Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while she was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, researching the main voodoo gods of the country and studying as an initiate. under the supervision of Haiti's best-known voodoo hougans (priests) and mambos (priestesses). However, while many scholars have explored Hurston's interest in and study of voodoo in his ethnographic texts, such as Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938), only a few have explored the relationship between voodoo and Their Eyes Were Watching God. . A close analysis of the novel reveals that voodoo imagery and symbolism are integral to the development of the predominant themes of Hurston's second novel. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the nature of black women and men; how their nature is shaped by their individual and collective experiences within American and African American cultures; and how their experiences inform their self-knowledge, their connection with the world around them, and their relationships with others. More precisely, Their Eyes Were Watching God focuses on the quest of a young black woman who seeks to discover herself beyond the false values ​​imposed on her by a society that does not allow women or black people to exist naturally and freely. Through her female protagonist, Janie Crawford, Hurston critiques the status of black women and the roles offered to them in American and African-American cultures; and it provides them with an alternative frame of reference for their unique experiences within the world and an alternative path to self-determination and autonomy. That path is Voodoo, a religion that Hurston describes as "the old, very old mysticism of the world in African terms...". . . a religion of creation and life” (Tell My Horse 376). Voodoo is a syncretization of African and European religious beliefs and practices, through which its followers strive to gain personal and communal power by achieving harmony with their respective individual natures and with the world in which they live. . According to voodoo specialist Alfred Métraux, the religion has “neither national church, nor association of priests, nor written dogma, nor code, nor missionization” (Métraux 13). Therefore, it is a religion that can be and has been adapted – through the integration of new symbolic materials – to deal with the changing social and political circumstances of the cultures that practice it. It is the adaptability of religion and its historical and social relevance to the unique experiences of black people (especially women) that Hurston draws on in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Using Voodoo as an intertext for her novel, Hurston has at her fingertips a system of beliefs and practices filled with powerful female deities, leaders, and adherents. As a religion that reflects the desires and aspirations of its followers, that functions as an alternative form of power for those who would otherwise feel powerless, and that prioritizes the lives of women in ways that other religious traditions do not , Voodoo is an effective vehicle through which to explore the role and status of black women in modern African American culture. Through the integration of voodoo imagery and symbolism, Hurston offers an alternative pathway through which women can transform and transcend the sociocultural pathologies and existential constraints that distinguish the African American female experience. Despite the apparent absence ofA unified social or ideological superstructure, Voodoo possesses a set of fundamental beliefs and practices that characterize the religion throughout the world (Métraux 13). At the heart of religion is the existence of loa or mysteries, spirits or deities who personify the experiences, hopes and aspirations of their faithful or followers and upon whom the followers claim the cure for ills, the satisfaction of needs , hope and survival. When summoned during a voodoo ceremony, the loa "rides" – like a rider rides a horse – or "possesses" his servant, then speaks and acts through his "horse", depending on the specific circumstances in which he/she was summoned. There are two classes of voodoo loa: the rada and the petro. Rada loa are considered “high and pure” (Tell My Horse 441). They are gentle gods who only do good things for people. They can use violence to punish a Vodouisant, but never, like some petros, out of malice. The Petro Loa are more relentless and violent than their alter ego Rada. There is a category of petro loa called gé-rouge or “red eyes” who are, without exception, evil and even cannibalistic. Although Petro Loa are known to be evil, they can also be made to do good things. However, oil work for an individual is only possible if