Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
Curriculum Unit
Dorothy M. Hill
Contributor
Mary Anne Kovacs
i
www.centerforlearning.org
Curriculum Unit Author
Dorothy M. Hill, who earned her D.A. at Carnegie-Mellon University, has distinguished herself in the secondary English field and is the recipient of numerous
awards. She also teaches at the university level and has authored The Center for
Learning novel/drama curriculum units Song of Solomon, A Doll’s House/Hedda
Gabler, and Frankenstein.
Editorial Team
Mary Anne Kovacs, M.A.
Rose Schaffer, M.A.
Mary Jane Simmons, M.A.
Bernadette Vetter, M.A.
Cover Design
Krina K. Walsh, B.S.I.D.
Copyright © 2008 The Center for Learning. Reprinted 2012.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Printed on recycled paper.
The worksheets in this book may be reproduced for academic purposes only and
not for resale. Academic purposes refer to limited use within classroom and teaching settings only.
ISBN 978-1-56077-879-0
Contents
Page
Handouts
Introduction ............................................................................... v
Teacher Notes ........................................................................... vii
1 Meeting Janie ...................................................................... 1 ............................... 1, 2, 3
2 The Tree of Life .................................................................... 7 ................................... 4, 5
3 An Image Shattered ........................................................... 13 ................................... 6, 7
4 Mr. and Mrs. Mayor ........................................................... 17 ................................... 8, 9
5 A Glance from God............................................................. 21 ......................... 10, 11, 12
6 The Everglades .................................................................. 27 ............................... 13, 14
7 Surviving the Flood ............................................................ 33 ............................... 15, 16
8 The Crisis .......................................................................... 37 ..................................... 17
9 Loss................................................................................... 41 ..................................... 18
10 Like a Pharaoh to His Tomb ............................................... 45 ............................... 19, 20
Supplementary Materials
Creative Projects ................................................................ 48
Making a Portfolio .............................................................. 49
Critics’ Comments ............................................................. 51
Writing Topics.................................................................... 52
Quiz .................................................................................. 53
Quiz Answer Key................................................................ 54
Test ................................................................................... 55
Suggested Responses to Test Questions ............................. 57
Bibliography ............................................................................. 59
iii
iv
Introduction
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s third published full-length work (1937), was written in the middle of a career
rich in recognition and variety. Her work of writing fiction and essays,
researching black communities, and conducting field studies in anthropology was rewarded by an honorary doctorate and other awards.
Zora died, however, in poverty and obscurity. It was another writer,
Alice Walker, who, discovering Zora’s grave in 1973, launched a Hurston
revival which has lasted to this day.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is valuable as a notable and historic
example of black fiction, a powerful evocation of feminine self-knowledge,
and a superlative reading experience.
Materials in this guide include a complete set of lessons, lists of
essay questions, additional activities, and, as a supplement, directions
for fashioning a portfolio.
The virtual reality of a novel may lead the reader into happenings never yet experienced. It is better to live through a hurricane in
fiction’s pages than to suffer from calamitous winds. In this novel Zora
draws her readers into the pain of growing up without parents and the
disappointment of loveless marriages. Quite as vivid, however, are the
camaraderie of a work crew’s labor and play in the Everglades and the
days and months of true love.
Hurston’s heroine, Janie, does more than live through her experiences. As she retells her life’s events to her friend Pheoby, Janie
meditates on the meaning of the past, knowing that facts are useless
without understanding.
Hurston, the spellbinder, enriches her narration of Janie’s life with
interpretation. The singing style, rhythmical and euphonious, is filled
with metaphor, an understanding of which appeals to new depths in
the reader’s imagination.
Janie is unforgettable. At sixteen she awakens to life’s sweetness.
Then she develops from romantic to realist to seer. The reader may
well share Pheoby’s belief that she grows just from listening to Janie’s
story.
Janie is modern in her feminist sense of herself, her way of moving
on when circumstances would otherwise condemn her to an inauthentic
life. She attends to the movements of her own consciousness even when
the result causes her pain.
v
The values stressed in this novel are
•
the importance of choosing life, being involved in life, rather than
being a bystander
•
the growth of inner strength with one’s advance in self-knowledge, as one realizes that self-awareness and detachment are
both necessary qualities
•
The contrast between a practical business outlook and the independence of a creative spirit
•
three special human concepts
—resilience helps one cope with loss and disaster
—men and women are of equal worth
—one needs to be valued and accepted as oneself
•
the profit gained from the guidance of others, but the necessity
of not being unduly subservient to others
•
the importance of having a full life but also of experiencing
something more
•
the spiritual relationship of individuals to the natural world
•
the presence of God in people’s lives
vi
Teacher Notes
This novel uses two literary techniques with which students need
to be familiar:
•
the frame device for telling a story (A narrator begins by declaring, “This is the experience I have undergone,” and ends by
summarizing in a return to the present.)
•
the use of dialect to establish a sense of intimacy between reader
and speaker, implying the idea, “This is how I talk; this is the
language of my people.”
Zora Neale Hurston separates her own literary, narrative voice, which
uses standard English, from the dialogue of the characters, who speak
in the accents and vocabulary common to their locality.
Throughout the reading, students should be able to do the following:
1. recognize and remember the frame inside which the action is set
2. move with understanding from the standard English of the
author’s narration to the dialect English of the characters
3. analyze character development; recognize where it deepens
enough for the reader to meet what seems to be a real person
4. distinguish realism from fantasy in the narration to recognize
when the characters are spinning off, as they talk, into another
world
5. understand the connotations suggested by the figurative language which is so rich a part of the novel; see that metaphors
underline the awareness of Janie’s understanding of people and
Pheoby’s understanding of Janie
Portfolio writing is an interesting and valuable way for students to
develop their perceptions of literature and their understanding of themselves. It is explained in this guide as an activity which may expand to
a greater degree as needed, depending in part on the independence of
the student and the receptivity of the teacher.
Separating the portfolio directions to the student into reading, writing, format, presentation, and evaluation is meant to give some form to
the portfolio work for both student and teacher. Naturally, the plans
will be modified according to class needs.
Reading assignments for Their Eyes Were Watching God are as follows:
Chapters 1–4 for Lesson 2
Chapters 5–6 for Lesson 3
Chapters 7–9 for Lesson 4
Chapters 10–13 for Lesson 5
Chapters 14–17 for Lesson 6
Chapter 18 for Lesson 7
Chapter 19 for Lesson 8
Reread chapter 19 for Lesson 9
Chapter 20 for Lesson 10
Answers will vary unless otherwise indicated. Students may need
additional paper to complete some handouts.
vii
viii
Lesson 1
Meeting Janie
2. Have students put the scenario into writing either as a class effort or as a series of
group efforts. Distribute Handout 2.
Objectives
•
•
•
To approach this vivid story with curiosity and interest, accepting the fact that it
contains elements in common with our own
experience
3. Have students share the results of Handout
2 with the class by reading the scenarios
aloud.
To study carefully the frame of the story as
it is laid out in chapter 1 so that the rest of
the narrative will be seen as existing inside
that frame
4. Have students read chapter 1 silently.
When they have finished, elicit responses
and questions. Lead them to recognize the
use of dialect and the contrast with the
author’s poetic narrative voice, as well as
Janie’s status as a person returning to
share her story of survival.
To form some early opinions about Janie’s
nature so that her later actions can be accounted for against this background
Notes to the Teacher
5. Distribute Handout 3, and direct small
groups to complete the exercise.
Two facts of Janie’s return to her home are
worth remembering: that she has been greatly
fulfilled by passing beyond the horizon of this
town—people who never leave, never grow in
that special way from the experience of being a
stranger somewhere else—and that she knows
the meaning of her ordeal. She is not merely
retelling her experience; she has studied its
significance and is ready to communicate it.
The continuous narrative gift with which Janie
tells her story and the power of her interior life
are established in this first chapter. We learn
to anticipate not only the newest adventure but
also the writer’s interpretation of the action.
Suggested Responses:
1. The narrative voice is relaxed, with
perfect control of both language and
situation. Images and figures of speech
abound.
2. Men seem to be big dreamers, with their
hopes on the far horizon, and are often
disappointed. Women remember what
they want to remember; they identify
the dream with reality and pursue it.
3. Paragraph 3 indicates that Janie survived
a situation in which many people drowned,
perhaps a flood. Imagery stresses the
condition of the casualties.
In this lesson, students focus on the frame,
in which a survivor returns to tell a story.
They then read chapter 1 of the novel and become acquainted with Janie, as well as with
the contrasting voices of the narrator and the
characters. Attention is given to the challenges
and values of dialect as an asset in creating
vivid local color. To complete the optional activity, students need art materials.
4. A few key images clearly depict the
condition of the bloated bodies. The sun
is personified. In the fifth paragraph,
the conversation is an instrument of
torture and even murder.
5. With the day’s work behind them, the
people come alive and empowered; they
are judges, and the object of their judgment is Janie.
Procedure
1. Announce that this is a story about a survivor. Set the stage for chapter 1 and the
frame of the story by having students read
and discuss Handout 1, which asks them
to imagine a situation like Janie’s.
6. Hurston painstakingly presents the
people’s dialect; readers can actually
hear the conversation and are drawn
into it. (Note: You may want to have
volunteers read aloud various sections
of the dialogue. Depending on their
1
backgrounds, students will differ widely
in their ease with and responses to the
dialect. Point out that in everyday speech,
we all elide words so that they sound
very different from what they look like
when written in standard English—“I
dunno”; “How are yuh?”)
