The end?

What do you think happens to Janie after the book? Does she settle back in Eatonville, living among her old friends and neighbors? Or could Janie soon suffer from rabies and die? She had been bitten by Tea Cake during the fight in which she shot him (p. 184); the doctor had previously  expressed concern that towards the end of his illness, Tea Cake was a threat to Janie, that he might bite her.

Robert Haas wrote an article, “Might Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie Woods Be Dying of Rabies? Considerations from Historical Medicine” (Literature and Medicine 19, no. 2 (Fall 2000) 205-228) in which he argues that everything else the doctor said to Janie came true as far as Tea Cake’s illness, and so why wouldn’t his specific warning that Tea Cake might bite her and give her rabies also come true. Could Janie be telling Pheoby her story because she won’t be around for very long to tell it herself? What do you think?

Setting

While not strictly an autobiographical novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God is set largely in Eatonville, FL, the town Zora Neale Hurston herself grew up in, and noted for being one of the few all-African American towns in the US when it was incorporated in 1887. It is in Eatonville that Janie lives with Jody and to Eatonville that she returns to her story with Pheoby.

How is the setting integral to the book? Do you think the same story could have taken place somewhere else?

Related links of interest:

Zora! Festival: the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, sponsored by the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community

St. Lucie County also holds its own ZoraFest annually

Zora Neale Hurston’s Fort Pierce home in St. Lucie County is listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail (click on the tour markers for a virtual tour)

Getting started

From the very first instance of a character speaking in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s writing style makes the reader take notice:

“What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls?”

Much has been said about Hurston’s use of vernacular speech in the book. Fellow writer Richard Wright criticized Hurston for what he saw as giving white readers the stereotypes of African Americans that they expected.

However, after the revival of interest in her work in the 1970s and beyond, those same characters’ speech patterns were no longer seen as pandering to white readers but a reflection of Hurston’s anthropological training, her affirmation of people as they are, and her outright talent as a writer:

“Her fidelity to diction, metaphor, and syntax… rings, even across forty years, with an aching familiarity that is a testament to Hurston’s skill and to the durability of black speech.”
  –Sherley Anne Williams, Foreword to Their Eyes Were Watching God (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1978)

How do you feel about the way Janie speaks? Do you find it easy to follow along? What impact does it have on the story? Is it more real to you, or is it a stumbling block to understanding?

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“Between Laughter and Tears,” review of Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Richard Wright (New Masses, (5 October 1937: 22-23).

Reviews of Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937-1938 (Univ. of Virginia)

The Sound of 1930s Florida Folk Life (NPR): Zora Neale Hurston participated in a WPA program that documented Florida culture in the 1930s. Hear her sing “Evalina.”  Hear Zora Neale Hurston’s recordings held by the Florida Memory Project

“Power of Prose: African American Women” by Christa Smith Anderson (PBS’ “Do You Speak American?”)

Ruby Dee reads an excerpt of Their Eyes Were Watching God (HarperAudio) (via Salon.com)