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BLACK BOY AND THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

I. Abstract
This paper examines the drastic differences in literary themes and styles of Richard
Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, two African--American writers from the early 1900's. The
portrayals of African-American women by each author are contrasted based on specific
examples from their two most prominent novels, Native Son by Wright, and Their Eves Were
Watching God by Hurston. 
With the intent to explain this divergence, the autobiographies of both authors (Black
Boy and Dust Tracks on a Road) are also analyzed. Particular examples from the lives of
each author are cited to demonstrate the contrasting lifestyles and experiences that
created these disparities, drawing parallels between the authors' lives and creative
endeavors. 
It becomes apparent that Wright's traumatic experiences involving females and Hurston's
identity as a strong, independent and successful Black artist contributed significantly
to the ways in which they chose to depict African-American women and what goals they
adhered to in reaching and touching a specific audience with the messages contained in
their writing. 
Out of bitterness and rage caused by centuries of oppression at the hands of the white
population, there has evolved in the African-American community, a strong tradition of
protest literature. Several authors have gained prominence for delivering fierce messages
of racial inequality through literature that is compelling, efficacious and articulate.
One of the most notable authors in this classification of literature is Richard Wright,
author of several pieces including his most celebrated novel, Native Son, and his
autobiography, Black Boy. 
A man violently opposed to and deeply enraged by the injustice that is at the roots of
the African-American struggle, Wright is also known for his harsh criticisms of any
author whose work, in his opinion, downplays or completely ignores the plight faced by
the African-American community. One such author, whose portrayal of the African-American
woman as a heroine, thus stirring Wright's bitterest and deepest aversion and
condemnation, is African-American female, Zora Neale Hurston. Like Wright, Hurston, also
his contemporary, was a prolific artist, yet in a strikingly different style, and with
drastically different thematic messages, she strayed from the tradition of bitterness and
rage embraced by Wright. 
The study of African-American protest literature is useful in comprehending the depth of
the racial plight in America. Richard Wright (1908-1960) and Zora Neale Hurston
(1891-1960), two African-American authors sharing the same literary era, then, might be
expected to produce similar works, if not in plot, then perhaps, and probably more
likely, in theme. 
Typical African-American literature of this time period, especially that of Black males,
carries strong messages of the injustice of racism, oppression and inequality in all
facets of society. Zora Neale Hurston, however, chose an inherently different path. In
the words of Missy Dehn Kubitschek, Their Eyes Were Watching God provides an emblem of
Hurston's withdrawal from political concerns in favor of personal relationships (19). 
This course of action has warranted the intense criticism of Black males, among the
harshest of whom was Richard Wright. In a review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Wright
contends that Miss Hurston can write; but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality
that has dogged Negro expression. 
A major divergence of literary style is discovered when comparing both Hurston's and
Wright's representations of female characters in their major novels, Their Eyes Were
Watching God and Native Son, respectively. This deviation is almost entirely specific to
the authors' portrayal of African-American women. While a female is the central character
of Hurston's novel, Wright consistently portrays women as hindrances to the ability of
the African-American male to succeed despite the constraints created by white society.
In order to discover some of the underlying origins of the very different gender roles in
these two novels, a complementary comparison of the autobiographies of Wright and
Hurston, Black Boy and Dust Tracks on a Road, respectively, is especially useful. 
To contrast the gender-related themes employed by Wright and Hurston, and to subsequently
analyze the roots of these differences, is to create a portrait of two drastically
dissenting views and literary techniques. These views have contributed to the creation of
two distinct bodies of literature in the African-American community. The answer to this
gender question can only begin to adequately analyze the factors that caused two
astoundingly talented African-American artists of the same time period to create
literature that is so vehemently contradictory. 
V. Janie
Zora Neale Hurston, in keeping with themes dealing with personal relationships and the
female search for self-awareness in Their Eyes Were Watching God , has created a heroine
in Janie Crawford. In fact, the female perspective is introduced immediately. Now, women
forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't
want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly (Their
Eyes 1). 
On the very first page of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the contrast is made between men
and women, thus initiating Janie's search for her own dreams and foreshadowing the female
quest theme of the rest of the novel. Detailing her quest for self-discovery and
self-definition, it [Their Eyes] celebrates her [Janie] as an artist who enriches
Eatonville by communicating her understanding (Kubitschek 22). 