7. Pheoby and Janie are old friends;
Janie has been gone for a year and a
half. Janie seems to have run off with
a younger man she calls Tea Cake. It
seems as if he has died. Their relationship was a good one; the people are
wrong in thinking he was just after her
money. Janie knows that she has been
on a real adventure in life; Pheoby is
eager for a vicarious adventure.
8. The night begins as “fresh” and “young”;
as Janie tells her story, it becomes
“monstropolous.”
6. Direct students to read chapters 2–4 of Their
Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for
Lesson 2.
Optional Activity
Create visuals, either representational or
abstract, to depict chapter 1. Share your
work with the class.
2
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 1
Handout 1
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Survivors
Directions: Read the following information. Use the graphic organizer to brainstorm possibilities.
Literature is full of stories in which one person who has been through an
ordeal returns to the place that he or she knows. Think about the messenger
in the Book of Job who declares in chapter 1, “I only am escaped alone to tell
thee.”
Imagine some situation in your world in which a person like that messenger—a survivor of a crash, a refugee, a combatant in a military action, a crime
victim, etc.—returns to your city or neighborhood. How would people react to this
survivor? Would they be curious? resentful? uninterested? fearful?
What about the survivor? What would he or she think about the contrast between the life he or she observes now and the life he or she has experienced?
Ordeal
Others Involved
Survivor
Means of Survival
Audience
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3
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 1
Handout 2
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Scenario—The Survivor Returns
Directions: Using Handout 1, discuss among all the members of the class a possible series of
actions in a scenario. As one class member makes notes on the board, decide on the facts in the
scenario. Take notes below as you think through the action. Add some of your own ideas.
1. Event from which the survivor escaped
2. Survivor (identity, age, sex, physical description)
3. Location to which the survivor escaped
4. Other characters (names, descriptions)
5. Sample dialogue
6. Notes on further action
7. Survivor’s closing words (comments about the return and about memories of the past)
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
4
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 1
Handout 3
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Meeting Janie
Directions: Use the following questions to process chapter 1 of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
1. Reread the first five paragraphs of the chapter. How would you describe the narrative
voice?
2. According to the narrator, what are some essential differences between men and women?
3. What do we learn of the ordeal which Janie survived?
4. How does the narrator use figurative language to convey intense impressions?
5. What does the narrator stress about the people in the town?
6. How does the language of the characters differ from the voice of the narrator? What does
the use of dialect add to the novel? What challenges does it pose?
7. What do we learn about Janie, Pheoby, and Tea Cake?
8. How does the narrator characterize the darkness in which Janie and Pheoby are talking?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
5
6
Lesson 2
The Tree of Life
Objectives
•
3. Distribute Handout 4. Discuss with students questions 1, 2, and 3.
To examine Nanny’s role in Janie’s life, the
reasons why Janie married Logan Killicks,
and the reasons why she left him
•
To understand some of the agony caused
to black women by the heritage of slavery;
to understand also the personal strength
which helped them survive
•
To develop an appreciation of the poetic/
philosophical Hurston style, a depth of
reflection expressed through metaphors of
the natural world
Suggested Responses:
1. What happened to Tea Cake? Where
was the flood? How did Janie manage
to survive? What has she experienced
and seen?
2. For men, the author says, dreams are
vitally important. They either materialize
in fulfillment or they mock the dreamer
by his disappointment. Women, to the
contrary, deal with truth only, she says.
What does not work out, they forget.
What they care about, they hold in
memory. For us today, when women
are able to expand their dreams of personal accomplishment in the world, the
substance of dreams will have changed
from what it was in the thirties.
Notes to the Teacher
Janie begins her story, as people often do,
by searching for a place to start. To explain
who she is and what she has experienced, she
goes way back to the beginning. We hear about
her childhood, about Nanny, and about the
circumstances that led to the marriage with
Logan Killicks. Figurative language makes
clear Janie’s yearning for vitality and love.
When she left Logan for Joe, Janie was trying
to choose life.
3. Janie in her physical beauty and psychological independence is threatening to
the townspeople who have never been
anywhere else. To Pheoby, Janie is a
real, individual person whose life is a
fascinating lesson.
It is important to conceptualize the motives
behind Janie’s actions. Before beginning a discussion of chapters 2, 3, and 4, students will
have shared their views of Janie from thinking
about chapter 1. Handout 4 will help them to
move toward an understanding of Janie the survivor who sets up the frame of her story. They
will also consider the effects of her surviving
on both herself and her observers. By the end
of chapter 4 they will probably have begun to
notice on their own Zora Neale Hurston’s use of
metaphor to mirror perceptions and feelings.
4. Ask students to do a focused free writing,
using Handout 5.
5. Divide the class into pairs of students.
Have partners exchange their writings and
discuss the ideas expressed. Take time to
summarize the activity together afterwards.
This procedure may extend to a second class
session.
6. Direct students’ attention back to Handout
4. Have small groups discuss the rest of
the questions.
Procedure
Suggested Responses:
1. Ask a volunteer to read aloud the first
paragraph of chapter 2. Lead students to
interpret the simile. (Janie sees her life
as something big and as a mix of good
and bad. She seems to value both kinds
of experiences.)
4. Janie is bold and independent; she is
very pretty and physical, at home in
her own body. She does not fear the
neighbors, and she scorns their criticism,
as well as their minute experience of
life. She has a story to tell, and she
wants Pheoby to hear it.
2. Ask a volunteer to read aloud the second
paragraph, and point out Janie’s quandary:
she gropes for a place to start her story.
7
5. Janie longs to reveal herself and her
wonderful story; she needs a sympathetic ear. Pheoby marvels at the story
and lives through the model Janie’s life
presents to her.
9.
6. There is ironic humor in Janie’s early
unawareness of her difference from her
white playmates and in her response
to the photograph.
Marriage with Logan was loveless
drudgery; he was not a bad man, just
very limited. Janie wanted more in life,
and she went after it. Joe seemed to
represent the “something more” that
she sought. Unlike the townspeople,
the author does not impose a judgment.
She does seem to affirm the choice to
pursue life as a top value.
10. Answers are likely to include the
emphasis on trees budding and in
bloom, especially the pear tree, and
on experiences of air, dark, and light.
Note Janie’s romantic hopes near the
end of chapter 4: “From now on until
death she was going to have flower
dust and springtime sprinkled over
everything.”
7. Nanny was born into slavery, and her
own daughter was a disappointment.
She raised Janie and was always
very protective, seeking safety as a top
priority. Nanny obviously loved Janie
but emphasized limits, not the wide
horizon.
8. Joe Starks was well dressed, cocky,
and ambitious. He was not just using
Janie; he wanted to marry her.
7. Instruct students to read chapters 5–6 of
Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for Lesson 3.
8
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 2
Handout 4 (page 1)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Questions for Discussion and Review
Directions: Use the following questions as a basis to discuss the first four chapters.
1. Chapter 1 begins with a dramatic situation—the return of a woman with a story to tell to
whoever cares to listen. What suspense does the situation arouse in your mind? Enumerate
the questions which occurred to you as you read.
2. Look again at the first two paragraphs of chapter 1. Account for the author’s distinction between how men and women view what happens to them. Account for the differences in how
this section would have been viewed in the 1930s, when the book was first published, and
now in the present.
3. The people on the porches criticize Janie, whereas Pheoby begins to listen to Janie’s story with
sincere interest. How do you account for the difference in attitudes?
4. What sort of person is Janie? Quote lines from chapter 1 to support your judgment.
5. In what sense do Janie and Pheoby need each other, as teller and listener?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
9
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 2
Handout 4 (page 2)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
6. What was Janie’s early experience with her own blackness? What does this detail add to the
story as a whole?
7. What seem to have been Nanny’s main experiences and characteristics?
8. What words would you use to describe Joe? Provide textual evidence.
9. What were Janie’s reasons for leaving Logan Killicks? Does the author seem to approve of her
action?
10. Janie feels close to the natural world. Quote some lines or phrases from chapters 2, 3, and
4 in which she unfolds her perceptions of her life in metaphors drawn from nature. Interpret
these quotations.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
10
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 2
Handout 5
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Focused Free Writing
Directions: Spend fifteen or twenty minutes on a free writing in which you react in a relaxed,
open manner about Janie the survivor.
Choose one hardship of Janie’s early life as a focus. Think about her (and yourself) having to
deal with such a hardship. Tell a story about your own life, and relate it to Janie’s experience.
Use the Venn diagram to generate some ideas. Write for an audience of your classmates.
Janie’s Life
My Life
Differences
Differences
Similarities
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
11
12
Lesson 3
An Image Shattered
Objectives
•
To understand the growth that Janie
achieves even through disillusion
•
To observe the effect of excessive control on
the development of the controlled individual
2. Jody got the idea to buy Matt Boyner’s
yellow mule, teased and tormented as it
was, overhearing Janie’s pity for it. He
saw this as a new way to be admired.
Notes to the Teacher
Janie’s growth, fostered by her misadventures in love, came step by step as she began
to understand what she could ask for herself.
She accepted her grandmother’s choice of
husband for her. She then lived to understand
that what Nanny considered treasures—house,
possessions, land—left her feeling empty, tied
as she was to a man like Logan Killick.
The mock funeral, the buzzards, and
the chorus all constitute a parody of
the meaning of life and death.
3. We see Jody’s character through his
relationship with other men. The emphatic proof of their unsuitability lies
in his statement that his stature was
the source of her stature.
