The Wisdom of Our Inner Voice

Although Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was published in 1937, and largely dismissed for a variety of political reasons, I fell into the story as if it had been written for contemporary times. Janie Crawford, a black woman, “saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.” (Chapter 2)  She is a woman who listens to her inner voice, struggles to actualize her self through the quagmire of relationships with men, women and society.

Through her sufferings and triumphs, Janie survives and grows into a rich, yet imperfect human being, a woman who begins to understand the world through the poetry and wisdom of her inner voice. Politics may change and influence how a work of rare beauty is critiqued, but like the protagonist Janie, the realization of what lies on the written page is always in the eye of the beholder.