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Their Eyes Were Watching God 39382 Views


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Description:

Their eyes may have been watching God, but we think we know who won that staring contest.

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English Language

Transcript

00:04

Their Eyes Were Watching God, a la Shmoop. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching

00:11

God was published near the tail end of the modernist movement.

00:15

Is it just like all other Modernist works? Or is there something a bit different going

00:20

on here? Well, what the heck is a modernist work? Let’s

00:24

start there. Laser beams and flying cars?

00:27

Not even close. Modernism is a literary movement that reached its peak between 1890 and 1940.

00:33

It’s bleak stuff for the most part, often conveying the idea that life is chaotic and

00:38

futile and everything must come to an end.[1]

00:41

These aren’t books about robotic dogs. They’re book about robotic dogs dying…

00:49

Or worse – robotic dogs never even existing. So on the one hand, There Eyes Were Watching

00:54

God fits right in among Modernist writers' search for comfort amid existential struggles.

01:00

Just as T.S. Eliot searched for spiritual post-war comfort in The Waste Land…

01:11

…Eyes combines a personal quest for love with larger historical issues like racism,

01:20

slavery, and the oppression of women.

01:23

And hurricanes. Everyone hates hurricanes. On the other hand, there’s something else

01:29

about modernism … it’s very… monochromatic.

01:33

You see… modernism is mostly populated with… white males. Zora Neale Hurston is neither.

01:40

Janie’s problems, as a black woman, don’t fall under the category of Stuff White People

01:46

Like.

01:47

They don’t even fall under the category of Stuff White People in the 1920s Cared About.

01:54

The stuffy modernists were more renaissance than Harlem Renaissance.

02:03

In that sense, Janie’s story isn’t the same as Ezra Pound’s, Eliot’s, or Thomas

02:08

Hardy’s.

02:09

Eliot was too busy cramming as many confusing words as possible into The Waste Land to be

02:13

bothered with race relations and gender oppression.

02:20

And Pound and Hardy were probably shopping for sweater vests.

02:26

Or maybe we just need a different perspective. Perhaps the narrow lens of modernism isn’t

02:31

the right way to look at this novel.

02:33

Hurston wasn't just trying to overcome spiritual emptiness… she was trying to overcome the

02:38

double-oppression of being black and being a woman in the early twentieth century.

02:43

These were issues that no one who wasn’t black and female cared about, so it was quite

02:49

a weight on her shoulders.

02:53

She might have been a modernist, but at the same time, she was challenging the modern

02:57

emphasis placed on white men and white male problems.

03:01

So is this book like all other modernist works because it deals with depressing existential

03:06

conflicts?

03:07

Or is it in a different category because it discusses problems that your typical white

03:11

male modernist couldn’t care less about?

03:13

Or is Hurston a modernist who is challenging other modernists?

03:17

Shmoop amongst yourselves.

03:18

[1]I'm sure this is 100% accurate—or at least it obscures some of what's really important

03:22

about Modernism.

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