they make a promise of service. When someone swears an oath to the Petro, he must pay the debt; or the Petro will take revenge. At the center of Hurston's narrative is his female protagonist, Janie Crawford-Killicks-Starks-Woods, as the embodiment of Erzulie (or Ezili), the loa who governs the feminine spheres of life. The depiction of Erzulie entered the religion at a time when slave owners sexually exploited their slaves and separated families at will ("Erzulie" A-muse-ing Grace). In her rada and petro manifestations (Erzulie Freda, Erzulie Danto and Erzulie Gé-Rouge), she represents the ideality of love, the sacredness of motherhood, the innate strength and creativity of women, their capacity to endure and to survive adverse circumstances and their determination to fight. for what is most dear to them. Through her characterization of Janie-Erzulie, Hurston explores a more complex subjectivity for African American women beyond that of the sexually exploited slave and the tragic mulatto (two of the first female character types to appear in literature African American); and she inscribes a new archetype in the pantheon of African American women: a heroic African American “Everywoman” who masters her world and claims her place within it as a fully integrated, autonomous, and creative self. Through her seamless integration of Vodou, Hurston challenges and subverts predominant stereotypes of Vodou as "primitive magic" and "witchcraft", legitimizing what she ardently believed to be an authentic African spiritual path and establishing its viability as a as a means of empowerment for those who are powerless. It also challenges and subverts the predominant myths and stereotypes that perpetuate the condition and treatment of women in general, and black women in particular, within American culture; and she re-elaborates existing archetypal models of the African American female sociocultural experience, releasing the constraints under which black women exist. The result is a narrative of “mythical” status and importance. Just as myths transcend the confines of common life and imbue everyday actions with universal (i.e., archetypal) meaning, Hurston uses voodoo imagery and symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God to create a mythmodern American – rooted in African diasporic tradition – which transcends the limits of common life. what is expected and accepted as historically and culturally plausible for black women in the dominant social order. She values ​​a tradition through which black women can achieve an autonomy that integrates both their public and private selves and that reflects agency and authority over their own lives and their own stories. Hurston draws on the stages of the archetypal quest paradigm, which form the foundation of the hero's journey monomyth, to structure his novel. Every culture has its version of the monomyth. However, in all cultures the quest is traditionally cyclical and can be divided into three broad stages, as follows: (1.) Separation (call to adventure); (2.) Initiation (theJourney); and (3.) The Return (“Ageless Wisdom,” Divine). Each section of Hurston's novel represents a different stage in Janie's quest toward individuality. However, Hurston uses images and symbols from both Voodoo and Black American folklore to adapt and transform the conventions of the paradigm and to situate the text within an identifiable African American and feminine tradition. Additionally, the novel is a frame story. Janie's story of her journey to selfhood, told in her own voice, is framed and aided by that of a third-person omniscient narrator, who possesses the folk wisdom and knowledge of the black experience that Janie researches and can therefore represent the minds and speech of all the characters in a timeless perspective that Janie's direct speech alone cannot. The distinctive blend of spiritual and folk imagery and symbolism, coupled with Hurston's use of both direct speech and an omniscient point of view that functions to "present the past and the fictional present as if each was the present time” (Pondrom 201) contributes to the mythic status of Janie’s story. As the novel begins, Janie's quest is over and she returns to Eatonville, the place from which she began her journey, to tell her friend, Pheoby Watson, how her identity was revealed. to her. Hurston makes an immediate connection between African-Haitian and Southern African-American cultures in his description of the people of Eatonville: It was time to sit on the porches by the side of the road. It was time to hear things and talk. These guardians had been tongueless, earless and eyeless all day. Mules and other brutes had occupied their hides. But now the sun and the boss were gone, so the skins looked powerful and