I finished Their Eyes Were Watching God a few weeks ago, and I’ve been too wrapped up in my current book (A Confederacy of Dunces)*, work, and the infancy of my son’s infancy.
I came away with two main thoughts after what was my second reading of this book. (I’m rather alarmed at my lack of memory of the specifics of books I’ve enjoyed. I’ve been wanting to read more Flannery O’Connor lately, which got me thinking of the only book of hers that I’ve read, Wise Blood¸ and I realized I can’t remember much about that book except certain sensory details and a kind of aurora of feelings and impressions the book gave me. If I met someone who had read it also, I doubt I’d be able to lead a discussion about it unless that person jogged my memory about the specifics. I think I listen to music in this same way, a kind of holistic sensory impressionist method that causes me to not pay too much attention to lyrics or to totally gloss over English-teacher-related ideas such as form and structure and other things I find quite boring and having nothing to do with the enjoyment of language at play), which leads me to my first thought about this book – the language. My God, the language. It is simply amazing that Hurston wrote in a dialect that is foreign to most people, and when the reader begins the book, he has to decipher the spellings, but that once things get rolling, so does the reader’s comprehension and soon it’s as easy to read as correct spelling and diction, but the playfulness and beauty of the language still shine through. Hurston is composing music here and words become more than just letters, but rather a flowing river with its own wondrous tune. Via the language, we are able to read about people who are not like us (I somehow picture Hurston’s audience as predominantly white. More on that in a bit. But regardless of race, aren’t most books about people not like us, places we haven’t been to, ideas we haven’t yet embraced?) and most importantly, come to identify with them even though the outward is decidedly different.
The idea of race kind of bugs me. To me it’s nothing and something at once, a two-sided paradox that can be viewed from many different angles, each angle still reflecting that varying two-sides. Yet all too often, humans view it simplistically. “…and you know what [race] they were,” says the simplistic white man. “You know how those white boys do!” says the simplistic black man. “Don’t ever use the N-word around me,” says the simplistic do-gooder. Even in coming up with these examples, I’ve reduced a complex issue to simplicity (and possible buffoonery), but the point remains: despite our desire for simplicity, the issue is anything but. In hearing so many reduced ideas and sentiments concerning race in everyday life, I yearn for a discussion of the whole issue, especially the uncomfortable parts. Their Eyes were Watching God deals with race, but I left it feeling as if it didn’t make that much a statement about it. It didn’t raise its fist or shout its anger or spend a lot of time pontificating through word or character’s actions/words. It just told a simple love story, and in so doing dealt with race the way it seems many big problems are best dealt with: to allow them to roll out and take its course. Hurston spent the most time elaborating on Mrs. Turner’s jealousy of Janie’s whiteness and hatred of Tea Cake’s blackness. But the power in Hurston’s message regarding Mrs. Turner is that it wasn’t a message at all, but a failure of viewpoint exposed by the love Janie and Tea Cake had, a love that transcended race and circumstance and past failures and the shortcomings of those that should have provided Janie with a means to happiness rather than forcing her to find it by trial and error. In not making a statement, Hurston makes the strongest statement of all: that that white hot burst of emotion one can feel when confronted by an affront to one’s race or the blandness of those that live in the blandness of one race communities (most of us) that preach the single orthodoxy of DON’T are all inferior weapons against racism, that love is the greatest weapon. Not love like some feel-good antidote where we love everyone. But as Hurston says regarding the attitudes of Mrs. Turner, the power of Janie’s love was in her pursuit of love, the pursuit of her true self, and in that pursuit she had no worries or hang-ups about Tea Cake’s dark skin. She simply loved him because he was the man for her. She did not erect idols to some ideal like Mrs. Turner did. The ideal and the idols erected to it by Mrs. Turner are false gods, and like any following of any false god, it led Mrs. Turner down the wrong path.
* I’ve fallen behind with these updates. Finished Confederacy and on to a few others. Updates soon.
Bellicose Blatherings 
Comments