Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks while in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, researching the country's major voodoo deities and studying how to initiate under the tutelage of the most famous hougan (priests) and mambo (priestesses) Voodoo of Haiti. However, while many scholars have explored Hurston's interest 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 they looked at God. A careful 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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the nature of black women and men; the ways in which 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 to the world around them, and their relationships with others. More specifically, Their Eyes Were Watching God is about a young black woman's quest for self-discovery beyond the false values ​​imposed by a society that allows neither women nor black men to exist naturally and freely. Through her female protagonist, Janie Crawford, Hurston critiques the status of black women and the roles available to them within American and African-American cultures; and offers them an alternative frame of reference for their unique experiences in the world and an alternative path to self-determination and autonomy. This path is Voodoo, a religion Hurston describes as “old, old world mysticism 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 devotees strive for personal and communal power while achieving harmony with their respective natures individuals and with the world they live in. According to voodoo scholar Alfred Métraux, the religion has “no national church, no association of priesthoods, no written dogma, no code, no missionization” (Métraux 13). a religion that can be and has been adapted – through the integration of new symbolic materials – to address the changing social and political circumstances of the cultures that practice it. It is the adaptability of religion and the historical and social relevance of religion to unique experiences of black people (especially women) that Hurston draws on in Their Eyes Were Watching God By using voodoo as an intertext for her novel, Hurston has at her fingertips a system of beliefs and practices filled with powerful female deities, female leaders, and adherents. women. As a religion that reflects the desires and aspirations of its followers, that functions as an alternative form of power for those who might otherwise feel powerless, and that privileges the lives of women in ways that other religious traditions do not, Voodoo is a vehicle effective 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 provides an alternative path through which women can transform and transcend the socio-cultural pathologies and existential constraints that characterize the African American female experience. Despite the apparent absence of a unified social or ideological superstructure, Voodoo has a core set of beliefs and practices that characterize thereligion around the world (Métraux 13). Central to the religion is the existence of loas or mystères, spirits or deities who personify the experiences, hopes and aspirations of their devotees or followers and upon whom the followers invoke the cure of ills, the satisfaction of needs, hope and survival. When summoned in a voodoo ceremony, the loa "mounts" - as a knight mounts a horse - or "possesses" his/her servant and then speaks and acts through his/her "horse", addressing the specific circumstances for which he/she was evoked. There are two classes of voodoo loa: the rada and the petro. The rada loa are considered “high and pure” (Tell My Horse 441). They are kind people who only do good things for people. They can use violence to punish a Vodouisant, but never – like some petros – out of pure spite. The Petro Loa are more relentless and violent than their alter ego Rada. There is a category of petro loa known as gé-rouge or “red-eyes” who are, without exception, evil and even cannibalistic. Although petro loas are known as evil, they can also be coerced into doing good things. However, petro work for an individual is only a promise of service. When someone swears on the petro, he must pay the debt; or the petro will exact revenge. At the center of Hurston's narrative is her female protagonist, Janie Crawford-Killicks-Starks-Woods, as the embodiment of Erzulie (or Ezili), the loa who rules the female spheres of life. The figure of Erzulie entered the religion at a time when slave owners sexually exploited their female slaves and separated families at will (“Erzulie” A-muse-ing Grace). In its sparse and petro manifestations (Erzulie Freda, Erzulie Danto and Erzulie Gé-Rouge), it represents the ideality of love, the sacredness of motherhood, the innate strength and creativity of women, their ability to endure and survive circumstances adversaries and their determination to fight for what is closest to their hearts. 