Their Eyes are Watching God Death and Rebirth
On Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, is book witch begins at the end of the story, when Janie, the main character, finds her way back to her hometown. ... There is a big theme that constantly plays out through out the book and it is Death and Rebirth. It can both mean, to me, literally and symbolically, since there does not have to be an actual death nor actual birth, but the idea that something arises out of the cause of something else. ... This was because she has showed that she was ready for a relation, in Nanny’s eyes. ... She goes and prays to go that she has the best she could but it is now in god’s hands, “Lawd, you know mah heart. ... With this last passage of Nanny, she dies and then, the cycle of death and rebirth starts. ... This shows how the actual death of the grandmother initiated the cycle, and by her death came Janie’s realization, in a sense it was her rebirth, of the way she thought, the way she saw marriage. Afterwards you see how the marriage ends and how the theme of death and rebirth takes place again, when the marriage of Logan and Janie dies out and Janie leaves and sets out with another man named Joe Starks, nicknamed Jody. This is seen as a death of the marriage and a new beginning with another man. ... Jody had a good funeral it “was the finest thing Orange County has ever seen with Negro eyes,” (Hurston, 88). ... Again, the death of Jody brought a rebirth in Janie, she was free again, and she was not confined to rags, and was not, anymore, prevented from talking to the people in porch of the store, little things like this can really change the was you see someone. But also with Jody’s death came sorrow to Janie, because she was a lone. ... Throughout this story you see how a lot of event keep leading to drastic changes in Janie’s life, firs, Nanny forcing her to get marries, then leaving with Jody, then the death of Jody, then meting and falling in love with Tea Cake, finally Tea Cake’s death.