Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Community
As Janie returns to Eatonville, the novel focuses on the
porch-sitters who gossip and speculate about her situation. In Eatonville
and the Everglades, particularly, the two most significant settings
in the novel, Janie constantly interacts with the community around
her. At certain times, she longs to be a part of this vibrant social
life, which, at its best, offers warmth, safety, connection, and
interaction for Janie. In Chapter 18, for
example, when Tea Cake, Janie, and Motor Boat seek shelter from
the storm, the narrator notes that they “sat in company with the
others in other shanties”; of course, they are not literally sitting
in the same room as these others, but all of those affected by the
hurricane share a communal bond, united against the overwhelming,
impersonal force of the hurricane.
At other times, however, Janie scorns the pettiness of
the gossip and rumors that flourish in these communities, which
often criticize her out of jealousy for her independence and strong
will. These communities, exemplifying a negative aspect of unity,
demand the sacrifice of individuality. Janie refuses to make this
sacrifice, but even near the end of the book, during the court trial,
“it [i]s not death she fear[s]. It [i]s misunderstanding.” In other
words, Janie still cares what people in the community think because
she still longs to understand herself.
Race and Racism
Because Zora Neale Hurston was a famous black author who
was associated with the Harlem Renaissance, many readers assume
that Their Eyes Were Watching God is concerned
primarily with issues of race. Although race is a significant motif
in the book, it is not, by any means, a central theme. As Alice
Walker writes in her dedication to I Love Myself When I
Am Laughing . . . and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive:
A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, “I think we are better off
if we think of Zora Neale Hurston as an artist, period—rather than
as the artist/politician most black writers have been required to
be.” Along the same lines, it is far more fulfilling to read Janie’s
story as a profoundly human quest than as a distinctly black one.
But issues of race are nonetheless present. Janie and
Tea Cake experience prejudice from both blacks and whites at significant moments
in the book. Two moments in particular stand out: Janie’s interactions,
in Chapter 16, with Mrs. Turner, a black
woman with racist views against blacks, and the
courtroom scene, in Chapter 19, after which
Janie is comforted by white women but scorned by her black friends.
In these moments, we see that racism in the novel operates as a
cultural construct, a free-floating force that affects not only how
white characters treat black characters, but also how black
characters perceive themselves. Hurston’s perspective on
racism was undoubtedly influenced by her study with influential
anthropologist Franz Boas, who argued that ideas of race are culturally
constructed and that skin color indicates little, if anything, about
innate difference. In other words, racism is a cultural force that
individuals can either struggle against or yield to rather than
a mindset rooted in demonstrable facts. In this way, racism operates
in the novel just like the hurricane and the doctrine to which Jody
adheres; it is an environmental force that challenges Janie in her
quest to achieve harmony with the world around her.
The Folklore Quality of Religion
As the title indicates, God plays a huge role in the novel,
but this God is not really the Judeo-Christian god. The book maintains
an almost Gnostic perspective on the universe: God is not a single entity
but a diffuse force. This outlook is particularly evident in the mystical
way that Hurston describes nature. At various times, the sun, moon,
sky, sea, horizon, and other aspects of the natural world appear
imbued with divinity. The God in the title refers to these divine
forces throughout the world, both beautiful and threatening, that
Janie encounters. Her quest is a spiritual one because her ultimate
goal is to find her place in the world, understand who she is, and
be at peace with her environment.
Thus, except for one brief reference to church
in Chapter 12, organized religion never appears
in the novel. The idea of spirituality, on the other hand, is always
present, as the novel espouses a worldview rooted in folklore and
mythology. As an anthropologist, Hurston collected rural mythology
and folklore of blacks in America and the Caribbean. Many visions
of mysticism that she presents in the novel—her haunting personification
of Death, the idea of a sun-god, the horizon as a boundary at the
end of the world—are likely culled directly from these sources.
Like her use of dialogue, Hurston’s presentation of folklore and
non-Christian spirituality celebrates the black rural culture.