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 African American literature); and inscribes a new archetype in the pantheon of the African American female self: a heroic African American “Everywoman” who dominates her world and claims her place within it as a fully integrated, autonomous, and creative self. Through his seamless integration of voodoo, Hurston challenges and subverts predominant stereotypes of voodoo as "primitive magic" and "witchcraft," legitimizing what he firmly believed to be an authentic African spiritual path and establishing its viability as a means of empowerment for those they have no power. It also challenges and subverts the predominant myths and stereotypes that perpetuate the status and treatment of women, in general, and Black women, in particular, within American culture; and reworks existing archetypal patterns of African American female sociocultural experience, loosening the constraints under which Black women exist. The result is a narrative of “mythical” status and importance. Just as myths transcend the limitations of ordinary 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 modern American myth, rooted in African diasporic tradition, which transcends what is expected and accepted as historically and culturally plausible for Black women within the prevailing social order. It values ​​a tradition through which Black women can achieve an individuality that integrates both their public and private selves and that reflects agency and authority overtheir lives and their stories. Hurston relies on the stages of the archetypal quest paradigm, which forms the foundation for the monomyth of the hero's journey, to structure her novel. Every culture has its own version of the monomyth. However, in all cultures, the quest is traditionally cyclical and can be divided into three main phases, as follows: (1.) Separation (Call to Adventure); (2.) Initiation (the Journey); and (3.) The Return (“Ageless Wisdom,” Divine). Each section of Hurston's novel represents a different phase of Janie's quest for individuality. However, Hurston uses imagery and symbolism from both voodoo and black American folklore to adapt and transform the conventions of the paradigm and to situate the text within a tradition that is identifiably African American and feminine. Furthermore, the novel is a narrative plot. Janie's story of her journey to selfhood, told in her own voice, is framed and aided by that of an omniscient third-person narrator, who possesses the folk wisdom and knowledge of the black experience that Janie is seeking and it can, therefore, represent the minds and speeches of all the characters from a timeless perspective that Janie's direct speech alone cannot. Hurston's distinctive blending of spiritual and folk imagery and symbolism, combined with Hurston's use of both direct speech and an omniscient point of view that functions to "present the past and the imagined present as if each were the present time" ( Pondrom 201) contributes to the mythical status of Janie's story. As the novel begins, Janie's quest is complete and she returns to Eatonville, the place from which she embarked on her journey, to tell her friend Pheoby Watson about how her identity was revealed. to her. Hurston makes an immediate connection between African-Haitian and Southern African-American cultures in his description of Eatonville's residents: It was time to sit on the porches along the street. It was time to listen to things and talk. These models had been tongueless, earless, and eyeless conveniences 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 masters of minor sounds and things. (1) The description of the citizens as “tongueless, earless, and eyeless comforts” is reminiscent of Hurston's description of the zombies in Tell My Horse. Zombies, according to Hurston, are individuals who have died and whose bodies have, after burial, been taken from the grave and given an “antidote” that “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 willpower, unable to speak or feel, and with "dead eyes" that stare without recognition (Tell My Horse 469 ). In this state, zombies can easily be used as field workers, as "beasts of burden". In his description of the citizens, Hurston connects the experiences of African diaspora populations and alludes to the dehumanizing effects of slavery as a possible genesis of the figuration of zombies in the Voodoo religion. It also alludes to the perpetuation of this aspect of slavery in the lives of poor Southern African Americans beyond the Reconstruction era. Furthermore, in his description, Hurston highlights the restorative capabilities of the community. Once removed from the authority of the “bossman” and safely ensconced in their community, citizens reclaim their strength and humanity; and it is the community's potential for individual and collective self-mastery and self-expression that Hurston is ultimately concerned with. However, Hurston makes it clear from the beginning of the novel that whilecommunity self-determination plays a significant role in the novel, it is “the woman” – as Janie is called for the first three pages of the novel, reinforcing her archetypal personality – the central focus of the narrative. Janie returns to Eatonville wearing overalls, with her long hair swinging in a braid down her back; and the inhabitants of the city sit in appreciation or judgment, depending on the sex, upon his return: The men noted his firm buttocks as if he had grapefruits in his trouser pockets; the great cord of black hair that swung to her waist and unraveled in the wind like a plume; then her fighting breasts trying to pierce her shirt. They, men, saved with their minds what they lost with their eyes. The women took the faded shirt and the muddy overalls and set them aside as a reminder. It was a weapon against his strength. (2) Janie is the