From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Their Eyes Were Reading Three Books
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 17:57:55 GMT


                          Thursday, the 27th of August, 1992

As is my wont, and as has been my par (this year), I finished three books
last week: William Golding's _Lord of the Flies_, Robert MacNeil's
_Wordstruck_, and Zora Neale Hurston's _Their Eyes Were Watching
God_. Since I liked all three, and yet they are so very different
that I liked them in different ways, I'd like to compare a bit
and comment. But, since I've already said a bunch about _Wordstruck_
(or at least I've typed in long passages from it that I particularly
liked) and since I'm not going to add anything to criticism of
Golding, I'd like to focus on Hurston, returning in the end to
the context of all three.

First of all, I would like to reiterate my thanks to Terrance
(and to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese by way of Dinesh D'Souza) for
recommending the book. There is nothing better about r.a.b.
(besides the interesting people hereupon) than the recommendations
one gets. And this book is lovely.

Second, I'd like to confess that my impression of the provenance of
the book was all wrong. That is, I had said something like ``Hurston
was only yesterday'' in terms of proposing her for canonization.
``Yesterday'' is a relative term, and I'd stand by it from the perspective
of my reading ancient Greeks and Romans, or from the perspective of
what I'd understand by what merits inclusion in the Great Books set.
But, I had heard of _Their Eyes_ before Terrance recommended it, and my
vague impression had been that it was written, say, sometime in
the sixties. Zora Neale Hurston died in 1960. _Their Eyes_
was published in 1937. On the other hand, it's interesting
that the discovery of the book as an object of critical study
really dates from the mid-1970s. My paperback edition
(Perennial Library, Harper & Row) begins with a Foreword
by Mary Ellen Washington and ends with an Afterword by Henry
Louis Gates, Jr.. Basically, they say that _Their Eyes_ went out of print
early on and stayed out of print until, in the early 70s, black
feminist scholars began reading it and teaching it (they were
led by Alice Walker, who made a pilgrimage to Florida to go find
and mark Hurston's unmarked grave), and it was not until _Their
Eyes_ had reached the top of a list of books that the MLA petitioned
publishers to bring back in print that it was reissued in 1978,
and it's stayed in print ever since. The other thing that's interesting
is that both Washington and Gates agree that part of the reason _Their
Eyes_ went out of print in the first place, is that black male criticism,
most notably that of Richard Wright, gave it an unfavourable reception.
Basically, _Their Eyes_ is not a woe-is-downtrodden-me political tract,
but a lyric novel with universal theme and appeal, and Wright didn't like it
because this universality ran counter to Wright's own program of political
engaement. Anyway, though _Their Eyes_ is as old as Hemingway or _Finnegans
Wake_ or Richard Wright, its influence does seem to be much more
recent than that.

I said I like it, but first let me say what *I* think is its weakness
(this is something no doubt that could be argued into a strength in a
different mood). I think it's weak on plot. Basically, the novel
is the story of Janie's progress through three marriages, the first
with a man who wants her for a beast of burden, the second with a
man who wants her to be a decoration, and the third with a man who
loves and respects her. And she is transformed thereby into diplaying
self-confidence and self-assurance by the end (it seems to me she always
had self-respect). OK, first I think one could complain that the plot
is basically the cliche Quest for Mr. Right. But, since the story (begins
and) ends after the death of Mr. Right, it's much more *about* Janie's
inner life. So, this complaint I'd regard as superficial and null. But,
in the mechanical workings of the plot, I think it creaks a lot.
It's not what I'd call ``tight'', where each and every event is
sprung in some necessary way from the last. For instance, I don't
understand why there's the hurricane. Or, the scene in the middle of
the flood with Janie trying to keep herself from drowning by
hanging on to the cow's tail, with a mad dog attacking her from atop
the cow's back, seems phantasmagorically improbable to me. Tea Cake
saves her by killing the dog, but gets bitten himself. Then there's a
point where, after having lost all their possessions in the storm,
they go out and buy a rifle and a pistol again, and I couldn't help
feeling this wasn't motivated by anything other than needing the
weapons for the following scene where she has to kill him before he,
in his diseased madness, can kill her. Anyway, I think there's a tightness
of plot that _Their Eyes_ doesn't have.