When Logan left to buy a mule, she heard
whistling and feasted on the sight of Jody,
stylish and citified. When she left Logan for
Jody, she expected to have both love and life. Unfortunately, Jody’s love did not fulfill her as
she thought it would. After months of subservience to him, she drew closer to rebellion. In
this lesson, students focus on the deterioration
of their relationship and the impact on Janie’s
character.
The remarks of the townspeople at the
end of chapter 5 presage Janie’s flight,
from what we know of her nature. She
worked hard but never received any
credit from Jody. His insistence on her
wearing a head-rag so that her beauty
would be disguised and his banishing
her from the porch to take care of business make her fight back.
She realized that her image of Jody,
now broken, never was real.
3. Ask students to improvise role-plays of times
in Janie’s life when a crisis occurs. The
crises could involve Janie with Nanny, the
photograph, Logan, or Jody. Invite the class
to comment on the relationships portrayed.
Procedure
1. Remind students of Janie’s expectations
of “flower dust and springtime” near the
end of chapter 4. Ask them to explain the
irony in those hopes. (Joe quickly became
absorbed in his own ambitions for wealth
and power; he took Janie for granted and
tried to dominate her, even slapping her when
dinner was not well prepared. The romance
faded, and Janie became resentful.)
4. Distribute Handout 7, and direct students
to complete the writing assignment.
Suggested Responses:
Suggested responses may include but
will certainly go beyond the following
ideas.
2. Distribute Handout 6. Divide the class
into groups. Allow time for discussion of
individual questions.
1. This is a bucolic tribute to Janie’s beauty
and classiness. Students may relate it
to everyone’s desire to be more than
just a cheap date.
Suggested Responses:
2. Joe’s assumption of his own masculine
superiority is offensive, but he was
totally unaware of his boorishness.
1. Romance faded out. Both men did not
relate to the real soul of Janie but used
her to fulfill their own agenda: Logan to
run his farm, Jody to have a reflection
of his power.
3. Envy and jealousy are universals transcending time and place.
13
5. Instruct students to read chapters 7–9 of
Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for Lesson 4.
4. This is a reflection on the dynamics of
power.
5. Mathematical challenges in store-keeping frustrated Janie, but Logan insisted
she could do it if she wanted to. Janie
was stuck in her position.
6. Janie’s receptiveness to Joe died. “Flower
dust and springtime” were over. Most
people can identify with the evaporation
of romance.
7. Janie realized that the Jody she loved
was not the real Joe Starks; it was
what she had imagined him to be. That
dream was shattered beyond repair.
14
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 3
Handout 6
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Questions for Discussion and Review
Directions: Use the following questions to examine Janie’s change by the end of chapter 6.
1. In describing Janie’s deteriorating relationship first with Logan, then with Joe, the narrator
refers to the disappearance of rhymes from their conversations. What does this mean? Why
does it happen with both men?
2. What does the mule-baiting incident show you about human nature? Why does Jody buy
the mule? What significance do you attach to the mule’s funeral?
3. In chapters 5 and 6, Janie’s expectations crest but then fall. Detail each point of her disillusion. How much is she able to rebound from each disillusion?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
15
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 3
Handout 7
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Writing
Directions: Choose one of the following and do a focused free writing, or use one or more of the
references to write about Janie’s disillusion and rebound.
Chapter 5
1. the comment about Janie and a fish sandwich
2. Jody’s statement about being a “big voice”
3. power, property, and hatred
4. the town, Joe, and power
Chapter 6
1. Janie, mathematics, and the rock
2. “She wasn’t petal-open anymore with him.”
3. “[S]omething fell off the shelf inside her.”
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
16
Lesson 4
Mr. and Mrs. Mayor
Objectives
•
•
3. Distribute Handout 8, and have small
groups complete the exercise.
To examine Janie’s realization that she does
not really love Joe and to explore the impact
of this realization
Suggested Responses:
1. Janie was depressed and seemed to
give up on life for a while. The narrator indicates that Janie’s experience is
a universal one; people do experience
misery, and they desperately try to
escape it.
To recognize the potential for self-development which exists in Janie
Notes to the Teacher
Chapters 7, 8, and 9 chronicle the deterioration of a relationship. The strength and
dominance pass from one partner to the other.
After her twenty years with Joe, Janie can fall
only so far. The insults escalate in power between them. When Joe strikes her, he causes a
divide to be opened between them. It can never
again be bridged. She stands on one side, he
on the other.
2. She enjoyed a fantasy of freedom under
a tree on a breezy day.
3. Joe was ailing, and as he sickened, he
got meaner.
4. Janie began to fight back.
5. She shamed him in front of others in
the store.
The chapters also bring an end to a phase
of Janie’s life. Some students may be shocked
by her apparent callousness in the face of
Jody’s death. It helps to note the comment at
the beginning of chapter 7 that Janie lost all
her “fight.” Joe’s death brought her freedom,
and Janie was too honest to parade a grief she
did not feel.
6. Janie began by trying to effect some kind
of reconciliation, but the conversation became a bitter exchange of accusations.
7. She saw an attractive woman with
beautiful hair. Then she played the role
of a dutiful new widow.
8. Janie felt free and was in no hurry
to become involved with another man.
She confided in Pheoby, and we realize
that the Pheoby Janie is talking to in
the frame story was an actual witness
to much of what Janie has said about
her life with Joe.
In this lesson, students begin with discussion questions on chapters 7–9. They then
focus on a section from chapter 9 that can
stand on its own as a short story, from Janie’s
preparation for the funeral to her appreciation
for lonesomeness.
4. Refer students to the second paragraph
in chapter 9, and point out that the following section of the novel can easily be
excerpted as a self-enclosed short story.
Have volunteers read aloud through the
phrase, “Besides she liked being lonesome
for a change.”
Procedure
1. Ask students to share the results of their free
writing on Handout 7 (Lesson 3). Conduct
a general discussion of their insights.
2. Discuss with students the relative ease or
difficulty of Janie’s accepting Joe’s death,
especially considering the nature of their
last days together.
5. Distribute Handout 9, and have small
groups complete the exercise.
Suggested Responses:
Suggested Responses:
Some students may be shocked at the way
Janie treated Jody’s fear in his last moments. Others, however, will defend her,
feeling that Jody’s callousness to her
over the years broke any relationship
they had. Most students will agree that
she was ready for a new life.
1. The laundry metaphor emphasizes that
Janie presented an appropriate facade
at the funeral.
17
2. She felt free and joyful, as if in the
rebirth of spring.
6. Many men were interested in marrying
a wealthy and pretty widow.
3. She had no desire to return to the
past. Her real feeling for Nanny was
resentment.
7. Janie felt free but was in no hurry to
act on her feelings. She was in an interim period of reassessing things and
moving toward the future. Being alone
was an opportunity.
4. The horizon stands for the realm of
opportunities. Some people, like Nanny,
narrow their focus to their immediate
close surroundings and focus only on
possessions and security. Janie sees
that repression as a stranglehold on
her life.
8. Janie always sought joy, vitality, and
love. Perhaps she was just waiting for
a response from another “mud-ball”
whose spirit sang back to her own.
6. Instruct students to read chapters 10–13 of
Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for Lesson 5.
5. People are joyful, shining spirits encased
in earth; these spirits seek life and love
but are often frustrated.
18
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 4
Handout 8
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Questions for Review and Discussion
Directions: Use the following questions to examine chapters 7–9.
1. How would you describe Janie’s state of mind at the beginning of chapter 7? What does
the narrator mean by the reference to the dung hill?
2. What coping strategy did Janie adopt?
3. What happened to Joe?
4. How did Janie’s behavior toward Joe change?
5. Why did Joe strike Janie during the incident described at the end of chapter 7?
6. What happened during Janie’s last conversation with Joe?
7. What did Janie see when she looked in the mirror? How does chapter 8 end?
8. What was Janie’s main reaction to Joe’s death? To whom did she confide it?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
19
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 4
Handout 9
Name_______________________
Date________________________
“Each Little Spark”
Directions: During and after Joe’s funeral, Janie experienced renewal and insight. The passages are
replete with figurative language to strengthen the novel’s themes. Consider the following points.
1. What metaphor describes Janie’s preparation for the funeral? How does the comparison
work?
2. Behind her funeral veil, how did she feel?
3. What self-discoveries did she make?
4. What is the meaning of the references to the horizon?
5. The story includes a little creation myth. What does it convey?
6. Why did Janie have so many visitors?
7. Why did Janie enjoy being alone?
8. How does the creation myth relate to Janie’s sense of herself?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
20
Lesson 5
A Glance from God
Objectives
•
2. Distribute Handout 10, and have small
groups complete the exercise.
To evaluate the possibilities in Janie’s life
set into motion by Jody’s death and her
new freedom
•
To clarify the nature of the bond between
Tea Cake and Janie, a foundation upon
which the last half of the novel rests
•
To contrast this relationship, even accompanied as it is by hardships, with Janie’s
other two relationships
Suggested Responses:
1. Hezekiah worked in Janie’s store and
sometimes seemed to be in charge of it.
He took an interest in Janie’s welfare
and warned her against Tea Cake.
2. Tea Cake (Vergible Woods) came into
the store on a slow day when most
people were off to a ball game. He and
Janie had a playful conversation, and
he taught her how to play checkers.
Notes to the Teacher
In chapters 10–13, Janie describes meeting,
being captivated by, and marrying Tea Cake.
