Annotated Bibliography for
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Curren, Erik. "Should Their Eyes Have Been Watching God? Hurston's Use of Religious Experience and Gothic Horror." African American Review, Vol. 29, Iss. 1 (1995), 17-25. An exploration of the novel that rebuts and contrasts with earlier analyses that call Their Eyes an "affirmative quest" story. Curren's thesis is that these analyses in fact discount the entire final third of the book which is rife with horror, violence and tragedy, and asserts that what Hurston has done is not so much write an "affirmative quest" of the African folklore experience but tell a story that switches genres from "quest" to gothic horror. He then builds a methodical case for Hurston's deliberate intent to use gothic horror and her reasons for doing so-primarily, an anti-religious viewpoint that in this work is a fundamental underpinning of both gothic horror in general and its uses here. She uses a hurricane and a character's infection by a rabid dog as metaphors for black powerlessness-"watching God" being perceived as "focusing on the massa" (or, the white slaveowner)-reliance on corrupt and "magical" white authoritarian structures, and infection by "American type" materialism and racist ignorance. She warns her people not to fall into the traps inherent in a passive "watching God" mentality that will ultimately render the African American community no better than its white counterpart, with its own racism, superstitions and blind spots. Her characters and their tragedies serve in a "morality play" fashion to show the African American community the importance of its true folklores: the wisdom and wealth of a strong connection to nature, an egalitarian freedom, and a freshness and vitality to life without barriers of prejudice or erroneous magical/dependent thinking.
Marks, Donald R. "Sex, Violence and Organic Consciousness in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Black American Literature Forum, Vol 19, Iss. 4 (1985), 152-157. An analysis of Their Eyes in terms of the interdependence of Janie's four consecutive love/sex relationships and their expressions of "organic" versus "mechanistic" lives, or, "those of passion" versus "those of control." Marks proposes...
He shows how Hurston equates "control" with death or decay, while "passion" is connected with life, fertility, and community-but how even in the midst of that life and community lurks the everpresent threat of violence, that in fact violence seems to be a "given" in any passionate heterosexual relationship. Finally, he theorizes that the resolution to Their Eyes is a "synthetic" ending-a paradox of trying to reconcile Janie's "romantic" nature, one that needs a heterosexual relationship to work, versus Hurston's own reputed inability to form mutually caring, passionate but nonviolent relationships with men in real life.
Schwalbenberg, Peter. "Time as Point of View in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 10, Iss. 3 (1976), 104-105 + 107-108. An article that interprets Their Eyes through the vantage point of differing uses of the sense of time. Schwalbenberg purports that the shifts of time versus points of view in the novel are stylistic and deliberate, a way to alternately bring the reader into closer identification with Janie, then push the reader away into more abstract detachment. The novel presents different faces of time-from the timelessness of learning that she is black, and what that means for her in her world, to the respect for time and what it has taught her grandmother, to the quickening of time when Janie's life becomes less shackled. Change, progress, conflict and symbolism all partner with the use of time, of narrative versus dialogue in dialect-meandering versus immediate-to the effect that instead of "making everything old," time ultimately brings Janie to "youth" in the end, even in the aftermath of disillusionment, tragedy, and betrayal.
Some thoughts in Response . . .
I found the interrelationships of these three essays to be fascinating. I especially appreciate the iconoclast Curren, who is willing to go on record and "buck the tide" of prevalent thought and analysis on the "affirmative quest" versus…