But what I think _Their Eyes_ does have is a lyric beauty that is
magnificent.  Consider the opening:
  Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some
  they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the
  horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns
  his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.
  This is the life of men.
     Now, 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.
    So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from
  burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the
  pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated;
  the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.
     The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone,
  but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time to hear
  things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless
  conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their
  skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt
  powerful and human. They became lords of sound and lesser things. They
  passed notions through their mouths. They sat in judgment.
    Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had
  stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their
  minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with
  questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A
  mood come alive. Words walking without masters; walking altogether
  like harmony in a song. [pp. 1,2]

There's a poetry to this, I think. The way it's just at the edge of
myth, personifying the sun, universalizing the Watcher. A hint of the
opening of something like _Anna Karenina_, the double entendre of
``men'' and ``man'' in the first paragraph. And just its
lovely sound.

Try this central passage when the hurricane comes:
  Sometime that night the winds came back. Everything in the world
  had a strong rattle, sharp and short like Stew Beef vibrating
  the drum head near the edge with his fingers. By morning Gabriel
  was playing the deep tones in the center of the drum. So when
  Janie looked out of her door she saw the drifting mists gathered
  in the west---that cloud field of the sky---to arm themselves
  with thunders and march forth against the world.
    It woke up old Okechobee and the monster began to roll in his
  bed. Began to roll and complain like a peevish world on a grumble.
  The folks in the quarters and the people in the big houses further
  around the shore heard the big lake and wondered. The people felt
  uncomfortable but safe because there were the seawalls to chain
  the senseless monster in his bed. The folks let the people do the
  thinking. If castles thought themsleves secure, the cabins needn't
  worry. Their decision was already made as always. Chink up your
  cracks, shiver in your wet beds and wait on the mercy of the Lord.
  The bossman might have the thing stopped before morning anyway. It is
  so easy to be hopeful in the day time when you can see the things
  you wish on. But it was night, it stayed night. Night was striding
  across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands.
    A big burst of thunder and lightning that trampled over the roof
  of the house. So Tea Cake and Motor stopped playing. Motor looked
  up in his angel-looking way and said, ``Big Massa draw him chair
  upstairs.''
    ``Ah'm glad y'all stop dat crap-shootin' even if it wasn't for
  money,'' Janie said. ``Ole Massa is doin' *His* work now. Us oughta
  keep quiet.''
    They huddled closer and stared at the door. They just didn't use
  another part of their bodies, and they didn't look at anything but
  the door. The time was past for asking the white folks what to
  look for through that door. Six eyes were questioning *God*.
    Through the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things
  hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity. A baby rabbit,
  terror ridden, squirmed through a hole in the floor and squatted
  off there in the shadows against the wall, seeming to know that
  nobody wanted its flesh at such a time. And the lake got madder
  and madder with only its dikes between them and him.
    In a little wind-lull Tea Cake touched Janie and said, ``Ah
  reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo' big house 'way
  from such as dis, don't yuh?''
    ``Naw.''
    ``Naw?''
    ``Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't
  keer where you're at. Ah'm wid mah husband in uh storm, dat's all.''
    ``Thanky, Ma'am. But 'sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You wouldn't
  git mad at me for draggin' yuh heah?''
    ``Naw. We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin see de
  light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many
  people never see de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin' round and God opened
  de door.''
    He dropped to the floor and put his head in her lap. ``Well
  then, Janie, you meant whut you didn't say, 'cause Ah never *knowed*
  you wuz so satisfied wid me lak dat. Ah kinda thought--''
    The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for
  the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties,
  their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking
  if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to
  be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.
  [pp. 150,151]

The dialogue is all in black southern dialect, and there's a switching
in and out of it that Hurston uses to great effect. It's musical
and polyphonically so. And the level of myth, elements from folklore, and
the music combine to make me suspect the lack of tightness in the plot
is more than compensated for by the setting of striking tableaux. The
phantasmagorical scene with the mad dog, for instance, is like a
dumb-show depiction of Janie's life journey. It springs more from the poetry
than from narrative.

Anyway, I said I liked all three of the books I read last week in
different ways. _Wordstruck_ gave me most of myself. That is, I found
in it a kindred spirit talking about living and growing up
with books. I would give the nod for profundity to _Lord
of the Flies_. The question it asks, about how thin the veneer of
civilization really is, is deeply disturbing. For beauty of lyric
creation, beauty of language, the prize goes to _Their Eyes Were
Watching God_.

Well, bye y'all fo' uh couple uh weeks.

            Mike Morris
      (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)