In spite of doubt, she found herself coming
alive. It is important for students to see all the
dimensions of her love, to understand that it
was not merely a temporary sexual fascination.
This will become clearer as the story continues.
3. The people in the town were opposed
to their relationship, especially so soon
after Jody’s death. They believed that
Tea Cake was just after Janie’s money.
In terms of material wealth, he had
nothing to offer her. In addition, he was
substantially younger than Janie.
Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake did not
meet with the townspeople’s approval. Like
Granny, they wanted her to choose safety,
security, and wealth, and she had plenty of
suitors who offered those things. Janie took a
big chance in going off with Tea Cake; there
was the warning example of Annie Tyler, financially ruined and personally devastated by
a con man. Events in Jacksonville show Tea
Cake’s love for gambling, and his injury in a
fight shows the possibility of involving Janie
with some very rough people. She, of course,
followed her heart.
4. There was, of course, a physical attraction, but more important to Janie was
Tea Cake’s playfulness. She wanted to
believe his attraction to her was real
and enduring.
5. Annie Tyler was a wealthy widow in
her early fifties who, spurred by loneliness, had a series of affairs with much
younger men who were only interested
in her money. Eventually, she became
involved with Who Flung, who took off
with all of her money, leaving her a
broken woman. Her bitter experience is
what the people expected for Janie if
she continued her relationship with Tea
Cake, and it was an experience Janie
feared.
In this lesson, students review events and
people in chapters 10–13. They then compare
and contrast Janie’s three marriages and engage in character analysis.
6. Janie had a little money in her purse
and $200 hidden. Tea Cake found and
took it; he hosted a party where Janie
was not present, gambled, and bought
a guitar.
Procedure
1. Ask students to briefly summarize events
described in chapters 10–13. (Janie and
Tea Cake met, fell in love, and married.
Janie left Eatonville and went to join him
in Jacksonville.)
7. Tea Cake went to a gambling game to
win Janie’s money back, got in a fight,
and was cut. She took tender care of
him.
21
8. Tea Cake wanted to go with Janie to the
Everglades to work on the farms. The
goal was twofold: money and fun.
9.
Despite Tea Cake’s fun-loving nature
and genuine devotion to Janie, his gambling and rough company could have
posed dangers. Janie, however, seems
to have loved him unconditionally.
10. The rhymes did not go out of their conversations, and Tea Cake was not just
using Janie for his own purposes.
3. Using Handout 11, encourage students to
explore creatively the wisdom and effects of
each choice of a mate which Janie has made.
Schedule class time for presentations.
4. Distribute Handout 12, and review directions with the class. Allow time for
small group brainstorming and individual
writing.
5. Instruct students to read chapters 14–17 of
Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for Lesson 6.
22
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 5
Handout 10
Name_______________________
Date________________________
A New Page in Janie’s Life
Directions: Use the following questions to clarify your understanding of chapters 10–13.
1.
Who was Hezekiah? How would you describe his relationship with Janie?
2.
How did Janie meet Tea Cake? Describe their initial encounter.
3.
What were some of the barriers to their romance?
4.
What attracted Janie to Tea Cake?
5.
Explain the relevance of the story about Annie Tyler and Who Flung.
6.
How much money was Janie carrying with her? What happened to it?
7.
How did Tea Cake get hurt? How did Janie react?
8.
Where did Tea Cake want to go? Why?
9.
Was there a dark side to Tea Cake’s character? Explain.
10. How was Janie’s relationship with him unlike her previous marriages?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
23
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 5
Handout 11
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Janie’s Relationships
Directions: In spite of the short duration of so many marriages today, the choice of a mate remains extremely important. Choose several people in class with whom to work. Discuss with them
the differences in Janie’s three choices: Logan Killicks, Joseph Starks (Jody), and Vergible Woods
(Tea Cake). Decide on one of the following means of communication. Present your findings to the
rest of the class.
Role-Play
Portray the couple of your choice, Janie and one of her three husbands. Use dialogue from
the text. Act out what you think was the true nature of their relationship. If possible, create
a video recording of the dramatization.
Poster
Prepare a poster illustrating your interpretation of one of these relationships. Include a descriptive line from the text at the bottom of the poster.
Reading
Prepare a choral reading or a series of solo readings with musical background. Choose either
lines of dialogue from the novel or lines of description explaining Janie’s experience with one
of her husbands. Use recorded or live music for accompaniment.
Television Talk Show
Imitate a talk show format. One member of the group will be the host. Several will portray
some or all of the four characters—Janie, Logan, Jody, Tea Cake—or talk about them as though
they are relatives or friends. Others will be guests. Use anecdotes from the novel’s narrative
to illustrate the judgments made by the panelists.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
24
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 5
Handout 12
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Characters and Relationships
Directions: Choose one of the following characters to analyze.
•
Logan Killicks
•
Joseph Starks
•
Vergible Woods (Tea Cake)
•
Janie Mae Crawford/Killicks/Starks/Woods
Gather evidence to present specific features of the character’s relationship with one or more
characters. Decide upon three or four effects of the relationship on the character you will analyze.
Discuss each effect in turn, using the evidence you have gathered. Do you think the relationship
was destructive or constructive in the person’s life? What would have been different if circumstances
had not been the same? Develop your ideas into a coherent, clear essay that will be shared with
the class.
Relationship(s)
Positive Effects
Character
Alternative
Circumstances/
Results
Negative Effects
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25
26
Lesson 6
The Everglades
Objectives
•
To examine Janie’s and Tea Cake’s lives in
a world very different from Eatonville
•
To observe and understand the development
in Janie’s character as a result of her life
in this new world
•
To study the interaction of the natural
world, social issues, and social life in this
locality
the Everglades. Use the board to list the
positives and negatives of this life. Decide
on the overall results of the experience for
Janie.
Remind students that citing lines from the
novel to support their judgments is an important part of the critical process.
Suggested Responses:
1. The broad social mix—Bahamans,
Seminoles, blacks, whites—was very
different from that in Eatonville, giving
Janie a wider perspective on life.
Notes to the Teacher
A new character now enters—the Everglades,
“ground so rich that everything went wild. People
wild too.” Tea Cake, knowing how much cane,
beans, and tomatoes grow in the rich soil, took
Janie there for the picking season—for the
money but also for the fun. This was the time
of fulfillment for both of them—through one
season of cane, on to the months of idleness,
then to the start of a new season—days and
weeks crowded with events and learning.
2–3. Hard physical work contrasted sharply
with Janie’s work in the store in Eatonville and seemed to generate a very
physical culture with tense sexual undercurrents, including the incidents with
Nunkie and Janie’s first experience of
jealousy.
4. The other workers seem to have admired
and liked Tea Cake; at first, they felt
distant from Janie, who seemed a more
high-class person.
The wild nature of the social interaction—fights, gambling, meanness—needs to
be discussed. The world for Janie was not the
patterned world of the store with its business
routine and its porch–sitters. She was open to
a new kind of learning. She saw people “ugly
from ignorance and broken from being poor.”
5. The jooks were lively and raucous,
broadening experiences for Janie, but
always potentially dangerous.
6. Mrs. Turner took a particular liking to
Janie because she seemed more white
than the others; Mrs. Turner’s overt
racism ultimately led to the destruction
of her restaurant and her flight out of
the Everglades.
As she learned more, as she spent the daytime as well working alongside Tea Cake, she
felt distanced from Eatonville.
The overt behavior of “life on the muck”
moved into Janie’s emotional life as she wrestled
with Tea Cake and struck him in a fit of rage
over his flirtation with Nunkie. When Tea Cake
whipped Janie to reassure himself that he possessed her, she did not leave him in indignation
but loved him as much as ever. This concept
needs discussion as many students will have
strong reactions to Janie’s behavior.
7. Janie had no desire to be anything but
what she was—a black woman in love
with a black man and experiencing life.
The exchange of blows can be deeply
troubling to many students, but neither
Janie nor Tea Cake saw it as deeply
problematic, and it did not hamper their
love. It may have been a product of the
very physical qualities of their daily
lives.
Procedure
1. Distribute Handout 13. Divide the class
into seven groups. Ask each group to work
on one of the points listed in part A. After
twenty minutes, lead (or have students lead)
a discussion with the entire class on life in
2. Have students complete part B of Handout
13. Then conduct a discussion based on
their judgments.
27
Suggested Responses:
Some students may rejoice in Janie’s new
freedom and knowledge of this world
of the Everglades and Tea Cake’s place
in it. Others may be repelled by her life
and argue that she is too subservient
to Tea Cake and is not utilizing her
own talents. Oppositions may create
an interesting discussion.
3. Distribute Handout 14 along with newsprint
or art paper, markers, and other graphics
materials. Divide the class into teams of four
or five. Ask small groups to create a visual
illustrating one scene or line in chapters
14–17. Direct groups to present the drawings to the class, and invite responses from
the class.
4. Instruct students to read chapter 18 of Their
Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for
Lesson 7.
28
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 6
Handout 13 (page 1)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Life in the Everglades
Part A.
Directions: Think about the experiences of Janie and Tea Cake in their new life in the Everglades.
Do you consider the effects of this life to be largely positive for them or largely negative? Consider
the following issues.
Experiences
Details/Quotations
Effects
1. the social mix of people
2. the nature of the work
3. the sexual undercurrents
4. the attitudes of the other
workers
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29
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 6
Handout 13 (page 2)
Experiences
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Details/Quotations
Effects
5. the evenings at the jooks
6. Mrs. Turner’s racism
7. Janie and Tea Cake trading
actual blows
Part B.
