"Their Eyes Were Watching God" is notable for its strong African American female protagonists who pursue love and respect. This novel is now considered a seminal work and is Zora Neale Hurston's best known novel.
a manifest indication of the existence or presence or nature of some person or thing
However, that is one of the many shrewd
manifestations of Zora Neale Hurston’s enormous talents: her ability to render a world complete with its codes and disciplines within a few sentences, and then placing in that world her vision of how her people—the women and men of her own creation, her characters—function, triumph, and survive.
From the time she first discovers that she is a “colored” little girl by searching for her face in a group photograph, to the moment she returns to Eatonville, Florida, from the Everglades, not
swindled and deceived, as had been expected, but heartbroken, yet boldly defiant, after having toiled in the bean fields, survived a hurricane, and lost the man she loved.
So in spite of the judgmental voices that greet her upon her return, in spite of the “mass cruelty” invoked by her
prodigal status, Janie has earned the right to be the griot of her own tale, the heroine of her own quest, the “member” of her own remembering.
This is a novel with an overpowering sense of
exigency and urgency in its layered plot, swift pace, intricate narration, and in the raw anguish evoked by the conflicting paths laid out for Janie Crawford.
failure to conform to accepted standards of behavior
Like all individual thinkers, Janie Crawford pays the price of exclusion for
nonconformity, much like Hurston herself, who was accused of stereotyping the people she loved when she perhaps simply listened to them much more closely than others, and sought to reclaim and reclassify their voices.