human. They became the lords of sounds and minor things. (1) The description of townspeople as "tongueless, earless, eyeless commodities" recalls Hurston's description of zombies in Tell My Horse. Zombies, according to Hurston, are individuals who have died and whose bodies have, after burial, been removed from the grave and given an "antidote" which "resurrects" them. The antidote restores the body's vital signs, allowing the body to move and act, but leaves the victim with no memory, no will, unable to speak or hear, and with "dead eyes" that stare unrecognized. (Tell My Horse 469). In this state, zombies can easily be used as field workers, as "beasts of burden". In his depiction of the townspeople, Hurston connects the experiences of people in the African diaspora and alludes to the dehumanizing effects of slavery as a possible genesis for the figuration of zombies in the Voodoo religion. She also alludes to the perpetuation of this aspect of slavery in the lives of poor African Americans in the South beyond the era ofReconstruction. Additionally, in his description, Hurston emphasizes the restorative capacities of community. Once removed from the authority of the “boss” and installed safely within their own community, the townspeople recover their strength and their humanity; and it is the community's potential for individual and collective self-possession and self-expression that ultimately concerns Hurston. However, Hurston makes it clear from the beginning of the novel that although communal self-determination plays an important role in the novel, it is "the woman" – as Janie is called in the first three pages of the novel, reinforcing her archetypal character – which is at the center of the story. Janie returns to Eatonville in overalls, with her long hair braided down her back; and the townspeople sit to appreciate or judge, depending on sex, on her return: The men noticed her firm buttocks as if she had grapefruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair which hung to her waist and unfurled in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to poke holes in his shirt. They, men, kept in their minds what they lost through their eyes. The women took the faded shirt and muddy coveralls and set them aside as souvenirs. It was a weapon against his strength. (2)Janie is the essence of Erzulie Freda in terms of physical appearance, bearing and behavior. Erzulie Freda is the rada loa of love, beauty and elegance; she is the potential lover of all the men of Haiti and the rival of all the women. In Tell My Horse, Hurston describes her as a mulatto, just like Janie; she is the product of her mother's rape by her white teacher—with long black hair, "a beautiful, luxuriant-looking woman [with] firm, full breasts and other perfect feminine attributes" (384). In fact, Hurston's description of Janie is very similar to Alfred Métraux's description of Erzulie Freda in Voodoo in Haiti: "Finally, in all the glory of her seduction, with her hair loosened to make her look like a haired half-breed long, Ezili makes his entrance. . .. She walks slowly, swaying her hips” (111). Like Erzulie Freda, Janie arouses the lust of men and arouses the envy of women. However, while she physically resembles Erzulie Freda, Janie's overalls recall the petro appearance of the loa, Erzulie Danto. While Erzulie Freda is "a city girl with refined tastes and desires", Erzulie Danto is a hard-working, hard-working country woman who can become bossy, aggressive and acerbic in her appearance and is frequently imagined wearing the blue denim of a Haitian peasant. woman (Filan 1). By integrating the two figurations of Erzulie, Hurston indicates that Janie managed to integrate all aspects of black femininity into her journey; and on her return, she shares with Pheoby the details of the adventures through which she achieved this integration. Janie begins her story at the moment when her “conscious life” (10) began – at the age of sixteen, as she lay beneath a flowering pear tree in her garden. While watching a bee pollinate a pear flower, Janie experiences her sexual awakening. She identifies with the pear tree (“Oh, to be a pear tree, any tree in flower!”); and as she leans on the gate post, “waiting for the world to be created,” she undertakes to find “a bee for its flowering” (Their Eyes 11, 31). The recurring metaphors of the blossoming pear tree and the horizon (the world) frame and help unify Janie's quest. The pear tree symbolizes passionate, non-possessive, mutually affirming love, the idyllic union of equals. Using organic imagery to symbolize Janie's emerging awareness of herself as a woman,Hurston elevates her protagonist's sexual awakening above the profane, socially imposed stereotypes of black women's sexuality; and