Directions: To what extent does Janie grow and benefit in her new life in the Everglades? Do you
see the effects as mainly positive or negative? Mark your position on the continuum, and write a
paragraph defending your opinion.
Janie
deteriorates.
Janie
flourishes.
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30
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 6
Handout 14
Name_______________________
Date________________________
An Illustration of Janie’s World
Directions: Many strong images appear in chapters 14–17, making this section of the text especially
appropriate for visual depiction. Reread Zora Neale Hurston’s description of each of the following,
and take notes. Then use one of them or another vivid image of your choice as the subject of a poster.
Your work may be either representational or abstract.
The Living Quarters
Tea Cake Playing His Guitar
Janie in Blue Denim Overalls
Janie and Nunkie
The Incident at Mrs. Turner’s Restaurant
Image of Your Choice
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
31
32
Lesson 7
Surviving the Flood
Objectives
•
•
experience of gratitude, and the need to
return to the scene of the disaster.
To focus on the action in chapter 18 as
prelude to more catastrophe and culmination of a life lived at risk
3. Point out that chapter 18 alludes several
times to the title of the novel. Ask students
to point out and explain the allusions.
To think about the depth of the love Janie
and Tea Cake share
Suggested Responses:
Five or six pages into the chapter, the narrator
comments, “Six eyes were questioning
God.” Motor Boat, Tea Cake, and Janie
huddled in the house just before the
dikes broke, causing the Okeechobee
to flood. A few pages later comes the
exact phrase, “their eyes were watching
God.” This time the watchers were Janie
and Tea Cake, but also all of the other
people huddling fearfully in their huts.
This is the timeless situation of people
who are helpless to save themselves
and turn to Providence.
Notes to the Teacher
The fight at the Turners’ in chapter 17 prefigures the chaos in the world of the Everglades
when the dike broke. People had to find higher
ground to avoid the oncoming lake. Janie and
Tea Cake moved on to the pivotal catastrophe,
the bite of the mad dog, as Tea Cake defended
Janie. This event, with the circumstances of the
flood and the storm, determined Tea Cake’s later
death and Janie’s later sorrow. In Palm Beach,
they had time to talk over this most dramatic
moment of their lives and their value to each
other.
4. Distribute Handout 16, and conduct a
discussion of the items in part A.
In this lesson, students return to a subject
they discussed in Lesson 1—what it means
to be a survivor. They use the Internet to
research survivor stories and share their findings. (If your classroom does not have Internet
access, have students complete the research
and Handout 15 prior to the lesson.) Students
then consider the references to the novel’s title
in chapter 18 and the impact of the storm on
Janie and Tea Cake.
Suggested Responses:
1. Both Janie and Tea Cake sound humble,
serious, exhausted, and relieved. Their
love was mature and deep.
2. The opening encounter was playful,
flirtatious, and tentative.
3. Some students may pick up the foreshadowing in the description of the incident
with the dog, particularly its dread of
the water and its terrible eyes, both
characteristic of hydrophobia (rabies).
Procedure
1. Point out that chapter 18 describes a
dramatic and difficult effort to escape a
natural disaster, and remind students
of their discussion of survivors prior to
their study of Their Eyes Were Watching
God. Ask students to brainstorm a list of
disasters that people, individually and in
groups, seek to survive (flood, earthquake,
tornado, shipwreck, fire, avalanche, war,
attack by a wild animal, etc.). Then have
students individually or with partners use
the Internet to research specific examples.
Distribute Handout 15 for students to
record their findings.
4. With Tea Cake, Janie found genuine
love, which she learned is more than
“flower dust and springtime.”
5. Have students work individually on the
free writing assignment in part B. Allow
time for volunteers to share their work,
and encourage large-group discussion,
6. Instruct students to read chapter 19 of Their
Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for
Lesson 8.
2. Lead a discussion based on students’ research, and point out commonalities such
as a desperate turn to God, an ultimate
33
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 7
Handout 15
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Surviving a Real-Life Disaster
Directions: Use the Internet to learn about a specific instance in which a person struggled to
escape from and survive a disastrous situation. Record your findings below.
1. Nature, time, and place of disaster
2. Name and description of survivor
3. Details used to describe the disaster
4. Other people involved
5. Survival steps/attempts
6. Attitude of survivor, in retrospect
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
34
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 7
Handout 16
Name________________________
Date_________________________ A Closer Look at Janie and Tea Cake
Part A.
Directions: Use the following prompts to reflect on chapter 18.
1. Read aloud the conversation between Janie and Tea Cake at the end of chapter 18. What do
you hear?
2. Read aloud the conversation at Janie and Tea Cake’s first meeting at the start of chapter 10.
What do you hear?
3. Review the story of the fight with the dog. Decide on the most important details, and discuss
their significance.
4. Discuss how far Janie and Tea Cake have come by the end of chapter 18.
Part B.
Directions: On a separate piece of paper, write a focused free writing on one of these topics:
•
The Strength of “The Tie That Binds”
•
The Disadvantage and Value of Risk in a Love Relationship
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35
36
Lesson 8
The Crisis
Objectives
•
To examine in detail the progression of
events which led to Tea Cake’s death
•
To move to a philosophical consideration of
the events
2. Distribute Handout 17, and have students
discuss the question either in small groups
or as a whole class.
Suggested Responses:
1. The Seminole Indians left the area, as
did the Bahamans. ’Lias offered Tea
Cake and Janie a ride in his car. The
animals and birds left as well.
Notes to the Teacher
As they read, in chapter 18, of Janie and
Tea Cake suffering from the storm, students
will naturally focus on the survival of the two
and be moved by their feelings for each other
as they survived the natural catastrophe.
2. The workers were accustomed to relying
completely on the white landowners for
safety.
3. Tea Cake, Motor, and Janie had no idea
how to cope with the storm. Only God
had the answer to their bewilderment,
the same bewilderment Janie faced in
Tea Cake’s illness and her trial.
In chapter 19, the consequences of the
events unfold. Students will ask themselves
why Janie and Tea Cake had to be enveloped
in this crisis. They will wonder why the two did
not leave the lake area earlier so that they were
not in the worst possible situation. Dealing with
these questions now rather than in Lesson 7
will help students to focus their attention even
more sharply on chapter 19. Handout 17 will
help students to link event and meaning.
4. Janie remembers the unimportance of her
former life compared to the significance
of her love for Tea Cake. He was truly
a gift from God to her.
5. Janie remembers the hate in the dog’s
eyes, a danger Tea Cake defended her
from (which, the doctor told her later,
must have been rabies).
The same human beings who had worked,
rejoiced, played, and suffered in their choices
moved to the larger stage symbolized by the
novel’s title. They lost control of their lives by
not heeding soon enough the signals of coming
disaster. A sense of destiny paralyzes them.
6. As a black man, he had the worst jobs
involving dead bodies. He saw the utter disregard for the black people who
died.
Forced to help bury the dead, Tea Cake
discovered that white corpses were placed in
coffins, while black corpses (identified by their
hair if by nothing else) were dropped directly
into the ground. In the Everglades, he moved
to more catastrophe as he developed symptoms
of rabies. Janie, suffering as she watched him
suffer, was compelled to shoot him to save her
own life. The obligatory murder trial afterward
gave Janie a continuing life, but she suffered
great grief.
7. After the bite of the mad dog, Tea
Cake’s only hope was medical attention.
Although he and Janie reached Palm
Beach, it was impossible immediately
to find a doctor in the chaos after the
storm. Later, his being impressed into
service burying corpses was such a
dreadful experience that he could think
only of returning to the Everglades.
There he had a little time but no serum
to prevent the progress of the illness he
did not know he had.
Procedure
1. Ask students whether they were surprised
by events in chapter 19, and conduct a
general discussion based on responses.
Include Tea Cake’s experiences burying
the dead, his illness, Janie’s shooting him,
and the trial.
8. She shot in self-defense and to free Tea
Cake.
37
9. In the eyes of the law, Janie may
have been guilty of murder. She was
acquitted.
3. Instruct students to reread chapter 19 of
Their Eyes Were Watching God in preparation for Lesson 9.
10. To Janie, Tea Cake was everything.
11.The people’s ambivalence stemmed
from their love for Tea Cake and lack
of understanding of Janie’s actions. The
funeral finery and their basic affection
for Janie led them to forgive her.
12.For Jody’s funeral, Janie presented
a carefully prepared image that disguised her inner feelings of freedom.
She arrived at Tea Cake’s funeral in
her overalls, too full of grief to care
about appearances.
38
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 8
Handout 17 (page 1)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
The Path to Death
Directions: Use the following questions to discuss the fate of Janie and Tea Cake.
1.
Review chapter 18. What signals about impending disaster did Janie, Tea Cake, and other
people fail to heed?
2.
What is the significance of the reference to castles and cabins in chapter 18?
3.
Look again at the references to the title in chapter 18. What do they mean to you now?
4.
How does Janie view God as part of her relationship with Tea Cake?
5.
In retrospect, can you see foreshadowing in the description of the dog that bit Tea
Cake?
6.
How and why did Tea Cake encounter racism in the aftermath of the flood?
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39
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 8
Handout 17 (page 2)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
7.
What choices did Tea Cake make that led to his death?
8.
Why did Janie shoot Tea Cake?
9.
Explain the reason for Janie’s trial. What was the verdict?
