Racial Politics In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God is always considered the most prominent work of Zora Neale Hurston, the well-known Afro-American female writer. It tells a story about Janie, a Negro woman who experiences three marriages in her life. Criticism about Their Eyes tends to blend the text of the novel with the authorship of Hurston. Reviewers, past and present, either try to interpret Their Eyes via an analysis of both Hurston's public and private life, or try to understand the author through an interpretation of the novel.According to Roland Barthes's theory, however, to give an Author to a text is to impose a limit upon that text, and to furnish it with a final signification. My intention in this thesis is not to discover a"new"Hurston through an analysis of her work, nor to approach her work through an understanding of Hurston herself.Instead, I will focus my attention upon Their Eyes alone, treating it as a work independent of its author, and try to explore the racial politics metaphorically suggested in the text via a close and creative reading of the protagonist Janie's three marriages.Janie's first marriage is the product of Nanny's marital dream. Nanny desires to marry a white man who, she believes, will change her fate of being"de mule uh de world". But she fails because of her slave status. So she sets all her hope on her granddaughter Janie. Textual details reveal that Nanny's initial plan is to let Janie marry a white husband instead of a Negro one. Seeing Johnny Taylor, a"trashy"Negro, kissing Janie, however, Nanny changes her mind, and persuades Janie to marry another black man named Logan Killicks, whose 60 acres of land let him appear much more close to a wealthy white man. This actually is an ambivalent decision. Logan Killicks just wants to make use of Janie as his"mule", which is totally beyond Nanny's imagination. Nanny's dream is thus broken. The broken dream of Nanny symbolizes the failure of certain black people who try to merge into white society by assimilating white values and standards.Janie's ideal love is virtually the continuation of Nanny's marital dream, although the two hold different attitudes towards Logan Killicks. The very special growing-up experience in the backyard of white people, together with the gradual influence of her grandmother Nanny, lets Janie begin to realize from a very young age the danger of marrying a black man, and she dreams all the time of taking a white man as her husband. Joe Starks seems to be an ideal stand-in for the"white prince"appearing in her adolescent dream, so Janie decides to elope with him. Unfortunately, Joe Starks turns out to be a complete white-value"mimic", who brings Janie more boredom than freedom. Janie's"white"dream under the pear tree collapses thoroughly. The second unsuccessful marriage of Janie further proves the doomed fate of those black people who try to merge into white society by valuing white values more highly than black ones. And Janie's disillusionment in the wake of Joe Starks's death seems to indicate another possible way to redeem the lost soul of the black race.In the process of achieving the ideal of living a life like a white lady, Janie finds herself nearly suffocated. After she follows Tea Cake to move into the Everglades, Janie's lost vitality begins to be restored. Tea Cake,"the son of Evening Sun"(189), is a typical black young man. The fact that it is Tea Cake who helps Janie achieve the true happiness seems a clue that the only way to salvage the black race is to embrace black tradition. This idea was quite popular among black intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance.Yet Tea Cake's ultimate death implies another clue that Afro-American tradition has been infected and corrupted by so-called American values (virtually white values), and that there exists no pure black tradition at all in America. The two thoughts seem quite contradictory, but ambivalence or inconsistency is no other than one of the most distinctive features of Afro-American literary works.