Yesterday, I finished reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I cried at the end, and when I looked closer, I realised they were tears of joy—not sorrow. Joy because Janie lived a full life. Not an easy one, not a perfect one, but a full one.
I don’t really want to dwell on structure, genre, or the book’s place in the literary canon. I just want to talk about how it made me feel. So I won’t call this a review—think of it as a reflection.
As someone trying to read more books, especially by Black authors, Their Eyes Were Watching God came up as a suggestion. No one really explains why it’s considered a classic. But I understand now.
What I’ve found is that most “classics” are defined by things like literary technique, storytelling, form, or the impact they had in their time. But what makes this book a staple in literature, at least to me, is its message. And the beauty of it is: the book doesn’t beat you over the head with that message. It isn’t message-forward—but even if you resisted, it would be almost impossible not to take meaning from it.
On the surface, this is a tale of a Floridian woman—Janie—and her three marriages. But beneath that are layers of identity, class, beauty, race, relationships, and everything in between. These themes are heavy, but in the book, they don’t weigh the story down. Instead, they settle beneath the surface. What floats to the top is the meaning you make of it.
That’s because for Janie, these themes aren’t abstract—they’re woven into her daily life. They exist around her, and she moves through them. Hurston doesn’t make them the be-all and end-all of Janie’s narrative. As a result, one of the most powerful themes that rises to the surface is time—and how it shapes Janie’s exploration of love, self-agency, and understanding.
As I read, I kept asking myself when the seemingly inevitable moments would happen.
When will Janie leave Killicks? When will she confront Starks? When will she be with Tea Cake? When will she leave before the hurricane? Hurston doesn’t hand you these answers. She shows you that timing isn’t always clear until it’s already passed. And ultimately, you have to choose.
Timing is Everything
“Naw, it’s real. Ah couldn’t stand it if he wuz tuh quit me. Don’t know whut Ah’d do. He kin take most any lil thing and make summertime out of it when times is dull. Then we lives offa dat happiness he made till some mo’ happiness come along”
Janie, Chapter 16
This is one of the very few moments in the book where Janie openly expresses her feelings towards her husband— not out of reassurance, not in defence, or in denial. Janie is talking about Tea Cake and she credits him for her happiness, I think Janie is the source of a lot of that joy—although she realises this a lot later.
Tea Cake was Janie’s third husband, but the first one to make her laugh, win her over, the first one to listen and dance with her. Janie was Tea Cake’s person, not property. And after being married twice for stability and then status, she choses love with Tea Cake. And when the time came to protect herself, she chose life.
I think agency in Their Eyes Were Watching God isn’t bold or loud. Sometimes it looks like waiting. It’s quiet. It feels slow. But it arrives on time.
Janie leaves Killicks early, before her spirit is worn down. She challenges Joe Starks late, but powerfully—when his grip on her is weak. Janie follows Tea Cake impulsively, but the spontaneity brings her the greatest depth. She stays during the hurricane and that costs her everything.
Each decision that Janie makes throughout the book is questionable but I think each satisfies her. Its not clean or sure and Hurston shows us that agency isn’t about having choices but when those choices are made.
Time gives weight to action.
The Rhythm of Life
The book is a narration of Janie’s marriages as she tells all to her closefriend Phoeby Watson. So the bulk of the novel is actually a flashback. The structure of the book itself actually mirrors Janie’s life. Her first marriage is tole quickly— its brief, almost forgettable. Her second marriage to Starks is long, drawn out, heavy. And her time with Tea Cake is fast-paced, rich, and electric.
Hurston doesn’t give each relationship equal space—because they weren’t equal. She also doesn’t break the narrative, either. Janie’s story is told in one sitting, over one night. But within that telling, we move through nearly 30 years of her life.
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
Chapter 1
The rhythm of Janie’s storytelling matches the rhythm of her memory. What she lingers on, what she skips over, what she remembers most vividly—its all a reflection of what mattered most to her. And what mattered wasn’t just what happened, but how it felt.
I saw a TikTok comment that said something like, “Their Eyes Were Watching God will make you realise that men aren’t sh*t.” But I don’t think this story is really about men at all. Janie’s life doesn’t revolve around them—it moves through them. They aren’t the centre of her story, she is.
Especially when you consider that: “Women forget all those things they don’t want to remember…” Janie remembers feeling, she remembers freedom, she remembers love. If “the dream is the truth,” then Janie’s story isn’t about her husbands—it’s about the woman she dreamed of becoming, and the woman she became. Bar her first marriage, Janie’s truth is that she followed her heart in every decision she made.
It’s easy to look at her story and focus on the trauma—the loss, the heartbreak, the pain. But what stands out more to me is the fact that Janie lived. She had status, then gave it up. She had love, and she chose it—even though it meant risking everything. When the time came to protect her life, she did it. She returned home not empty, but full—with stories, with memories, with peace. And she told her story in her own words, on her own terms.
Finding Out About Livin’
“Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”
Janie, Chapter 19
That’s it. That’s the story. That’s the journey.
The book is so often discussed in terms of race, gender, class, colourism, and texturism—and rightly so. But what I connected to most was this inner work of living well. Janie learns how to live for herself. Not for her grandmother’s dreams. Not for society’s standards. Not for men’s validation. And that’s a quieter kind of revolution.
Thought the book a lot of characters spoke at Janie and around her but rarely to her. Miss Watson’s venting, the customers at the store, her husbands and their associates.She takes everything she hears—and she does something with it. In the way she tells her story to Pheoby, you can tell how much she’s held on to. She remembers the details. The silences. The noise.
Externally, she doesn’t always react. But internally, she holds her own opinions. Janie understands what parts of the world speak to her desires, her dreams and the parts that don’t. Janie has a beautiful ability to find meaning in chaos. She makes sense around the nonsense. And her fulfilment isn’t just romantic. It’s existential. She watches the horizon. She listens to her thoughts. She grows.
I cried not because it ended, but because it felt whole. She went through everything and still returned to herself, steady and glowing. So maybe the right time doesn’t exist in a moment, but in hindsight. Maybe it reveals itself through living.
Through risk.
Through heartbreak.
Through joy.
Their Eyes…
At first glance, the title Their Eyes Were Watching God can be a little enigmatic, but it becomes clearer by the time the hurricane rolls in. It comes from a line during that pivotal storm scene, when Janie, Tea Cake, and others are facing nature’s force:
They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
Chapter 18
I love I read the title of the book in a line, it scratches an itch that’s hard to reach. The title is a moment of reckoning, it’s a surrender. It speaks to the moment when humans realise they’re not in control, that there are forces—natural, divine, or otherwise—that they must reckon with. It’s about surrender, vulnerability, and looking to something bigger when the ground beneath you shifts. Its about time, too. When the moment comes, you either act or endure. Sometimes both.
The title captures what the whole novel quietly teaches us: that no matter what you’ve been told, what you’ve survived, or what you’ve dared to dream—there are still things you must come to understand on your own. You must go to God for yourself. And you must find out about living for yourself.
This book reminded me to be patient with my own becoming. That fulfilment doesn’t always arrive fast. That sometimes, you must move before you’re certain. And when you do, even the hardest endings can feel like peace.