10. What is the meaning of the statement, “Tea Cake was the son of Evening Sun”?
11. Explain the people’s shifting attitude toward Janie.
12. How did Janie’s presence at Tea Cake’s funeral differ from her appearance at Jody’s?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
40
Lesson 9
Loss
Objectives
•
To focus on Janie’s last moments with Tea
Cake
•
To understand the complexity of her loss
•
To recognize the dynamics of the trial
3. The words snarled, ferocity, loping,
clenched, like he was some mad dog,
ferocious, and fiend link Tea Cake with
the mad dog in the flood.
4. Janie had to pry his teeth off her arm;
then she tenderly cradled him in a final
goodbye.
Notes to the Teacher
5. Answers will be highly subjective depending on students’ experiences with
love and death.
Counting the steps Janie and Tea Cake
treaded toward catastrophe, we begin to see
the storm in several ways. It is a plot device,
moving the action and displaying the characters’
inner worlds. It is a merciless move of destiny,
dominating chapters 18 and 19, forcing Janie
to let Tea Cake go.
6. Janie lost the love of her life, and
she herself pulled the trigger. With his
death, she lost her spiritual anchor.
7. Judge, jury, and lawyers were white
men, and there were some well-to-do
white women who came to observe. The
black people were massed in the back
of the courtroom, and they were, for
the time being, all angry at Janie.
To see the different levels on which Janie
suffered—physical, social, emotional, spiritual—is to recognize also her own personal
strength, that she is able to survive. She coped
with the trial through the same resourcefulness
she once used to leave situations which cut her
down. She coped through the same ingenuity
and focus she forced herself to use when Tea
Cake was so ill and such a hazard to her very
life.
8.
Janie feared misunderstanding; to her,
the really terrible thing would have
been for people to think her shooting
of Tea Cake was motivated by malice.
9. We do not hear Janie’s actual words,
and the testimony is not presented
in dialect. The courtroom response
suggests that she was genuine and
moving. She wanted Tea Cake to live,
but the disease made that impossible.
Her comments use the metaphor of a
rabid dog inside of Tea Cake and remind us of his skill as a gambler, at
the end involved in an awful game.
Procedure
1. Distribute Handout 18. Have two volunteers dramatize the dialogue between
Janie and Tea Cake when she returned
home from her visit to the doctor (about
thirteen pages into chapter 19).
2. Ask students to respond to the first question
on Handout 18. Lead them to recognize
the deep affection and respect the two
have for each other. This was the last time
Janie could talk to Tea Cake in his right
mind. To her, he was a gift from God, a
source of salvation. To him, she was more
beautiful than roses. On the other hand,
the gun under the pillow is ominous.
10. The only unreconciled area is inside
Janie, who remains devastated by
grief.
11. Eventually, time must part all lovers.
The strength of Janie’s and Tea Cake’s
love seemed to create eternity, but it
could not. Note the vivid personification
of an hour as a weeping human. For
Janie, the sun had set; she was in
darkness. The trial took place between
sunrise and sundown.
3. Have students work in small groups to
complete the rest of the handout.
Suggested Responses:
2. Tea Cake was cranky, resentful, and
bossy. Janie saw that the real Tea
Cake was no longer there.
41
12. We know from the story frame that she
makes her way back to Eatonville. Did
she go back to the home she shared
with Tea Cake? Does she keep some
special mementos of her life with him?
Will she eventually marry for a fourth
time?
4. Instruct students to read the very short
chapter 20 in preparation for Lesson 10.
42
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 9
Handout 18 (page 1)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Janie and Tea Cake: Final Moments
Directions: Use the following questions to examine Janie’s fi nal experiences with Tea Cake.
1.
Reread Janie’s conversation with Tea Cake when she returned from her secret visit with
the doctor. What insights do you gain?
2.
How was Tea Cake different the next morning?
3.
What specific word choices show what happened to him?
4.
What happened immediately after Janie shot Tea Cake?
5.
How effective is Zora Neale Hurston’s presentation of the scene? How did you respond as
you read it?
6.
Explain the complexity of Janie’s situation.
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43
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 9
Handout 18 (page 2)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
7.
Explain the racial differences at the trial.
8.
What was Janie’s most pressing concern?
9.
Describe Janie’s testimony.
10. To what extent does chapter 19 end with reconciliation?
11. How does Hurston use the idea of time? Consider the many references to the sun.
12. With the funeral over, what do you expect Janie to do next?
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44
Lesson 10
Like a Pharaoh to His Tomb
3. No, Janie is not telling secrets. Pheoby is
free to tell everyone what happened.
Objectives
•
To relate chapter 20 to the opening chapter
•
To interpret the ending of the novel
4. Pheoby feels empowered in a small
way, as if Janie’s story has somehow
conveyed new stature to the listener.
Notes to the Teacher
The novel ends with forgiveness and peace.
Janie’s soul, once full of life as a pear tree
blooming, has undergone the transformation
great suffering brings. Tea Cake’s friends now
realize that, far from meaning him harm, Janie
shared with Tea Cake a powerful love in which
both of them flourished.
5. “Yuh got to go there tuh know there.”
“Two things everybody’s got to do fuh
theyselves. They got to go tuh God, and
they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh
theyselves.”
6. The seed packet, a memory of Tea Cake,
represents new life. A part of him will
grow in Eatonville. True love, like the
sea, adapts itself to the beloved; it is
not like a grindstone, wearing the other
person down. Tea Cake brought light
to Janie’s life. The horizon represents
to Janie both the ultimate that she
can experience and the search for new
endeavors. For now, she has pulled in
her horizon and is ready to examine
where she has been and what she has
experienced. Janie is now middle-aged;
one suspects that her pursuit of vitality,
of the spark in other mud-balls, is not
over.
Janie’s life has been a search, out to the
horizon, for people. In the last lines of the story,
we see great tenderness and peace, as well as
gratitude.
In this lesson, students reconnect with the
frame of the story, Janie’s return to Eatonville
and her long conversation with Pheoby. They
then recognize that Janie herself articulates
some of the novel’s themes in her closing comments to Pheoby. They analyze the imagery and
figurative language in the closing paragraphs.
Finally, they complete an essay, either in class
or as an at-home assignment in which they
respond to Janie’s total experience.
7. Janie feels the consoling presence of Tea
Cake always near her. She is aware of
her own life as a combination of sorrow and joy. She is awed and grateful
about what she has experienced.
Procedure
1. Remind students that Their Eyes Were
Watching God is a frame story, and chapter
20 presents the other side of the frame.
Ask them to explain the elements of the
frame. (Refreshed by the meal brought by
Pheoby and relaxing with her feet soaking
in a pan of water, Janie is telling the story
of her life, especially of what happened to
Tea Cake, to her old friend.)
3. Distribute Handout 20. Review the essay
assignment, and establish your expectations regarding length, format, and due
date.
2. Distribute Handout 19, and have students
discuss the questions either in small groups
or as a whole class.
Suggested Responses:
1. Without Tea Cake, the Everglades just
seemed like a whole lot of mud.
2. Janie has kept a packet of seeds Tea
Cake planned to plant; she intends to
plant the seeds around her old home
in Eatonville.
45
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 10
Handout 19
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Resolution
Directions: Use the following questions as the basis to discuss the resolution of Their Eyes Were
Watching God.
1. Why did Jane decide not to stay in the Everglades?
2. What has she kept as a remembrance?
3. Does Janie want her story to be held in confidence?
4. How does Pheoby respond to the story she has just heard?
5. In her closing words to Pheoby, Janie articulates some of the novel’s major themes. What
are they?
6. Explain the symbolism of the seed packet, the grindstone/sea, the sun, and the horizon.
7. What does Janie experience in the novel’s closing paragraphs?
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46
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Lesson 10
Handout 20
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Final Essay
Directions: After thinking through the following topic, plan and write a substantial essay.
Reread the first two paragraphs of chapter 1 and the last paragraph of chapter 20. In light of
those three paragraphs, write an essay setting forth what you regard as the chief accomplishment
of Janie’s life. Unfold the motivating factors which shape the course of events. Analyze the distance
Janie travels. Assess the cost to her of all the sacrifices she has made. Convey your assessment
of the value of Janie’s life.
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47
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Creative Projects
Directions: Choose one of the following activities as an end-of-unit response to the novel.
Video
Choose a minor character such as Motor Boat, Mrs. Turner’s brother, Pheoby, Sop-de-Bottom,
a jury member at Janie’s trial, or a white woman in the courtroom at the trial, and write a
monologue for the character. In it, review his or her experience with Janie, narrate a part of
the action, interpret Janie, and share feelings about the significance of being involved in this
drama. Present the monologue live or in video form.
Art
Prepare a series of drawings or paintings illustrating scenes from the novel which you regard as
specially significant. Bind your work in an album, or prepare a visual display in the classroom.
Attach to each drawing a few evocative lines from the novel.
Audio
Prepare a recording of music which seems to you to echo the spirit of various chapters from
the novel. (If you are a composer, record your own compositions which fit.)
Research
Investigate the natural history of the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee. Present your findings
to the class.
Fiction Writing
1. Write a narrative giving Janie a new encounter in a new setting.
2. Write a fantasy in which Janie and Tea Cake see one another again and communicate
their feelings.
Professor for the Day
Using Janie’s often quoted words, “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,” lead a class discussion
of the novel. Encourage your classmates to unfold Janie’s movement toward God and her discoveries about living. Make sure the discussion stays focused. Require participants to support
their assertions with specific references to the text.
