Finding Hope in Their Eyes Were Watching GodTheir Eyes Were Watching God recognizes that there are problems in the human condition, such as the need to possess, fear of the unknown and resulting stagnation. But Hurston does not leave us with the despair of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but rather she extends recognition and understanding of humanity's need to escape the void. “These meat skins have a rattle to prove they are alive (183)” His solution is simple: “You have to go, you know there.” Janie, like the characters in previous novels, embarks on a quest to make sense of her inner questions - an emptiness she knew she possessed from the moment she sat under the pear tree. “She found an answer while looking for it, but where?...where were the bright bees for her (11)?” Even though tragedy invades her life, it does not paralyze it, but strengthens it. Alone at the end of the novel, having loved and lost, Janie sits at home, banished from the “feeling of absence and nothingness (183).” Her path to discovery led her toward herself, and she gained a greater understanding of the world she lives in and how happiness is a small thing: "If you see the light at daybreak, you won't do it if you die at dusk. That's so many people who have never seen joy. (151) "Instead of describing racial unease, she describes the African American as racially healthy. She was rejected by the black writing movement of the 1930s and 1940s for representing African Americans as a whole rather than oppressed and downtrodden people. Hurston was not an activist, seeking to prove any theory. Capturing the essence of black womanhood was more important to her than social criticism. of Hurston is ironic. Although Janie, having...... middle of paper ......ttp: 11 www. ñ hsc.edu/ ~ gallaher/ Hurston/ Hurston. "Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Modern Critical Interpretations: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. 'Tuh from Horizon and Back': The feminine quest in their eyes was looking at God. » Modern Critical Interpretations: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Ed. Harold Bloom New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Pondrom, Cyrena N. "The Role of Myth in Their Eyes Were Watching God." » May 1986): 181-202. Wright, Richard. “Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Zora Neale Hurston - Critical Perspectives Past and Present Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and KA Appiah New York: Amistad., 1993