1st response in 3rd quarter

Jaehak
11-1
25 January 2009

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Response#1, pp 1 – 71
Response type#1: Reactions and Evaluation

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston is a story about Janie, the protagonist, a white – black woman who is raised by her grandmother, Nancy. Janie had married twice with a white, Logan, and a black guy, Jody by several reasons. Janie married Logan without love by grandmother’s hope. When Janie realized that she was not able to love him, she run off with black guy who dreamed to have authority in black people’s town. But, the marriage with black guy even was not fine. While reading the book, I could receive one love and hate.

What I love about “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was dynamic plot of story. When I started to the book, it seemed like the story is going to be about racial discrimination. The reason was, in the beginning of the book, the story introduced the background of Janie’s generation history. Janie’s grandmother, Nancy, was a black woman who was raped by her white master, and then gave a birth who was Janie’s mother. Janie’s mother also was raped by her school teacher so that she transferred Janie to Nancy and then run away. At the last generation which is Janie was also treated as a slave to white guy who is named Logan. The history showed the illness and racial difference of black folks. But, I could know that the main story of the “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was not racial discrimination as the story went to the relationship between blacks. Moreover, I am not sure what the main story is going to be about the end of the story as the issues changed in the beginning.

What I hate about “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was the conversations were consisted of black spoken language. As I read throughout the book, the more than half of the story was consisted of the conversations between the characters. As the characters were black, the author used black spoken language in the conversations. What I mean is “If dat mule is wuth somethin’ tuh you, Brother Mayor, he’s wuth mo’ tuh me. More special when Ah got uh job uh wok tuhmorrow.” (p 54) As I translated it, the sentence should be written like “If that mule is what something to you, Brother Mayor, he’s what more to me. More special when I got your job your wok tomorrow.” So, when I read the conversations, I should pronounce the sentences and slowed down the path of my reading. Moreover, sometime, I had no idea what the word represent to like “’Tain’t no earthly use.” (p51) I had no idea what ’Tain’t is. So, I had several difficulties to understand what the characters are saying.

I have read up to one third of the book. The story is rising to its climax. The reason is Jody kept restrict Janie in order to make her high authority black’s wife and acted something different with past such as slapping Janie’s face, which caused Janie to start to explode her accumulated temper. I predict that Janie will run off again with others in order to get better life and who understand Janie as a person.