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48
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials (page 1)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Making a Portfolio
Directions: What if the decision on how to approach Their Eyes Were Watching God were your
decision? With what aspects of the novel would you want to deal: character study? historical background? psychological study? What connections with your own life have you already made? Would
the opportunity to direct your own learning teach you something new? change you?
The activities listed below will help you to make your own study plans. You could work independently or form a team with several other students, helping each other to assess progress,
growth, and understanding. You should find the enterprise very satisfying.
Reading
You will need to document your reading as you proceed. Here are some suggestions which
might help you.
1. Keep a reading journal. Be very specific, regularly summarizing chapters for yourself. If
you add reactions that are immediate as you read, you will be interested later to compare them with additional judgments of the meaning of the story as you read on.
2. Do some periodic free writings. Choose a heading (a character name, place name, or
a phrase from the novel). For at least fifteen minutes, write in a free-flow style about
whatever the heading suggests to you.
3. Every five chapters, list basic messages the writer seems to be giving just to you. Comment on each message.
4. Reread what you have done for 1, 2, and 3 above. Think through what your writing
tells you about your reading style and your philosophy of life. Ask yourself if you have
changed your judgments as you progressed with your reading. Did your thoughtful reading push you to reread certain chapters? With what results?
Writing
There are many different forms of writing: poem, narrative, essay, etc. Develop some of
these writings to follow the reading documentation detailed above. Here are some choices.
1. Write a series of poems. You decide on the subjects. For instance, write a poem to bring
alive each of the characters in whom you are especially interested.
2. Write experience narratives. What events in your own life were brought to your mind as
you read the novel? Of what events in a friend’s life were you reminded? Write a story
with appropriate dialogue and description.
3. Comment on meaning. What philosophical phrases, like “the meaning of love . . . the
importance of self-knowledge . . . developing and/or losing relationships” come to your
mind from the pages of the novel? Write a series of essays or reveries which you tie to
some quotations from chapters.
4. Make some imaginative projections. Write some narrative sketches of the next chapters
in Janie’s life. What second story might she experience?
5. Write some dialogue between characters which is not included in the novel. There may
have been times when you wanted to know what one character said to another, but the
author chose to move into action instead of writing dialogue. Write what you wish you
would have heard.
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49
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials(page 2)
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Format
Combine your reading journals and notes with the writing you’ve developed. Using an album
or a notebook, collect your portfolio writing in readable form. Supply a table of contents
if you wish, and make use of photography and/or artwork to keynote your experience in
working with the novel.
Presentation
In addition to showing your finished portfolio to other students, you might enjoy presenting
it formally to the class. Here are several suggested ways. You may think of more.
1. Speech and reading—Present major portions of your portfolio. You might also ask someone
in the class to record your presentation so that you can share it with others later.
2. Bulletin board in the classroom or school hall—Use photos representing events you have
written about in your portfolio as well as drawings and/or computer-generated art.
3. Dramatized incidents from your portfolio or from the novel, acted out by you and some
classmates—The dramatization might be live or a video recording. In the latter case, you
could use some experimental film techniques.
Evaluation
Only you know what the portfolio has done for you; you may be surprised, however, at
what others gain from reading or hearing about it. The following evaluations will help you
to see the value of your work.
Self-Evaluation
Answer the following questions in your own mind and also in writing if you wish:
1. What did you learn about your own reading and writing skills from this work? Have
you moved to a different level of competency? Describe where you began and where
you ended.
2. What about the development of ideas? Were you more sure of yourself in this regard
as you moved through your study?
3. With what phases of reading and writing skills did you need help? Where did you
find the help?
4. If you were beginning a portfolio again, what would you do differently to simplify
the process or enrich your experience?
Peer Evaluation
You should have some formal feedback from your classmates and teacher about your work
on this portfolio. Design your own instrument of evaluation by listing questions you think
the class would enjoy working on and/or questions about which you would like to hear
others’ opinions.
Distribute this evaluation sheet when the others see your portfolio or hear you talk about
it. Encourage them to be truthful but sensitive.
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50
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Critics’ Comments
Directions: In the years since Alice Walker rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston, her work, especially
Their Eyes Were Watching God, has received a lot of critical attention. Respond to the following
questions on separate paper.
1. Alain Locke, quoted in a 1990 foreword to the novel, says Hurston created “pseudo-primitives.” What do you understand this term to mean? To what sections of the novel might
he be referring? Do you agree with his term?
2. Alice Walker is quoted as saying that “while many women had found their own voices, they also
knew when it was better not to use it.” The remark refers to Janie’s silence during her trial.
What is some circumstance you have observed or experienced which this quotation would fit?
To what degree does this circumstance parallel some circumstance in Janie’s life?
3. Mary Helen Washington ends her foreword to a 1990 edition by saying, “The novel represents
a woman redefining and revising a male dominated canon.” She continues that such a revision
needs to be made and that women have a place in the work. What do you think? Is it possible
that even today men have set up the rules defining nature for both men and women? If not,
why not? If so, do women still have to insist on a revision? Talk from your own experience and
observation.
4. In a 1990 afterword to the novel, Henry Louis Gates Jr. cites Hurston as embodying a “problematic unity of opposites.” He continues with an explanation of why this complexity is interesting
to black women especially because it was “generated to establish a maternal literary ancestry.”
This statement relates especially to question 3. Gates continues that black women writers read
Hurston “not only for the spiritual kinship . . . but because she used black vernacular speech
and rituals. . . .” Summarize what the spirituality of the novel and the use of the black vernacular speech added to your appreciation as you read.
5. Gates also quotes Hurston’s term, “the sobbing school of Negrohood.” What black literature
have you read which you would align with the term, “the sobbing school”? Do you sympathize
with the latter, or do you prefer Hurston’s “sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings”?
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
51
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Writing Topics
Directions: Write an essay in response to one of the following prompts.
1. Look at Janie’s changes. Study the perceptions of herself you hear from Janie at the beginning
and then again later in the novel. Is there a change in the way she sees herself? Have you
grown closer to her character as you watched her go through her ordeal? Analyze “change” in
reference to Janie and yourself as a reader.
2. Make comparisons. If several of the characters in the novel remind you of persons you have
known in real life, write some comparison paragraphs about these people, describing them
and quoting appropriate phrases from the novel to make the connections with the fictional
characters.
3. Analyze your reading style. Write some pages analyzing the way you read. How did you help
yourself build an understanding of the characters? Do you normally read quickly, then reread
for more depth? Do you always read slowly, watching for perceptions as you go? How much of
the novel’s action were you able to predict? What events surprised you? Do you attribute your
answers to these last two questions to your reading style or to the writer’s skill?
4. Henry Louis Gates Jr. states that Their Eyes Were Watching God is closely related to Henry
James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Jean Toomer’s Cane. Investigate the relationship of either
of these works to Hurston’s novel. Delineate at least two similarities between the James or the
Toomer work and Their Eyes Were Watching God.
5. Gates also says that Hurston’s novel has a concern with “language as an instrument of injury
and salvation.” Looking at one of the following, write about language as an instrument of injury
or as an instrument of salvation:
•
your own life
•
the life of someone you know
•
one character’s experience in Their Eyes Were Watching God
•
one character’s experience in your favorite novel
6. Reread chapter 13, Janie’s experience with Tea Cake in Jacksonville and his story about his
experience away from her with his gambling friends. Some readers would describe this chapter
as more fantasy than reality. What do you think about it? Write an analysis.
7. Trace through the novel the influence of Janie on Pheoby.
8. Describe the special closeness of Tea Cake and Janie after his death.
9. Enumerate the circumstances in which Janie suffers pain silently. What would you ask her
about each circumstance if you could talk with her?
10. Look up Zora Neale Hurston’s autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, first published in 1942.
The simple chapter titles may draw you to read part if not all of the book. Make a special study
of one or two chapters and write about your discoveries.
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52
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Quiz
Part A.
Directions: Match each character with his or her description.
________ 1.
Hezekiah
________ 2.
Nunkie
________ 3.
Janie Crawford
c. woman who was duped by a con artist
________ 4.
Joe Starks
d. farmer whose wife left him
________ 5.
Vergible Woods
________ 6.
Motor Boat
e. person who became a very powerful figure
in Eatonville
________ 7.
Mrs. Turner
________ 8.
Logan Killicks
________ 9.
Pheoby
a. the main character in Their Eyes Were
Watching God
b. man who worked in a store in Eatonville
f.
loyal person who listens to a friend’s
story
g. person also known as Tea Cake
h. bigoted woman who had a restaurant
i.
person who flirted with Tea Cake in the
Everglades
j.
person who will not leave an abandoned
house during a hurricane
________ 10. Annie Tyler
Part B.
Directions: Identify each statement as either true or false.
________ 1.
Nanny always encouraged Janie to pursue new horizons.
________ 2.
Janie did not realize she was black until she saw herself in a photograph.
________ 3.
As a young girl, Janie liked to sit under an apple tree.
________ 4.
Logan Killicks was physically abusive to Janie.
________ 5.
Jody was elected mayor of Eatonville.
________ 6.
Jody’s death left Janie severely depressed.
________ 7.
Tea Cake taught Janie how to play checkers.
________ 8.
Tea Cake and Janie went to work in the Everglades.
________ 9.
Tea Cake became ill after being bitten by a rabid skunk.
________ 10. At the end of the novel, Janie is packing up to move on to new horizons.
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53
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials
Quiz Answer Key
Part A.
Part B.
