Their Eyes Were Watching God

12/26/2018

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Blurb:

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Review:

Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.

I have to admit being somewhat weary before starting this book. It is such an Important™ book that, from the very beginning, I was questioning how good it was going to be (unfortunately, a lot of Important™ books simply aren't that good in my opinion) but after a professor of mine specifically talked about it for quite a while and told us about Hurston and the impact (or lack thereof) of her work I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to pick this one up no matter how weary I was. And at first I considered myself proven wrong. The writing style, I though, was strongest in the beginning, the story is really intriguing and the representation of dialect was really interesting, although I struggled with it. However, as the book continued the story began to drag, somewhat, the style of writing lost some of its beauty and novelty and my interest started to slip from the pages.

In retrospect I do still see why and how so many people love this book but I also have to admit to not belonging to that group of people. Hurston's work has a very intriguing history and is certainly important especially in terms of dialectology but, frankly, I had expected her representation of dialect to be more varied considering her background. Moreover, there is a character in the book which specifically addresses Hurston's beliefs about black people 'acting white' but I felt that entire plot point was pretty unnecessary and added nothing to the story.

I also had some trouble with the characters. I really enjoyed how Hurston managed to convey a lot of Janie's feelings in the beginning of the book without stating them, I felt her frustration and unhappiness. I also enjoyed how she sometimes allowed the reader a peak into the heads of Janie's husbands and why they treated her the way they did. However, later in the book I felt like this connection to the characters was lost. I understood why Janie like Tea Cake but any further feelings felt rushed and remained unclear to me. Tea Cake himself was somewhat of a mystery to me and Hurston often seemed to glorify especially those aspects of his character that I consider the least positive. All that is to say that I eventually lost most of the emotional connection I had to the book because I lost grip of the characters.

Ultimately, the initial positivity I felt towards the book began dwindling fairly quickly and I read the second half mostly just to have read the book but without much enthusiasm. I do still appreciate Hurston's work (who wouldn't?) but theoretical appreciation of the author is not enough to save a book I, frankly, didn't connect with on a more meaningful level. That's how it goes sometimes.