essence of Erzulie Freda in physical appearance, bearing and behavior. Erzulie Freda is the rada loa of love, beauty and elegance; she is the potential lover of all men in Haiti and the rival of all women. In Tell My Horse, Hurston describes her as a mulatto, as does Janie; she is the product of her mother's rape by her white teacher, with long dark hair, "a beautiful, lush-looking woman [with] firm, full breasts and other perfect feminine attributes" (384). Indeed, Hurston's description of Janie closely resembles Alfred Métraux's description of Erzulie Freda in Voodoo in Haiti: “Finally, in the full splendor of her seductiveness, with her hair let down to make her look like a long-haired mongrel, Ezili makes his entrance. . .. Walk slowly, swinging your hips” (111). Like Erzulie Freda, Janie arouses the lust of men and evokes the envy of women. However, while she physically resembles Erzulie Freda, Janie's suit resembles the petro-like 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 domineering, aggressive, and harsh in her appearance and who is often imagined wearing a farmer's blue denim Haitian. woman (Philan 1). By integrating the two figurations of Erzulie, Hurston indicates that Janie has managed to integrate all aspects of black femininity into her journey; and upon his return, he shares with Pheoby the details of the adventures through which he achieved this integration. Janie begins her story where her "conscious life" began (10): at age sixteen, when she lay under a blossoming pear tree in her backyard. While watching a bee pollinate a flower on the pear tree, Janie experiences her sexual awakening. He identifies himself with the pear tree (“Oh, to be a pear tree, any flowering tree!”); and as he leans over the gatepost, “waiting for the world to be made,” he pledges to find “a bee for his flowering” (Their Eyes 11, 31). The recurring metaphors of the pear tree in bloom and the horizon (the world) frame and help unify Janie's research. The pear tree symbolizes passionate, non-possessive, mutually affirming love: the idyllic union between equals. Using organic imagery to symbolize Janie's nascent awareness of herself as a woman, Hurston elevates her protagonist's sexual awakening above society's profane stereotypes of black women's sexuality; and legitimizes sexual passion and desire as natural, rather than aberrant, aspects of black womanhood. The horizon symbolizes the life experiences necessary to achieve complete self-awareness, including meaningful participation in the traditions of the black community (Hemenway 239). The images symbolize the aspects respectivelyinternal (spiritual) and external (material) of life; and the successful integration of the vision of the pear tree and the horizon represents the telos of Janie's search for selfhood. Voodoo imbues the images with another level of symbolic meaning. The tree and the horizon are both symbols connected to the loa Legba, who, according to the ceremonial order of the Voodoo religion, is the first loa 'summoned' in the novel. Legba, like the tree, symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth, the spiritual and material worlds. He is the guardian, the lord of the crossroads, who provides "the way to all things" (Tell My Horse 393). As the bridge that the Vodouisant uses to cross into the spiritual realm of the Loa, Legba fittingly represents Janie's spiritual awakening. Along with Legba, Erzulie Freda, the loa of dreams, hopes and ideal aspirations, is invoked in Janie's vision of the pear tree. It is said that “Erzulie looks into mirrors and dreams of perfection” (“Erzulie Freda”, Sosyete); and as Janie – who is described as having “shiny leaves and bursting buds” (11) – looks at herself in the pear tree mirror, she dreams of the perfect union of equals. With her dawning 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 realize the vision of the pear tree, her quest is postponed indefinitely by Grandma Nanny. The nanny, whose worldview establishes the contrast between the "real" or ordinary world and Janie's vision, sees Janie kissing a nearby boy above the front gate and immediately declares Janie "a woman" (12). As a former slave who was raped by her master and gave birth to his son, Janie's mother, Tata embodies society's conventional notions of black women as "mules," "work oxen," and "brood sows" ( 15). He tells Janie, “I wanted to preach a big sermon about black women sitting on high. . . fulfill[ling] dreams of what a woman should be and do” (15). However, Nanny's life experiences only allow her to bear witness to her racial and sexual oppression as a woman of color. The nanny wants to see Janie safe in life, and safety for her means a life that reflects as closely as possible the material stability and social status of the white middle class. As a result, he arranged a wedding for Janie; and chose Logan Killicks, a widower much older than Janie who owns the town's only organ and owns sixty acres of land (22). Janie, now unable to express her desires, rejects his Call to Adventure in return. for safety and looks for 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 back street isolates Janie from the larger community, and Killicks ultimately attempts to turn her into the "mule" that the nanny tried to prevent her from becoming. As a result, Janie realizes that the institution of marriage does not guarantee the