it legitimizes passion and sexual desire as natural rather than aberrant aspects of black femininity. The horizon symbolizes the life experiences necessary to achieve full self-awareness, including meaningful participation in the traditions of the black community (Hemenway 239). The imagery symbolizes the inner (spiritual) and outer (material) aspects of life respectively; and the successful integration of the vision of the pear tree and the horizon signifies the telos of Janie's quest toward individuality. Voodoo imbues the imagery with another level of symbolic meaning. Both the tree and the horizon are symbols linked to the Legba loa, which, in accordance with the ceremonial order of the Voodoo religion, is the first loa "invoked" in the novel. Legba, like the tree, symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth, the spiritual and material worlds. He is the gatekeeper, the lord of the crossroads, who provides “the way of all things” (Tell My Horse 393). As the bridge that the Vodouisant uses to cross the spiritual realm of the loa, Legba aptly represents Janie's spiritual awakening. Alongside Legba, Erzulie Freda, the loa of ideal dreams, hopes and aspirations, is invoked in Janie's vision of the pear tree. It is said that “Erzulie looks in mirrors and dreams of perfection” (“Erzulie Freda”, Sosyete); and as Janie – who is described as having “bright leaves and bright buds” (11) – looks at herself in the mirror of the pear tree, she dreams of the perfect union between equals. With her burgeoning self-awareness, Janie is ready to accept the archetypal seeker's call to adventure. However, before Janie can embark on her journey to the horizon in her quest to actualize the pear tree's vision, her quest is indefinitely postponed by her grandmother Nanny. Nanny, whose worldview contrasts the "real" or ordinary world with Janie's view, sees Janie kissing a neighbor boy over the front door and immediately declares Janie "a woman" (12). As a former slave who was raped by her master and gave birth to his child, Janie's mother, Nanny embodies society's conventional notions of black women as "mules", "oxen of trait” and “brooding sows” (15). She said to Janie, “Ah, I wanted to preach a big sermon about colored women sitting upstairs. . . realizing dreams of what a woman should be and do” (15). However, Nanny's life experiences allow her to bear witness only to her racial and sexual oppression as a black woman. Nanny wants to see Janie secure in life, and for her, security means a life that reflects as closely as possible the material stability and social status of the white middle class. Therefore, she arranged a marriage for Janie; and she chose Logan Killicks, a widower much older than Janie who owns the only organ in town and owns sixty acres of land (22). Janie, unable at this point to express her own desires, refuses his Call to Adventure in exchange. for safety and seeks a way to merge Nanny's vision with his own. She explains that with the legal union of marriage comes love: “Husbands and wives loved each other and that was what marriage meant” (20). However, living with Killicks on the isolated road isolates Janie from the community at large, and Killicks ultimately attempts to turn her into the "mule" that Nanny sought to prevent her from becoming. Therefore, Janie realizes that the institution of marriage does not guarantee the love she envisions; and with this realization, “she became awoman” (24). This is the first significant lesson of Janie's adult life. Disappointed in her first attempt at love, Janie turns her attention to the horizon. She meets Joe Starks, a smartly dressed city slicker passing through town on his way to Eatonville, Florida, where he plans to become "a big voice" (28). Janie is initially skeptical of Joe because "he doesn't represent sunrise and pollen and flowering trees"; however, he “speaks from a distant horizon. . . for change and luck” (28). The prospect of realizing her skyline dream renews Janie's hope of realizing her dream of romantic love, and she leaves Logan to accompany Joe to Eatonville. In her marriage to Joe, Janie channels Erzulie Freda. Like Freda, who prefers sugary drinks and sugary foods, Janie, when she first meets Joe, tells him that she drinks sugar water (27). In fact, Joe's relationship with Janie resembles that of Haitian men loyal to Erzulie Freda, a kept woman who does not work and avoids menial work. As the wife of the merchant, postmaster, and mayor of Eatonville, Janie enjoys material comforts and a social status that places her above and apart from ordinary townspeople. In this regard, Janie's marriage to Joe perpetuates Nanny's vision of material stability and respectability. Joe “class” (107) Janie; it isolates him from the