Christine Schwartz Novel Synopsis

            Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a story of love, of hope, and of change.  The main character, Janie Woods, searches for love her whole life, but she does not know how to find it or how to know if she has.  The book begins with Janie’s return to her home town, where everyone wonders about her.  The rest of the book is Janie is telling her story to her old friend Phoeby.  This end to flashback arrangement is very effective in making the readers anticipate the tale. 

            Janie indicates that she has discovered in her first marriage to Logan Killicks, an old farmer, that matrimony does not come with or require love.  Logan is not fulfilling her vision of love: a blossoming pear tree.  Not long after that, she runs away with an attractive man named Joe Starks.  They are in love, but after Joe becomes the mayor, his treatment of Janie changes.  He is merely using her now.  She stays, but she does not love him anymore.  When Joe dies, Janie is not quite sure what to do.  She felt sorry for him, but she does not miss him.  She is mourning on the outside while secretly enjoying her freedom, when a young stranger waltzes     into Janie’s heart and makes himself at home. 

            Janie has been enchanted by men before, but this one named Tea Cake, is different than any other man she has seen.  He treats her like an equal.  Tea Cake is the median of Logan Killicks, who saw nothing special in Janie, and Joe Starks, who set her far above everyone else.  She can be a normal person with Tea Cake, but she knows that she is special to him.  After getting married, they move to “the muck,” a migrant worker hub.  After a few years, a devastating hurricane hits the muck.  They get away safely, but during their trip back, a rabid dog bites Tea Cake, who begins to go crazy.  Janie, who knows that he will die, just waits for something to happen until Tea Cake shoots at her.  Janie is faced with the choice to kill a maniac or be killed by one.  It may seem that the hurricane is the climax of the book, but the climax is actually when Janie has to choose whether or not to shoot.  This is the most critical moment in the book.  Her survival instinct and love of life are too strong to let her die, so Janie shoots her husband.  After her trial, the story moves back to the present. 

            The book is almost over, but it does not seem settled.  On the last pages, we realize that maybe things do not have to be resolved as we think they should.  “Of course he wasn’t dead.  He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. . .Here was peace” (Hurston, page 183-184).  Their Eyes Were Watching God shows Janie’s change from an immature daydreamer to a grown woman, full of common sense, but also of hopes and dreams and the fulfillment of them.