A Study Guide (New Edition) for Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide (New Edition) for Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Feb 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780028666426

Book preview

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

1937

Introduction

Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God while she was working in Jamaica, and the book was originally published in 1937. This coming-of-age novel is the most popular of Hurston's works. In this novel, she tells the story of African American characters and employs the dialect of rural African Americans together with standard English. Set in Florida in the 1920s and 1930s, the novel explores the themes of love, identity, and independence in a racially segregated state. Hurston uses symbolism to explore the ever-changing life of Janie, a woman who searches for love and human connection in a world where people prioritize financial security over personal relationships.

Author Biography

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 15, 1891. Her father, John Hurston, was a former slave who became a Baptist minister. When Hurston was an infant, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida, the oldest incorporated African American town in the United States. John Hurston was elected mayor of the town in 1897. Hurston was educated in Eatonville until the death of her mother when she was thirteen.

After her mother's death, Hurston lived with different family members because of conflict with her stepmother, according to Katie Marsico in Zora Neale Hurston: Harlem Renaissance Writer. She became a maid for a performer of a Gilbert-and-Sullivan theater troupe and developed a love of theater. In 1917, she attended the Morgan Academy in Baltimore while working as a secretary and graduated in 1918.

After earning her high school diploma, Hurston attended Howard University, where she received her associate's degree in 1920 and where she met Alain Locke, later acknowledged as the dean of the Harlem Renaissance, and joined the literary club. She published the short story John Redding Goes to Sea and the poem O Night in Stylus in 1921. Hurston moved to Harlem in 1925.

That year she was offered a scholarship to attend Barnard College, where she developed an interest in anthropology and studied with Columbia professor Frank Boaz, focusing on African American folklore. Charlotte Osgood Mason funded her research for five years. The agreement, however, meant that Mason could dictate how and where Hurston might use or publish the material, according to M. Genevieve West in Zora Neale Hurston & American Literary Culture. In 1927, Hurston married jazz musician (and later medical doctor) Herbert Sheen, but the marriage lasted just four years.

Hurston was the first African American student to graduate from Barnard, earning her bachelor's degree in 1928. She continued graduate studies at Columbia for another