Their Eyes Were Watching God practice questions and exam guide

Hurston's title 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' appears in the hurricane chapter and means:

1. Tourism
2. During the hurricane, Janie and the others 'sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His' — looking up for divine reckoning while the storm tears their world apart
3. Watching TV
4. Mockery

Answer: B — During the hurricane, Janie and the others 'sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His' — looking up for divine reckoning while the storm tears their world apart

The titular phrase appears in one of the novel's most famous passages; teaching it as the moment of cosmic confrontation is standard. (A), (C), (D) misread.

Hurston's anthropological training was supervised by:

1. Franz Boas at Columbia, whose cultural-relativist program shaped Hurston's fieldwork in the American South and the Caribbean.
2. Margaret Mead at Yale.
3. Bronisław Malinowski at Howard.
4. She had no academic supervisor.

Answer: A — Franz Boas at Columbia, whose cultural-relativist program shaped Hurston's fieldwork in the American South and the Caribbean.

Boas at Columbia is the correct supervisor. (B), (C), (D) misstate it.

Hurston's prose most often uses which technique to render Janie's interior life?

1. Free indirect discourse, which lets a third-person narration glide into Janie's idiom without quoted speech.
2. First-person diary entries.
3. Direct authorial intrusion.
4. Telegraphic stage directions.

Answer: A — Free indirect discourse, which lets a third-person narration glide into Janie's idiom without quoted speech.

Free indirect discourse is Hurston's signature interior device. (B), (C), (D) misidentify it.

How does Tea Cake come to be bitten by the rabid dog?

1. He approaches a stray after the storm out of curiosity.
2. He is bitten by Mrs. Turner's pet.
3. While he and Janie are trying to escape the flooding, he wrestles a dog off Janie's back as she clings to a cow.
4. He is bitten before the storm even begins.

Answer: C — While he and Janie are trying to escape the flooding, he wrestles a dog off Janie's back as she clings to a cow.

The rescue scene is the rabid dog episode. (A), (B), (D) misstate it.

The novel was first published in:

1. 1925, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
2. 1952, after the Second World War.
3. 1937, at the movement's late edge.
4. 1969, during the Black Arts Movement.

Answer: C — 1937, at the movement's late edge.

Publication date is 1937. (A), (B), (D) misdate.

How does the novel handle the theme of cosmic indifference?

1. The hurricane chapter — the title phrase — depicts an indifferent natural and divine order that does not register human distinctions, and against which selfhood is still possible.
2. The hurricane chapter is a comic interlude.
3. The hurricane is a punishment for Janie's sins.
4. The novel insists nature is always kind.

Answer: A — The hurricane chapter — the title phrase — depicts an indifferent natural and divine order that does not register human distinctions, and against which selfhood is still possible.

Cosmic indifference is one of the novel's thematic registers. (B), (C), (D) misread it.

Genre-wise, the novel is best classified as:

1. Lyrical literary novel — a Black woman's bildungsroman with strong folkloric and oral-tradition elements, often discussed within the Harlem Renaissance though it appears at the movement's late edge
2. Detective fiction
3. Genre romance
4. Historical chronicle

Answer: A — Lyrical literary novel — a Black woman's bildungsroman with strong folkloric and oral-tradition elements, often discussed within the Harlem Renaissance though it appears at the movement's late edge

Hurston's mix of folkloric voice and Black-female bildungsroman is the novel's formal signature. (B), (C), (D) misclassify.

Janie's hair functions symbolically because:

1. It is the visible site of her sexuality, freedom, and individual identity, which Joe insists must be tied up and which she lets down after his death.
2. It marks her as a foreigner.
3. It is dyed for the role of mayor's wife.
4. It is shaved during the trial.

Answer: A — It is the visible site of her sexuality, freedom, and individual identity, which Joe insists must be tied up and which she lets down after his death.

Hair = sexuality and selfhood. (B), (C), (D) misread it.

The narrative present at the novel's opening establishes which situation?

1. Janie has returned alone to Eatonville and the porch-sitters are speculating about where she has been.
2. Janie is preparing for her wedding to Tea Cake.
3. Janie is leaving Eatonville for the first time as a young woman.
4. Janie is on trial for Tea Cake's death.

Answer: A — Janie has returned alone to Eatonville and the porch-sitters are speculating about where she has been.

The frame opens with a returning Janie and a gossiping town. (B) misorders the timeline; (C) describes a much earlier moment in the flashback; (D) is a later embedded scene, not the opening present.

What does Joe Starks accomplish in Eatonville?

1. Nothing
2. He fights the town
3. He establishes himself as the town's mayor, builds the general store and post office, paints his own house white in contrast to the others — and demands that Janie play the role of polished Mayor's wife, including making her tie her hair up in public
4. He fails to settle

Answer: C — He establishes himself as the town's mayor, builds the general store and post office, paints his own house white in contrast to the others — and demands that Janie play the role of polished Mayor's wife, including making her tie her hair up in public

Joe's ambition makes the town and constrains Janie simultaneously. (A), (B), (D) misread.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is set primarily in:

1. New York City
2. Central Florida — including the all-Black town of Eatonville, the Muck (the agricultural lands of the Everglades), and West Palm Beach during the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane
3. The Mississippi Delta
4. Texas

Answer: B — Central Florida — including the all-Black town of Eatonville, the Muck (the agricultural lands of the Everglades), and West Palm Beach during the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane

Hurston's Florida — Eatonville is her own birthplace — is constitutive of the novel. (A), (C), (D) misplace it.

Joe Starks is best described as:

1. A rural sharecropper resigned to poverty.
2. An itinerant musician.
3. An ambitious, charismatic man whose vision of becoming a 'big voice' leads him to build Eatonville's civic infrastructure while shrinking Janie's public role.
4. A traveling preacher.

Answer: C — An ambitious, charismatic man whose vision of becoming a 'big voice' leads him to build Eatonville's civic infrastructure while shrinking Janie's public role.

Joe's ambition both builds the town and confines Janie. (A), (B), (D) misidentify him.

Who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Zora Neale Hurston.

What dialect does Hurston use?

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) of the rural South, drawn from her anthropological fieldwork.

How does the novel open?

Janie returns to Eatonville, in overalls and her hair down; her neighbors gossip.

Compare Their Eyes Were Watching God with The Awakening (Chopin).

Both follow a woman's awakening to selfhood against confining marriage — Chopin's ends in suicide, Hurston's in self-possession.

How does the novel end?

Janie returns to Eatonville at peace, telling Pheoby that she has 'been to the horizon and back.'

How does Joe die?

Of kidney disease — Janie speaks her mind on his deathbed.