Janie is a Black woman who asserts herself beyond expectation, with a persistence that
characterizes her search for the love that she dreamed of as a girl. She understands the
societal status that her life has handed her, yet she is determined to overcome this, and
she is resentful toward anyone or anything that interferes with her quest for happiness.
So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up
because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman
is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see, opines Janie's grandmother in an attempt to
justify the marriage that she has arranged for her granddaughter (Their Eyes 14). This
excerpt establishes the existence of the inferior status of women in this society, a
status which Janie must somehow overcome in order to emerge a heroine. This societal
constraint does not deter Janie from attaining her dream. She knew now that marriage did
not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman (Their Eyes 24). 
Janie is not afraid to defy the expectations that her grandmother has for her life,
because she realizes that her grandmother's antiquated views of women as weaklings in
need of male protection even at the expense of a loving relationship, constitute
limitations to her personal potential. She hated her grandmother . . . .Nanny had taken
the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon  (Their Eyes 85-86). 
Nevertheless, Janie is not afraid to follow her instincts, even when this means leaving
her first husband to marry her second - without a divorce. Janie hurried out of the front
gate and turned south. Even if Joe was not there waiting for her, the change was bound to
do her good (Their Eyes 31). The gossip that spreads throughout her small town when she
leaves with a younger man - after the death of her second husband leaves her a widow -
does not slow her down in the least. 
Finally, she finds happiness with Tea Cake, and it means so much more, because she has
decided to go through with it on her own. Discovering the two things everybody's got to
do fuh theyselves, is Janie's personal victory (Their Eyes 183). They got tuh go tuh God,
and they got to find out about livin' fuh theyselves, are the sentiments shared by Janie
once her journey is over (Their Eyes 183). Embodying a theme of the novel, this discovery
directly contradicts the anti - religion themes employed by Wright. 
Hurston has portrayed a female character as an emergent heroine, a creator of her own
destiny, and one who has mastered the journey for self-awareness. Says Mary Helen
Washington in the Foreword of Their Eyes Were Watching God, for most Black women readers
discovering Their Eyes for the first time, what was most compelling was the figure of
Janie Crawford - powerful, articulate, self-reliant, and radically different from any
woman character they had ever before encountered in literature. Janie Crawford is
defiant; she defies men, but most importantly, she defies our own preconceived notions of
what the role of an African-American woman should be in modern literature. 
VIII. Conclusion
Richard Wright was adamant in his belief that the African-American intellectuals had a
responsibility to all of America to use their talent to convey the suffering of their
people to the white world, to collaborate with the white world in the fight against war.

In criticizing writers that did not adhere to his ideals, Wright virtually deemed the
Black female experience as nonexistent. He attributed this largely to the lack of
political themes and racial tensions in the works of many female Black authors, most
notably Hurston. 
In choosing to focus on topics other than the racial plight (as well as those that
revolve around women), the Black female was often determined to be a traitor by the Black
male, who considered her work to be in direct opposition to his own. 
Initially, it seems rather ironic that two authors who are considered contemporaries,
should create such drastically different pieces of literature. One might expect both
Wright and Hurston to possess a need to express, not only their anger at, but also their
interpretations of, the oppression that plagued them, their families and their
colleagues. 
This was Wright's mission; he considered it his obligation to inform the masses, to
educate them, and in doing so, the traumas of his childhood emerged in his work. In the
process of conveying the horror of the racial discrimination that threatened his own
manhood, Wright included the influences of women as further impediments to his
development. Careful analysis of Wright's autobiography strongly suggests that these
portrayals of women paralleled the personalities of real women in his life. 
It is interesting then to examine what differences in Hurston's life urged her to create
literature that celebrates the African-American female and vibrantly portrays her search
for identity apart from the male community. Hurston was one of these strong women - one
who survived adversity, one who survived as an artist, one who survived without defining
her identity based on that of a male companion. This, she decided, was worthy of written
interpretation. 
Wright was decidedly unable to accept the African-American female as an individual - as a
feeling, thinking and wondering person who had the ability and often the desire to exist
entirely separate from his life, or that of any other male. He never observed an
independent female role model and was forced to identify the only women in his life with
negative forces and ill will. 
Wright and Hurston existed in separate, and very different worlds, resulting in their
failure to concur on what was an appropriate portrayal of the African-American woman in
modern literature. Hurston's consciousness of the female experience, especially that of
the African-American, is a major factor that sets her apart from her male contemporaries,
especially Wright, whose own failure to acknowledge this (due largely to his upbringing)
fueled his most intense criticism.