Their Eyes were Watching God


Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is considered a Slave Narrative, because it contains elements that are an essential component of Slave Narratives. Her critics have agreed that it contains some components but not all, so her novel was re-labeled as a revised Slave Narrative.
One of the components of a Slave Narrative that is found in Their eyes were Watching God, is Janie’s autobiographical account of the life of a slave, told by Janie. It is recognized on page 8, when Janie says to Pheoby, “ ‘Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start’” (Hurston).
She then leads into another component in the Slave Narrative, a vague notion the narrator has of her parents. Janie says, “ ‘I ain’t never seen mah papa. Mah mama neither’” (Hurston 8). All she knows of her mother is that her mother was raped by her school teacher, who was presumably white, even though Hurston doesn’t specifically tell the reader of his race. The only family she has is her grandmother who raised her.


To tie in another Narrative Slave component, Hurston also uses the volatile relationships between masters and their slaves. Janie’s grandmother was a slave who was raped by her master, which resulted in the birth of Janie’s mother. Women slaves had no control over their bodies. Their master was allowed to do whatever he pleased. Another form of this violence is between the mistress and the slaves. When Joanie’s mother was born and upon looking at her, the mistress realizes that baby with “gray eyes,” and “yaller” hair was a “white baby” she orders the whipping of Janie’s grandmother, not caring whether or not she lives or dies (Hurston 17).
A clash of religion is another component of a Slave Narrative, which is generally seen as Christianity vs. another religion. In our novel, the struggle is only seen as the women are on the porch gossiping about Janie as she is returning to Eatonville. Janie brings their hypocrisy to the surface in her conversation with Pheoby, “ ‘Well, Ah see Mouth – Almighty is still sittin’ in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me in they mouth now’ ” in which Pheoby responds, “ ‘Yeah, Sam (Pheoby’s husband) say most of ‘em goes to church so they’ll be sure so they’ll be sure to rise Judgment. Dat’s de day dat every secret is s’posed to be made known. They wants to be there and here it all’” (Hurston 5-6). The other religion that is practiced is voodoo. Huston doesn’t create a conflict between the two religion rather she shows the hypocrisy that was see by others of non-Christian faith.
Political propaganda, one of the main components of a Slave Narrative, is seen throughout the novel in different forms. The first is in the form of generational gap.

Janie’s view on marriage and her grandmother’s view are dramatically different. Janie thinks that marriage meant “husbands and wives always loved each other” and her grandmother defined love as “protection” (15). Another form is the formation of Eatonville as a city. Joe Sparks a black man buys up all the land and builds up a town for displaced slaves. Sparks, as mayor establishes a class system by the way he dresses better and enforces Janie to dress and act proper, not like the common women of the town. The successful building of an African American town of Eatonville, and the economical success that the community generated is another component of the Slave Narrative. It demonstrated the freedom and independence of the African American people.

The main ties to the Slave Narrative, is Janie’s life journey. She struggled to become her own person with her on voice through three different marriages. She went through abuse, homelessness, death of loved ones, a murder trial, and she survived a massive hurricane. All of these trials demonstrate a tumultuous life journey and ends with Janie’s ascending out of her life of crisis. This is what makes Janie the heroine of the novel, which is another component of the Slave Narrative.
What makes this novel a revision of the Slave Narrative is how the novel ends. Janie is a single landowner who is economically stable. In a Slave Narrative the woman would be married and her husband would be economically stable. Here Hurston revises it by giving her heroine an economically stable life without the hassle of a marriage. She gives Janie what she had been yearning for throughout the novel, her freedom.

Works Cited
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarpersCollins Publishing, 1937.