Their Eyes Were Watching God: Chapters 17-20

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

So far, you have read how the first two years of Janie and Tea Cake's marriage has developed.

Briefly write down an evaluation of the status of Janie and Tea Cake's marriage in your notes.

In this lesson, you will discover how Janie and Tea Cake's relationship is concluded and how Janie ends up back in Eatonville, which opens the novel's beginning.

When Zora Neale Hurston's book was published in 1937, it received generally positive reviews from white reviewers. However, the book was publicly ridiculed by two prominent African American writers of the era: Richard Wright and Alain Locke.

By the 1930s, many African American writers focused on writing protest literature. Whereas the African American literature of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance embraced various views of the Black experience in American society, 1930s literature began to rail more pointedly against racial inequality.

Writers such as Wright and Locke argued that the only themes worthy of exploration in African American literature examined the oppression of African Americans — particularly men — by whites. Any African American literature that did not focus on this issue was dismissed as frivolous or pandering to a white audience.

Read this excerpt [from "Between Laughter and Tears," a review by Richard Wright of two novels about African American life; The New Masses, 5 October 1937:]. As you do, answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.

• According to Wright, what is problematic with the language Hurston uses in her novel?
• In Wright's opinion, why does Hurston's novel cater to a white audience?
• What is the problem with Hurston's use of folklore according to Locke?

After answering, consider these next questions as well.

• How do you think readers in the 1930s — both Black and white — felt about the novel?
• Do you agree with Locke and Wright's novel reviews? Why or why not?

Read Chapters Seventeen through Twenty to finish the novel.

If you do not have a copy, you may access Their Eyes Were Watching God online.

As you read, note the events happening "down on the muck" in the Everglades. Write down at least ten events that occur in the novel's final chapters.

After reading and taking notes, move to the Got It? section to explore the issues of the novel's last chapters in more detail.