love she imagines; and with this awareness "she became a woman" (24). It is the first significant lesson of Janie's adult life. Disappointed by her first attempt at love, Janie turns her attention to the horizon. She meets Joe Starks, a stylishly dressed man about town who is 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 “it speaks of distant horizons. . . for change and chance” (28). The prospect of realizing her dream on the horizon renews Janie's hope of realizing her dream of loveromantic, and leaves Logan to accompany Joe to Eatonville. In her marriage to Joe, Janie channels Erzulie Freda. Like Freda, who prefers sugary drinks and sweet foods, Janie, when she initially meets Joe, tells him that she drinks sugar water (27). Indeed, Joe's relationship with Janie resembles that of the Haitian male devotees of Erzulie Freda, a non-working kept woman who avoids menial jobs. As the wife of the shopkeeper, postmaster, and mayor of Eatonville, Janie enjoys material comforts and enjoys a social status that places her above and beyond the common people. In this regard, Janie's marriage to Joe perpetuates Nanny's vision of material stability and respectability. Joe “ranks” (107) Janie; it isolates her from the community, prohibits her from engaging in daily conversations on the store's porch with other citizens, and excludes her from observing the city's rituals and traditions. According to him, as the wife of Eatonville's "big voice," Janie should be content to sit quietly and submissively on her social throne. However, the potential power of Janie's voice is highlighted when she publicly compliments Joe on the way he handles the community dispute, and one of the men comments, “Your wife is a born orator, Starks. We never knew this before. He 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 enforces division. Janie, in her effort to turn Joe into “a bee for his flowering” (31), initially submits to Joe's control, allowing him to place her on a pedestal. However, he soon realizes that he has, once again, equated marriage with his vision of the pear tree and that his ideal has, once again, been degraded. As Joe continues to deny Janie's freedom of expression and participation in the community, the organic imagery is revived; Janie discovers that she has "no more flowering openings dusting pollen on her man" (68). The rebirth of the pear tree image indicates the progress of Janie's developing self. After twenty years of marriage she is much more aware of the differences between women and men and how these differences negatively affect the status of women within their relationships and within the community. He continues to outwardly show obedience to Joe while cultivating and protecting his deeper self. She realizes that “she was saving feelings for a man she had never seen. Now he had an inside and an outside and suddenly he knew how not to mix them” (67). This new phase in Janie's self-discovery is foreshadowed when Joe orders Janie to tie her hair in a rag so that she will be less attractive to the men of the town. Having to wear the rag is a serious point of contention for Janie and marks the beginning of her backlash against Joe. Janie's conscious defiance evokes the figuration of the petro loa, Erzulie Danto, who is sometimes imagined wearing a moshwa, or headscarf (Filan 1). Danto, a fearsome advocate for women, gives his devotees the strength to endure and overcome adversity and the confidence to stand up for themselves, which is exactly what Janie does in compartmentalizing the internal and external aspects of herself. Erzulie Danto's invocation also heralds Janie's arrival on vocals. When Janie makes a mistake measuring a quantity of tobacco in the store, Joe uses the incident as an opportunity to attack her femininity in a way he never has before: "A woman stays in the store until she's as old as Methuselah and it may still not cut a little thing like a tobacco cap! Don't stand with your eyes bulging at me with your butt hanging downalmost to the knees” (74). Janie's bitterness and resentment overflow; and for the first time ever, she stands in the middle of the store in front of all the men and replies, "No, Ah, I'm not a young girl, no now. . . . But I'm a woman in every inch of me , and I know. .Talking about the fact that I look old! When you take your underwear down, you look like a person who has changed his life” (74-75). in her femininity. In confronting Joe she publicly exposes the ineffectiveness of his male authority, which reaches to the very core of her being; and she speaks from the pedestal he has placed her on as an outward sign of his status and power , she and Joe are permanently estranged. The damage to Joe's psyche contributes to his already poor health, resulting in his death. After Joe's death, Janie, in line with the research paradigm, takes stock of herself with those social conventions that have restricted and limited his growth; and ultimately rejects Joe and Nanny's value system, which favors material possessions and social status over spiritual freedom and romantic love, and imitation of white success versus the celebration of black life. He reflects: He was preparing for his great journey into the horizons in search of people; . . . But she had run away down a back road after something. . . . The nanny had taken the greatest thing God had ever created, the horizon.. . and