Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God: The Novel’s Outer Contexts and an Analysis of the Concept of Otherness

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Hawai'i Pacific University, course: 20th Century Women Writers of Color, language: English, abstract: Nora Zeale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God can be considered one of the sexiest, most ‘healthily’ rendered heterosexual love stories in our literature (Walker, Zora Neale Hurston 88). This paper provides information about the outer contexts of the novel, as well as inductive analyses of the novel. The first part of the paper (Ch. 2-5) reveals information about the author and the historical and literary context of the time in which Hurston’s novel was published. The second part of the paper (Ch. 6-7) starts off with an analysis of the plot and characters of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and then focuses on the theme of Otherness as it occurs in Huston’s novel. The examinations of the concept of Otherness , alongside with other terms such as Dichotomization and Stigma , will be based on the concepts that Rosenblum and Travis describe in their work The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class and Sexual Orientation.