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We speak student!

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

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The Title

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a la Shmoop

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"Their Eyes Were Watching God."

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What were they trying to see?

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[ laughs ]

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This is a tough one. There are a lot of different answers to this.

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One of the most popular interpretations of the title is that

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throughout slavery, up through the early 20th century,

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and as this book was being written,

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Black people were looking

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to white people for everything. What they were supposed to do

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and how they were supposed to act.

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And in the time of slavery, they had to just --

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They had no other choice.

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"Their eyes were watching God"

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shows us that they weren't anymore looking to the white people

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for the answers. They were looking beyond that.

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And they were looking to God.

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Whether or not this has a super deep

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religious implication,

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maybe not. But it's showing

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that there is something greater.

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For Hurston, God

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would be God of everyone.

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Not just God of Black people,

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not just God of white people, but God of everyone.

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And so these people - it's actually mentioned twice in the book, this phrasing -

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are really looking past

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what their history has been

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and saying, "No, there's something bigger

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and that's what we should be following."

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So let me put a darker spin on that.

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Had she titled it Their Eyes Were Seeking God,

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there's a darker version,

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which, in my mind, is that Christianity

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was used as a way to save the souls of the poor

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Black heathens in Africa

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for Jesus in the afterlife.

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And that we were doing them a favor

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by making them slaves and forcing them

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to worship in the way we white men were worshipping.

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It was a catch-all rationale

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for why slavery was a good thing

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and let people look the other way for one of the great atrocities on Earth.

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So another reading would be their eyes were watching God

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because they didn't trust the whole notion of Christianity

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and everything else that it meant.

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They were being enslaved.

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Absolutely. And they're seeing God as

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destiny, essentially, and saying,

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"Do we have free will?

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Can we make choices? Or is our path

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just set out for us, and this is how it is?"

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And that's the great -- It's that duality of the book,

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where you wanna go with passion in a direction, but you also don't trust.

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- It's like speak softly but carry a big stick. - Absolutely.

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Which was the man of the day. All right.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God with Dr. Deb. Zora Neale Hurston.

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Read it again if you haven't already. It's an awesome book.

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Ciao.

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[ pen writing ]

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What are some intepretations of the title?

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What do you think the title means?

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I guess that's right.

Full Transcript