Summer reading response to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Hurston, Zora Neale

Essay by vietling504High School, 10th grade May 2004

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

1.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York, New York: J.B. Lippincott Inc., Ã" 1990.

2A.

The main theme of Their Eyes Were Watching God is segregation of colors. There were a variety of situations in which the Caucasians were separated from the African Americans. For instance, in the start of the story, Janie begins to tell her life to Pheoby with her childhood. When she was a little girl, she didnâ ®t realize that she had dark skin until she had actually seen herself in the picture. It wasnâ ®t until then that she observed how differently African Americans were handled. After the hurricane, the theme is most expressively depicted, when the people are burying the dead. While the lighter bodies were

placed in single pine boxes for burial, the darker black bodies were carelessly thrown into a shared grave with the others.

2B.

The theme can relate to individuals my age because there is still some discrimination in this country, regardless if we have liberty of not. Not only is there bias amongst nationality, but also amongst sex, age, so on and so forth. It happens everyday, especially in jobs and in schools. Some people "hate" on certain others, meaning they have a grudge against them for simple reasons, sometimes dealing with their backgrounds or just by the way they look. Itâ ®s a shame how jobs would rather hire men than women or hire people based on their ethnic backgrounds. People still classify others with prejudice, even when they are of the same culture. In public, I cannot even pass by a person without them saying something like "ching chong ni nong" or something similar to that. We are all humans, with more similarities than differences from...