Their Eyes Were Watching God is about porch dwellers, a prodigal daughter, and the place where they congregate to create their common world-the porch. “It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things.” Zora Neale Hurston’s literary classic reveals the still but tenacious soul of Janie in a continual striving with the “cacophony of the outside world.” This world consists of a community of workers, laborers, and actors. To Janie these are neighbors, family members, and friends. To Hannah Arendt these categories in society describe The Human Condition. In this seminal text, Arendt describes the capacity of man to act and the potential within human affairs for new beginnings. These specific aspects of culture: work, labor, and action, reveal the interaction of humans with one another and their ability to construct a common world. This essay examines the creation of the common world in Their Eyes Were Watching God, identifies the three spheres of human activity and locates the place these take place. Finally, I show how these contribute in constructing a world where the protagonist, Janie, inhabits, matures, and grows.
About the presenterRaquel M Robvais
Southern University A&M College, Bachelor of Science 2000 Louisiana State University, Masters of Arts 2013 Master’s Thesis: “To Speak As a Human, a Modern and as an American: Blues Rhetoric in Cornel West’s Prophetic Pragmatism” Louisiana State University, Ph.D. Student 2013-present Louisiana State University, Assistantship 2013-present