Their Eyes Part 2

As I continued to read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I paid particular attention to a few of the themes that we discussed last class. I feel like Janie didn’t have a sense of identity when she was married to Logan or Joe (Jody). It seems like she was confined to the roles that women should play, especially while in Eatonville. Joe had such high expectations for Janie and she had to fulfill those shoes of the mayor’s wife for his sake. Janie must have felt inferior to her husband on a daily basis due to his strong influence and power he possessed as the mayor of Eatonville. One thing that stuck out to me was the continuous reference to Joe being a king figure. “You have tuh have power tuh free things and dat makes you lak uh king uh something” (58). Mrs. Tony also stated “Thank you, Mist’ Starks. You’re noble! You’se du most gentlemanfied man Ah ever did see. You’se uh king!” (73). I think that the town’s people admiration and need for Joe’s guidance, got to his head. He wanted everyone in town to look up to him and his wife so badly that he molded and controlled Janie to make her into his trophy wife. Everything had to be done his way, her hair had to be pulled back, she had to run the store, and she couldn’t think or speak for herself or women in general. At the end of their marriage Janie couldn’t contain herself anymore. On page seventy-five she spoke up for women and in return was told she was “too mouthy.” Janie’s emotions showed on page seventy-six. “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. She was in a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels.” Clearly the wheels represented Joe and no matter how many times she tried, Janie couldn’t escape being held down by them. I don’t think she felt like she had won an argument until Joe’s final moments before he passed because at that point he was too weak to control Janie. She finally stood up for herself without being hushed by Joe and it seemed like she was celebrating his death and her freedom by taking her hair down and burning her ‘head rags’ after the funeral.

I feel like gradually Janie gathered the strength to speak up, take charge of her life, and find herself after Joe died. I think that one of the main themes of Their Eyes Were Watching God is about self identity and individuality, which can be linked to most of the other authors we have studied this far.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

What I found interesting about Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was the way critics and other authors perceived this novel. I thought this would be a good topic for this week’s blog because we have been focusing on author’s writing styles and themes.

It’s amazing to me that books now, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God and Passing, are so highly praised and seen as such influential books from the Harlem Renaissance, even though they were criticized years ago. I always read the foreword to get a better sense of the author, book, and critics ideas of the book.

When this book was first published in 1937, Hurston was criticized for not depicting the true life of southern blacks. “Hurston made black southern life appear easygoing and carefree” (x). Years later she was noted for her writing and as “a woman on a quest for her own identity and, unlike so many other questing figures in black literature, her journey would take her, not away from, but deeper and deeper into black traditions” (xi).

Surprisingly in 1937 a white reviewer favored Hurston’s book, but “had difficulty believing that such a town as Eatonville, ‘inhabitated and governed entirely by Negroes,’ could be real.” This doesn’t surprise me because racist ideas and beliefs were still a huge part of society then. While some celebrated Hurston’s achievement, others disapproved of Their Eyes Were Watching God because it didn’t follow the way fictional literature was traditionally written, mainly black male critics. When I read this I was not surprised because it seems that people of the same race can be harsher when critiquing an author. We saw this with Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” where he disagrees with Cullen’s style of writing. He states that Cullen shouldn’t be a free poet and that he should stand up for his race. I think Hughes was over analyzing Cullen’s work and being extremely contradictory. He wants black writers to stand up for their race, but at the same time they should stand up for themselves and create new and different works of literature if they chose. I think this applies with Hurston as well, as black critics were harsher on her because she too was of the same racial background. I also think that her unique writing is one of the main reasons why she eventually received praise for Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Langston Hughes' Poems 11/12

Langston Hughes’ “A Song to a Negro Wash-woman” and “Song” stuck out at me this week. I found a similar connection between these two poems, the references to color and race that Hughes’ used. “A Song to a Negro Wash-woman” describes the type of work and long hours that African American working women endured. To me, it seems that Hughes’ used “white suds”, “Miss White Lady’s kitchen”, and “white clothes” to emphasize the power of the wealthy white class. This poem focuses on the hard work that black women did to get by and provide for their families ("I know how you send your children to school, and high-school, and even college. I know how you work and help your man when times are hard.") I think the lines, "And I've seen you singing, wash-woman. Out in the backyard garden under the apple trees, singing, hanging white clothes on long lines in the sun-shine. And I've seen you in church a Sunday morning singing, praising Jesus..." can also represent the purity that black women held and how religion helped them through the hard times. In the last stanza, Hughes' describes the wash-woman as a "singing little brown woman", "singing strong black woman", and the "singing tall yellow woman" with "arms deep in white suds." This stands out to me because I think the use of color, brown, black, and yellow highly contrast the woman's "arms deep in white suds." The wash-woman obviously works for whites because she has to, but there is still a strong sense of uplift to Hughes' poems as well.

I also found color references in the poem "Song" with the words dark, light, night, and brown. In the beginning Hughes' is talking about a black woman.

"Lovely, dark, and lonely one,
Bare your bosom to the sun.
Do not be afraid of light,
You who are a child of night."

I think dark represents the skin color of the woman, but also emphasizes the loneliness and hard life she has led. "Do not be afraid of light" could mean don't be afraid of whites or don't be afraid of life.

"Open wide your arms to life,
Whirl in the wind or pain and strife,
Face the wall with the dark closed gate,
Bear with bare, brown fists-
And wait."

Again, I believe Hughes' message is not to be afraid of life and the world. Although times are hard and fight back ("Beat with bare, brown fists" and wait for change.

Cullen Poems

As I read Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” it reminded me of Claude McKay’s poems. Stylistically I think they are similar in that they both are traditional writers, but the content of their poetry is also on a similar level. McKay and Cullen’s “Heritage” embrace their African roots and answer the question, “What is Africa to me?” (Cullen 24). However I think that the imagery of Cullen’s “Heritage” matches McKay’s “The Tropics of New York” in more ways. Cullen, although his writing is difficult to decipher, it is easy to see how his imagery links to Africa. He uses words like “jungle star,” “strong bronzed men,” “wild barbaric birds,” “jungle herds,” “great drums,” and “jungle boys and girls in love.” Similarly, McKay describes the fruit, colors, and landscape of Jamaica in great detail just like Cullen.