1.
b
1.
false
2.
i
2.
true
3.
a
3.
false
4.
e
4.
false
5.
g
5.
true
6.
j
6.
false
7.
h
7.
true
8.
d
8.
true
9.
f
9.
false
10. c
10. false
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
54
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials (page 1)
Name________________________
Date_________________________ Test
Part A.
Directions: Answer each question with one or two complete, detailed sentences.
1. How does the title of this novel relate to an event or events in the story?
2. With whom did Janie live during her childhood years? Why?
3. Janie reflects, near the end of the novel, that she hates her grandmother. What is the reason
for her hatred?
4. To whom does Janie tell the story of her life, and why?
5. What effect does Janie’s tale have on this listener?
6. Joe Starks seemed an attractive man to Janie when she first met him. What is one change in
him that later made her realize he was not a desirable mate after all?
7. How do the events which follow the teasing of the yellow mule relate to Janie’s discovery of
Jody’s real character?
8. After Joe Starks died, Janie spent six months in black. When she began to wear mourning
white, how did the townspeople react to her?
9. When Tea Cake and Janie were seen together, what facts made people predict that the two
would not get along and therefore would be a bad match?
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55
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials (page 2)
Name_______________________
Date________________________
Part B.
Directions: Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Write a detailed sentence or
two explaining your position.
1. The first quality that attracted Janie to Tea Cake was that he knew how to play.
2. Young Hezekiah, who helped Janie in the store, distrusted Tea Cake and thought he was
bad for her.
3. Janie feels close to the natural world.
Part C.
Directions: Write a few detailed sentences in response to each of the following topics.
1. Describe briefly, with details, the life in each of these places so important to Janie:
a. Eatonville
b. The Everglades
2. Give an example from anywhere in the novel of white racism causing suffering for blacks.
3. What is one reason for the presence of the Turner family as an element in the plot?
4. When Janie shot Tea Cake, she had to be tried for murder. The blacks in the community
turned against her. Why?
5. Why did they forget their hostility after Tea Cake’s funeral?
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56
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials (page 1)
Suggested Responses to Test Questions
Part A.
1. As the hurricane gathered force and the wind picked up again, Tea Cake, Janie, and Motor
Boat sat inside Tea Cake’s house watching the wind shake the wall. They had no plan to save
themselves and no one to help them.
2. Janie never knew her mother and father; she was raised by her grandmother.
3. After she is mature enough to reflect on her past, Janie hates her grandmother for encouraging the subservience that resulted in her marriage to Logan Killicks, a dreary man. She does
not learn until much later how to value herself.
4. The novel begins at the point when Janie returns, after Tea Cake’s death, to Eatonville. Meeting her old friend Pheoby, she spends the evening recounting not only what happened to her
after she left Eatonville with Tea Cake, but also the story of her earlier life.
5. Pheoby feels immeasurably enriched by Janie’s telling of her story. She says she has grown ten
feet taller from listening to Janie and is now no longer satisfied with herself. She apparently
grows inwardly now, as has Janie.
6. Joe Starks began to dominate Janie, forcing her to dress less attractively (wear a head rag) so
as not to appear desirable to men. He stopped talking to her in rhymes. He forced her to work
inside the store and not participate in the porch dialogue. He lost his playfulness.
7. Jody rescued the mule by buying it, but only because he saw the action as a way to be admired
by the townspeople. Janie saw that he wanted to be regarded as a king.
8. Janie had a host of admirers.
9. Tea Cake was taking her away from church. Janie was older than Tea Cake. He was probably
after her money.
Part B.
1. When Tea Cake and Janie played checkers, she felt happy that someone thought it natural for
her to play.
2. Hezekiah said Tea Cake had no money. He implied that Tea Cake was tricky. (He cannot know
about Tea Cake’s other quality—the ability he had to make Janie feel valuable as a person.)
3. Janie habitually notices and delights in details of the natural world. Her discussion about
her experiences and about the meaning of life is related, often, by metaphors drawn from the
natural world.
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57
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Supplementary Materials (page 2)
Part C.
1. a. Eatonville was only a raw place in the woods when Janie and Jody arrived, but he saw
the possibilities of building it up. It remained small in every sense of the word; the people
exhibit their pettiness and rivalries in their attitude toward Janie.
b. The Everglades called people from many places to work; black, Seminole Indian, Bahaman,
white. There was no social pretension. There was hard, physical work, but in the evening
there was relaxation at the jook. There were strong sexual undercurrents and some physical aggression. Natural beauty was/is everywhere.
2. Blacks had to bury the dead in Palm Beach after the hurricane, only to see that white bodies
were given coffins.
Blacks fled for their lives from the hurricane after the dike gave way and found at the Six Mile
Bend Bridge that this higher ground was monopolized by whites.
3. Mrs. Turner, who was obsessively anti-black, gave voice to white bigotry. She exhibited social
hypocrisy, taking money from blacks at her eating-house but then talking about them with
contempt.
The infatuation of Mrs. Turner’s son with Janie adds interest to the plot because of Tea Cake’s
interest in the fact.
4. The author says they blamed Janie for Tea Cake’s death in an example of their own powerlessness.
5. They saw the death scene in a new light after the court testimony; also, they loved her too
much to stay angry with her.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for resale.
58
Bibliography
Works by and about Zora Neale Hurston
Awkward, Michael, ed. New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Modern Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Glassman, Steve, and Kathryn Lee Seidel, ed. Zora in Florida. Orlando: University of Central Florida
Press, 1991.
Hurston, Zora Neale. The Complete Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Introduction, Henry
Louis Gates Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke.
———. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library, 1990. Series
Editor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. Foreword, Mary Helen Washington. Selected Bibliography. Chronology.
Plant, Deborah G. Every Tub Must Sit on Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale
Hurston. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Tanksley, Ann. Images of Zora. Exhibition catalog. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Center for the Arts,
1992.
Walker, Alice. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1977.
———. All About Zora: Views and Reviews by Colleagues and Scholars at the Academic Conference
of the First Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts, January 26–27, 1990, Eatonville,
Florida. Edited by Alice Morgan Grant. Winter Park, Fla.: Four-G Publishers, Inc., 1991.
———. Zora! Zora Neale Hurston: A Woman and Her Community. Compiled and edited by N. Y.
Nathiri. Orlando: Sentinel Communications Company, 1991. Illustrated.
Portfolios
Hewit, G. A Portfolio Primer: Teaching, Collecting, and Assessing Student Writing. Portsmouth, N.H.:
Heinemann, 1995.
Murphy, S., and M. A. Smith. Writing Portfolios: A Bridge from Teaching to Assessment. Markham,
Ontario: Pippin Publishing Limited, 1992.
Yancey, K. B., ed. Portfolios in the Writing Classroom. Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of
English, 1992.
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The Publisher
All instructional materials identified by the TAP® (Teachers/
Authors/Publishers) trademark are developed by a national network of
460 teacher-authors, whose collective educational experience distinguishes the publishing objective of The Center for Learning, a nonprofit
educational corporation founded in 1970.
Concentrating on values-related disciplines, the Center publishes
humanities and religion curriculum units for use in public and private
schools and other educational settings. Approximately 600 language
arts, social studies, novel/drama, life issues, and faith publications are
a
­ vailable.
Publications are regularly evaluated and updated to meet the changing and diverse needs of teachers and students. Teachers may offer
suggestions for development of new publications or revisions of existing
titles by contacting
The Center for Learning
Administration/Editorial
29313 Clemens Road, Suite 2E
Westlake, OH 44145
(440) 250-9341 • FAX (440) 250-9715
For a free catalog containing order and price information and a
descriptive listing of titles, contact
The Center for Learning
Customer Service
590 E. Western Reserve Rd., Unit 10-H
Youngstown, OH 44514
(800) 767-9090 • FAX (888) 767-8080
http://www.centerforlearning.org
Common Core
English Language Arts
Standards
Their Eyes Were Watching God
ISBN 978-1-56077-879-0
Entire Unit
9-12.1
Read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of
texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world;
to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society
and the workplace, and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction
and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
9-12.2
Read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an
understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic)
of human experience.
9-12.3
Apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and
appreciate text. Draw on prior experience, interactions with other readers and
writers, knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, word identification
strategies, and understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter
correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
9-12.6
Apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling
and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create,
critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
9-12.9
Develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use,
patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and
social roles.
9-12.11
Participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a
variety of literacy communities.
RL.11-12.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text
says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including
determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
RL.11-12.2
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their
development over the course of the text, including how they interact and
build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective
summary of the text.
RL.11-12.3
Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and
relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action
is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
© The Center for Learning • www.centerforlearning.org
Common Core Standards: Their Eyes Were Watching God — Page 2
RL.11-12.5
Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of
a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide
a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning
as well as its aesthetic impact.
RI.11-12.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text
says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including
determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
RI.11-12.2
Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development
over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one
another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the
text.
RI.11-12.3
Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific
individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.
RI.11-12.5
Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his
or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points
clear, convincing, and engaging.
SL.11-12.1a
Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under
study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evidence from texts
and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, wellreasoned exchange of ideas.
SL.11-12.1c
Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe
reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a
topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote
divergent and creative perspectives.
L.11-12.1b
Resolve issues of complex or contested usage, consulting references (e.g.,
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, Garner’s Modern American
Usage) as needed.
L.11-12.4c
Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries,
glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a
word or determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, its
etymology, or its standard usage.
Source
Common Core State Standards (Washington, D.C.: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief
State School Officers, 2010)
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