Black Folklore in Zora Neale Hurtson's Their Eyes Were Watching God

Abstract

This research studies Janie’s struggle for cultural identity in Their Eyes Were Watching God through black folklore, southern dialect, black symbolism, cultural embodiment of voodoo, black setting and celebration of native culture. This study reflects the political philosophy of Harlem Renaissance which is an awakening of Black Culture. Janie as the protest against the western domination and white externality celebrates black life and culture independently of oppositional definitions. It focuses the roles of myth and social institutions, the re-inscribed social roles and norms, literal and figurative death of the black and rebirth as well to demonstrate the affluence of southern life. Through the hearts and minds of those who read Janie’s story can trace the subjective agency over her identity crisis and understands what it means to struggle. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel about people who are amid of white threshold waiting for the suspension in contradiction of being free. Their collective memory of slavery resulted psychic damage, although the quest is guided to as alive as a pear tree in blossom which supplied with their brave beliefs and self-efficacy ultimately moved to the front yard from the backyard. Deeply rooted injustice as a world system has been uprooted and the indifferent human sufferings and exploited black lives are migrated from their suffocation to the ventilated free life.