Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Hurston

When starting this novel by Hurston I had a lot of mixed feelings about it. I wasn't to sure if I liked it or not. I guess in a way I'm still not sure. Her writing style is some what hard to read because we don't talk the way she was writing. Overall though I really enjoyed this novel when reading all of it. I liked the way it starts with Janie talking to her friend Pheoby and then the whole novel is her story, but it brings you right back to her talking to Pheoby at the end. Towards the end I didn't want to put the novel down. I couldn't believe the storm that Janie and Tea Cake lived through and then I was shocked when he got bit by the dog and was sick. I wanted to keep reading to see what Janie was going to do and I was shocked when she shot him. I know she did it to protect herself and any other people who were in contact with Tea Cake, but at the same time I wanted him to get better and for them to live happily ever after. I guess thats just the type of person I am. Overall I think it's one of those books that you have to read the whole thing before you can decide weather or not you like it.

Hughes/Hurston

Before I comment on the Hurston novel I wanted to comment about Hughes and the activity we did in class on Wednesday. I thought the website that we were shown in class was very interesting and the idea of reading poetry and making it fit into your life and what is going on makes it that much more interesting to read. I enjoyed the activity in class we did where we had to find a Hughes poem that had meaning to us. I enjoyed listening to what everyone else said. Overall I really enjoyed reading Hughes work. It was straight forward and easy to understand, yet it had very strong messages. I think everyone could pick at least one of his poems to relate to their life, if not more.

I'm having mixed feelings so far about Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Maybe it's just because it's early in the book that I'm not sure what I really think yet. I felt like at time it was a little challenging to read because a lot of the book is written in the southern dialog. I found myself having to go back and re-read sentences to understand what was going on. I felt like at times a character would be thrown in and I'd have no idea where they came from and again would have to go back and re-read sections of the novel. I thought it was interesting in Chapter 2 when Janie was telling the story about her grandmother and the picture of her when she was younger. She said that she saw a picture and didn't recognize herself in the picture because she was black and this was the first time that she ever thought of herself any different then the children she played with while growing up. I don't know why, but throughout all of the reading this part stuck out the most in my head. I guess it's just because I found it interesting.

I'm not so sure what I think about Janie as a character. I feel like she gets herself involved with these men before she even knows them and then it seems like she is a weak character. You don't see her standing up for herself to much. But I guess at the same time she does stick up for her self when she leaves her first husband (Logan Killicks). I feel as if Janie gets pushed around a lot, almost as if she has no backbone.

I'm still trying to decide what I think of this novel, but so far it's ok. I need to keep reading it to see what happens before I can decide what I think of it.

Langston Hughes

I thought it was very interesting reading Hughes after reading Cullen. They are two poets from the same time period, but their writing is completely different. Cullen was more difficult to understand where Hughes' poems are more straight forward. Since Hughes' poems are straight forward I think it makes it difficult to write about his poems.

The essay that was written by Hughes was very interesting. He talks about how Cullen shouldn't want to be a free poet and write about anything he wants, but should stand up for his race and only write about racial issues. When reading Cullen's poems verses Hughes poems it's easy to see that Cullen writes about anything he feels at the moment, while all of Hughes' poems have to deal with racial issues. I felt as if Hughes was being a little nasty in his essay. I felt as if he is only looking at the world as an upper class or lower class. He doesn't see a middle grounds of just ordinary people, black or white. I felt a lot of bitterness towards Cullen in the Hughes essay also.

My favorite thing about the Hughes poems we read are the flow that they have. They are very simple to read and have a nice rhyme scheme to it. I also noticed that their is a lot of repetition in his poems, which also seems to make them flow. I enjoyed the poem Aunt Sue's Stories. This poem not only talks about slavery and other racial issues, but it talks about family and how important family is. I also really enjoyed the poem Laughers. This poem is just list of a bunch of words or small phrases. But I really like the way it flows. I feel like he is listing all the jobs of African American's, but I could be wrong. This poem like many other poems by Hughes also talks about music and dancing, which shows how important this was to him.

So far even though I don't like poetry I'm really enjoying reading Langston Hughes and I'm excited to read more of his work.

Countee Cullen

Once again I'm finding it hard to understand poetry. I'm really not good at trying to find meaning behind what authors try to write when it comes to poetry. Yet when we go over them in class it makes sense and I can't figure out why I didn't get that. I found this set of poems to be difficult to understand and I felt like I struggled a little bit with these. I think it's because Cullen writes traditional poetry and also I just haven't had a lot of experience reading poetry. The class discussions help me to make sense of these poems a lot.

A Brown Girl Dead was one of my favorite poems. It's such a sad poem, but at the same time it's in a way happy because for once this girl gets to look beautiful and be dressed up in a way she has never been before. I also thought this poem was pretty straight forward and easy to understand. The girl is young and has passed away. Her mother doesn't have money to give her a nice funeral so she pawned her wedding ring. That shows you what a mother would do in order to give her daughter something she wouldn't have, even if she isn't able to enjoy it. I liked the idea in class that we discussed that maybe the white is a symbol for purity. Maybe it is because thi girl will never be able to get married. Cullen uses a lot of irony in the poems. It's ironic that the poem says "she'd be so proud she'd dance and sing, to see herself tonight" and of course we know this girl is dead and wouldn't see herself.

I thought the discussion in class about the homosexual themes was interesting. I really didn't pick up on this at all while I was reading. But after talking about this in class and then talking about the poem Tableau, I could see the theme. It makes me wonder more about Cullen's life growing up and life as an adult.

Other then the poem I talked about above I thought the other ones were ok, but nothing that I was crazy about. In the Cullen poems we see a lot of common themes that we've seen in a lot of other works we've read. Such as heritage, and religion.