community, prohibits him from engaging in daily conversations on the store porch with other townspeople, and he excludes him from respecting the rituals and traditions of the town. He believes that as the wife of the "big voice" of Eatonville, Janie should be content to sit silently and submissively on her social throne. However, the potential power of Janie's voice is indicated when she publicly compliments Joe on how he handles a community argument, and one of the men comments, "Your wife is a born orator, Starks." We never knew it before. She put the right words in our thoughts” (55). Janie's voice has the potential to build and affirm community, while Joe's "big voice" seeks submission and imposes division. Janie, in her efforts to transform Joe into a “bee for his fulfillment” (31), first submits to Joe's control, allowing him to place her on a pedestal. However, she soon realizes that she has, once again, equated marriage with her vision of a handstand and that her ideal has, once again, been degraded. As Joe continues to deny Janie's free speech and participation in the community, the organic imagery is revived; Janie discovers that she has "no more flower openings sprinkling pollen on her man" (68). The revival of the handstand imagery indicates Janie's developmental progress. After twenty years of marriage, she is much more aware of the differences between women and men and how these differences negatively influence women's status within their relationships and within the community. She continues to make an outward display of obedience to Joe while nurturing and protecting his deepest self. She realizes that “she kept feelings for a man she had never seen. She now had an inside and an outside, and suddenly she knew how not to mix them up” (67). This new step in Janie's discovery is foreshadowed when Joe orders Janie to tie her hair up with a dishcloth to make her less attractive to the men in town. Having to wear the headscarf is a serious point of contention for Janie and marks the start of her fight against Joe. Janie's conscious defiance evokes the figuration of the petro loa, Erzulie Danto, who is sometimes imagined wearing a moshwa, or headscarf (Filan1). Danto, a formidable advocate for women, gives her followers the strength to endure and overcome adversity and the confidence to stand up for themselves, which is exactly what Janie does by compartmentalizing the inner and outer aspects of herself- even. The summoning of Erzulie Danto also announces the arrival of Janie to the voice. When Janie makes a mistake measuring a quantity of tobacco in the store, Joe uses the incident as an opportunity to attack her femininity like he has never done before: "A woman stays in the store until May she become old like Methusalum and still be able to cut a little thing like a piece of tobacco! Don’t stand there rolling your pop eyes at me with your rump hanging almost to your knees” (74). Janie's bitterness and resentment boil over; and for the first time, she stands in the middle of the store in front of all the men and replies: “No, ah, she's not a young girl, no. . . . But I am a woman with every inch of me, and I know it. . . .I'm talking about me looking old! When you drop your pants, you don't seem to change your life” (74-75). Janie's attack on Joe indicates her awareness and growing confidence in her femininity. By confronting Joe, she publicly exposes the ineffectiveness of her masculine authority, which goes deep within her being; and she speaks from the top of the pedestal on which he placed her as an external sign of his status and his power. As a result, she and Joe are permanently separated. The damage to Joe's psyche contributes to his already failing health, leading to his death. After Joe's death, Janie, in keeping with the quest paradigm, takes stock of herself. She confronts those social conventions that have restricted and limited her growth; and she ultimately rejects Joe and Nanny's value system, which values ​​material possessions and social status over spiritual freedom and romantic love, and the imitation of white success over the celebration of black life. She reflected: She was preparing for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; . . . But after all, she had been taken to a side street. . . . Nanny had taken the greatest thing God ever created, the horizon... and pinched it into an object so small that she was able to tie it around her granddaughter's neck hard enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so much in the name of love. (85) With Joe's death, Janie becomes an active agent in her own life and is finally ready to accept the seeker's call to adventure. It is Verigible “Tea Cake” Woods who will facilitate Janie’s physical journey and around whom all the