pinched it until it was so small that she could tie it around her niece's neck tight enough to suffocate her. She hated the old woman who had perverted her so in the name of love. (85) With Joe's death, Janie becomes an active agent in his life and is finally ready to accept the seeker's call to adventure. It is the real “Tea Cake” Woods who will facilitate Janie's physical journey and around whom all the images of the novel converge. Tea Cake embodies the organic union of Janie's pear tree vision; it is "a bee to a flower, a pear tree in bloom in spring" (102). She 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 fulfilled in her union with him. Perfumes and flowers are traditional offerings to Erzulie Freda; Tea Cake “seems to crush the scent of the world with its footsteps” (99). Tea Cake also talks about horizon. His surname, Woods, connects him to the symbolism of the tree and therefore to Legba, the spirit of the fields, 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, who has been described as “the East, the East, the sun and the place where it rises the sun” (“Vodoun”, La Mistica). The relationship between Janie and Tea Cake symbolizes the fusion of African American Southern folklore and Haitian voodoo. Additionally, Janie physically resembles the mulatto goddess Erzulie Freda, while Tea Cake has Erzulie Danto's black skin. Their union foreshadows the integration of the two aspects of the Loa in Janie's life. The relationship between Janie and Tea Cake signifies the culmination of the mythology surrounding Erzulie Freda. Just as "disturbed dreams" (Tell My Horse 387) are a sign that a man has been called a devotee of Erzulie Freda, Tea Cake tells Janie that her sleep has been disturbed by dreams in which she touched his long, thick hair, an attribute she shares with Erzulie Freda. Janie starts wearing the color blue, Erzulie's color, because Tea Cake loves her in blue. Erzulie is considered a triple goddess. As such, she has three husbands: Damballah, the sky god; Agwe, the god of the sea; and Ogoun, the god of fire and iron. Janie's wedding to Tea Cake, in which they both wear blue, is Janie's third weddingJanie, mirroring Erzulie Freda's three husbands. Through her relationship with Tea Cake, Janie communes with the world. Tea Cake takes Janie dancing and to the movies; he teaches her to fish, hunt, play checkers and drive. In the context of the research paradigm, Tea Cake is Janie's mentor and helper. He helps Janie gain confidence and insight and accompanies her on her journey as an equal partner in facing the trials of the journey. Tea Cake also, channeling Legba, facilitates Janie's “crossing the threshold” from the ordinary or everyday world (Eatonville) to the “world of adventure,” when he and Janie move into the muck of the Florida Everglades. Janie's vision of the pear tree comes to fruition 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 mahself everywhere" (107). To achieve this level of agency and autonomy, there are aspects of Janie's identity that still need to 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 into the manure with its “rich black earth” (125), an image that evokes Erzulie Danto's black skin. The description of the workers settling on the manure reflects Janie's introduction to the popular working-class identity that characterizes Erzulie Danto: “Frying pans, beds, patched-up spare inner tubes, all hanging and dangling from the ancient machines outside and from hopeful humanity, gathered and hovered within. . ..people ugly by ignorance and destroyed by poverty" (125). Janie immerses herself in people's lives and becomes an accepted participant in the community. While Joe required her silence and submission, Janie and Tea Cake are colleagues and colleagues. They work side by side on the manure, picking beans. Janie learns to shoot and becomes a better shooter than Tea Cake. He develops his story-telling skills and adds his voice to others in the muck. Their home becomes the center of the community. On the manure, which represents the poor, working-class people 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 Bahamians or “Saws” who work on the muck and perform their rituals with drums and fire dances in secret, away from the scornful eyes of the Americans. Rather than ask the “Saws” to abandon their practices and traditions to gain acceptance, Janie and Tea Cake assimilate the Bahamians and their unique cultural expressions into the community they created in the muck. However, the idyll in the manure cannot last. Just as the archetypal seeker must face trials and tests on his journey, Janie must ultimately confront those social and natural forces that prohibit her journey to selfhood. Ironically, while Tea Cake facilitates Janie's quest, it ultimately problematizes its successful completion. This phase of Janie's quest finds its context in the mythology surrounding Erzulie Freda, who embodies all that is good and noble about love as well as all that is unattainable or painful about it (Collins 148). Haitian rituals honoring Erzulie Freda begin with cheerfulness, as the loa's "horse" greets and flirts with the men; however, they typically end with an inconsolable cry, as the loa recalls a past betrayal or disappointment (Collins 138). Derek Collins explains: “Erzulie Freda is. . . intrinsically incapable of being satisfied or truly capable of