A Journey Of Self-Realization

Nowadays Afro-American literature has become an indispensable part of American literature and culture.There are many eminent Afro-American artists who have created many marvelous works in varied genres.The Afro-American literature is moving to the center from the margin.Zora Neale Hurston,a great novelist,folklorist,and anthropologist in American,is universally acknowledged as the Mother of Black Female Literature.She is also regarded as one of the greatest writers during the Harlem Renaissance.Her most classic fiction,Their Eyes Were Watching God,explores the spiritual journey of a black uneducated woman,Janie Crawford,to quest for her own identity in the white and male dominated society.This novel is of milestone significance in constructing female image in an age of protest literature.It explores the inside world of a black woman to present her consciousness awakening.Janie undergoes three marriages which serve as stepping stones of her individual quest for self-realization against multiple oppressions.As she goes from one marriage to another,she gradually sheds the oppressive white and male definitions of selfhood given to her by her grandmother,her community,and society.By fighting against and overcoming various forms of forces that antagonize her quest,Janie has grown into a mature woman with a complete possession of her self from a naive and diffident little girl.This thesis,in the light of the black feminism,tries to analyze Janie's experiences to show the misery of the black women and the ways she realizes herself and her black identity or blackness and gets survived in the white society to influence the lives of other black women.On the other hand,this thesis also tries to explore black women's ways to self-realization according to Janie's experience to point out a way for those who are immersed in the white culture and getting totally assimilated by the mainstream culture and losing their black individuality.