"Their Eyes Were Watching God" - Analysis of the main conflicts and some metaphorical images of the novel (PDF)

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2005 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Literatur, Freie Universität Berlin, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of a woman¿s life. Protagonist Janie recapitulates her way from youth to her forties and shows the growing-up of a woman in the search for love. On the sideways Zora Neale Hurston points out the life of African-American people and their problems on the turn of the twentieth century until the 1930s. The objective of this paper is to point out the main conflicts and metaphorical images used in the book.
As the novel is to some extent a biography of a woman¿s way to love the first to mention is the eternal conflict between men and women. Like a painter Hurston draws the traditional roles of the sexes and the contradictions of her time - a time of feminine emancipation in all aspects. Emancipation also plays a role in the obvious generation conflict personated in Nanny, Janie¿s grandmother. Somehow incidental, but flashing now and then, and sharp in her observations Hurston works up the racial issue of black and white living together in the American society around 60 years after slavery has officially ended. These are the more general conflicts of the book, while within the story opens the conflict within the black community. A subtle comparison of the life in Eatonville and the Everglades - inseparable of course from the totally differing feelings of Janie in both places.
In the course of the novel Hurston uses strong, picturesque metaphorical language to describe the inner world of Janie¿s thoughts and feelings. This paper can only give a few examples for these images. The tree image stands for her love life and sexuality - first in bloom when she becomes a woman. The mule stands as a symbol for the submission of women through men.