images in the novel gather. Tea Cake embodies the organic union of Janie's pear tree vision; he is “a bee to a flower – a pear blossom in spring” (102). He also embodies Erzulie Freda's ideal of the perfect lover. Just as Freda craves sweets, Janie wants “sweet things” (23) in her relationship. Tea Cake's name indicates that Janie's desire is satisfied in her union with him. Perfumes and flowers are traditional offerings to Erzulie Freda; Tea Cake “seems to crush the perfumes of the world with her steps” (99). Tea Cake is also about the horizon. His last name, Woods, links him to the symbolism of the tree and therefore to Legba, the spirit of the fields, the woods and the outdoors in general. Tea Cake is, for Janie, the "Son of the evening sun" (169), which is also an allusion to Legba, described as "the East, the East, the sun and the place where the sun rises" (“Vodoun”, La Mystica). The relationship between Janie and Tea Cake symbolizes the fusion of African-American southern folklore and Haitian Vodou. Additionally, Janie physically resembles the mulatto goddess Erzulie Freda, whilethat Tea Cake has the black skin of Erzulie Danto. Their union foreshadows the integration of the two aspects of the loa in Janie's life. The relationship between Janie and Tea Cake indicates the culmination of the mythology surrounding Erzulie Freda. Just as "troubled dreams" (Tell My Horse 387) are a sign that a man has been called as a devotee of Erzulie Freda, Tea Cake tells Janie that her sleep has been disturbed by dreams of touching her long hair and thick, a Janie attribute. she shares with Erzulie Freda. Janie starts wearing the color blue – Erzulie's color – because Tea Cake likes her in blue. Erzulie is considered a triple goddess. As such, she has three husbands: Damballah, the god of the sky; Agwe, the god of the sea; and Ogoun, the god of fire and iron. Janie's marriage to Tea Cake, in which they both wear blue, is Janie's third marriage, like Erzulie Freda's three husbands. Through her relationship with Tea Cake, Janie enters into communion with the world. Tea Cake takes Janie dancing and to the movies; he teaches him to fish, hunt, play checkers and drive. In the context of the quest paradigm, Tea Cake is Janie's mentor and assistant. He helps Janie gain confidence and insight, and he accompanies her on her journey as an equal partner through the trials of the journey. Tea Cake, channeling Legba, also facilitates Janie's "crossing the threshold" from the ordinary or everyday world (Eatonville) into the "adventure world", when he and Janie move to the muck of the Florida Everglades. Janie's vision of the pear tree is actualized in her marriage to Tea Cake, and their idyllic union blossoms in the mud. However, Janie tells Pheoby before she and Tea Cake leave Eatonville, "Ah wants to use herself everywhere" (107). In order to achieve this level of agency and autonomy, certain aspects of Janie's identity must still be developed, aspects that invoke the figuration of Erzulie Freda's alter ego, Erzulie Danto. Janie begins to embrace these aspects of herself when she and Tea Cake move to the mud with its "rich black earth" (125), an image that evokes Erzulie Danto's black skin. The description of the workers settling on the mud reflects Janie's introduction to the popular working-class identity that characterizes Erzulie Danto: "Stoves, beds, repaired spare inner tubes, all hang and hang old cars outside and hopeful humanity gathered and hovering inside. . .. People ugly with ignorance and broken by poverty” (125). Janie immerses herself in people's lives and becomes an accepted participant in the community. While Joe demanded her silence and submission, Janie and Tea Cake are peers and work colleagues. They work side by side on the land, picking the beans. Janie learns to shoot and becomes a better shooter than Tea Cake. She develops her storytelling skills and adds her voice to those of others on the mud. Their home becomes the center of the community. On the Mud, which represents the poor working-class people that Hurston loved so much, Janie and Tea Cake accomplish what Hurston herself aims to accomplish with her novel: a redefinition of the black community that recognizes and privileges the unique gifts of all its members. This act of communal recreation is explicit in Janie and Tea Cake's friendship with the Bahamans or "Saws" who work on the mud and perform their drumming rituals and fire dances in secret, away from the scornful eyes of the Americans. . Rather than requiring the "Saws" to abandon their practices and traditions in order to be accepted, Janie and Tea Cake assimilate the Bahamans and their unique cultural expressions into the community they have created on the mud. However, the idyll on the mud