where the elders would socialize and gossip.  Hurston’s life in Eatonville supplied her with ample information and early tidings to a new world of grown-up talk, and one that Janie would not be able to enter until after Joe Starks’ death. 

            Following Janie’s time in Eatonville, she meets Tea Cake and goes on to have a loving relationship with him.  When Tea Cake and Janie decide to transition from Jacksonville to the Everglades they embark upon a new life.  From Hurston’s explanations of the land purchases for Eatonville, she speaks about the backing of “…the Whites who helped Joe Clarke to convince the Negroes of [settlement]” (“Birthplace” 6).  Similarly, the whites who lived with the black community in the Everglades did not mind the presence of one another and in the case of Janie’s trial, Mr. Prescott, the local doctor, defended stated the worsening condition of Tea Cake when he was bitten by the mad dog.  Though the jealousy and misunderstanding that Janie suffered from was something that made the blacks use “…the only weak weapon that they had left…and are only allowed to use in the presence of white folks: [their tongues]” (Their Eyes 186).  Other than the fueled flames of sorrow, the conflict that would also go “…inside of [Hurston], off and on for years…[reflects] the self-depreciation that she would feel” (“People” 190).  And in comparison to the land of Hurston’s Eatonville to the Everglades that Janie lived in “…White Maitland and Negro Eatonville, have lived side by side for fifty-five years without a single instance of enmity…” (“Birthplace” 6). 

            From Hurston’s recollections of childhood and background about her family history, coupled with information about her surroundings, she creates a world from drawn exposure in Their Eyes Were Watching God.  The people Hurston immersed herself with and her comfort in Eatonville shows her unique view upon the racial interactions, especially as a woman.  Her personal life is different from other authors of the Harlem Renaissance, but she still prides herself in her cultural heritage and show it through the characters that she depicts.  Janie is someone whom Hurston can associate with and through her eyes turned towards the new horizon, she sets off to find opportunities that Hurston instills in her life adventures.