Title: Their Eyes Were Watching God: Chapters 1–2 | SparkNotes
Headings: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Chapters 1–2
Summary: Chapter 1
Summary: Chapter 2
Analysis: Chapters 1–2
Their Eyes Were Watching God (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series)
Popular pages: Their Eyes Were Watching God
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Content: Throughout the book, we see Janie struggle with her own voice and control of language. As Gates writes in an afterword included in most modern editions of the book, Hurston views the “search for voice” as the defining quest of one’s lifetime. The divided style of narration, however, suggests that the quest is complicated and lacks a singular resolution. Gates argues, “Hurston uses the two voices in her text to celebrate the psychological fragmentation of both modernity and of the Black American... [H]ers is a rhetoric of division, rather than a fiction of psychological or cultural unity.” Against this division, though, Hurston, in subtle ways, opens lines of communication between the two narrative styles. The third-person narrator is a voice that, while different from Janie’s, partakes of figures and experiences in Janie’s world. Hurston colors the narrator’s sophisticated prose with colloquialisms, like the “Now” that opens the novel’s second paragraph, nature metaphors, and a tone that reveals that the narrator delights in storytelling as much as any of the characters. Because of these qualities, the narrative voice is more than just the absence of dialect; the narrator has a personality that is related, though not identical, to those of the characters. Hurston’s affection for Black folklore and dialect is evident not only in its raw presentation in dialogue form but also in the traces it leaves on her high prose.