First published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God experienced little success at the time of its release. This was partially due to the fact that the majority of the tale is written in a southern black dialect of English which is written the way words are pronounced rather than the way they are supposed to be spelled. To well educated and highly respected black authors of the time who had conquered and perfected the art of writing, reading Zora Neale Hurston's prosaic style could have frustrated them, giving them a feeling that she was undoing everything they had accomplished. These writers (including Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison) would have felt Hurston writing in such a manner would make their own people seem uneducated and therefore stupid, not separating the two concepts. Many people did not and still don't realize that education is not a gauge for intelligence, but rather a result of available opportunities. This is the reason why in the novel the Native Americans have gone east to higher ground right before the hurricane and nobody pays them much attention, thinking they are stupid.

“Indians don't know much uh nothin', tuh tell the truth.”

The Natives are wise to nature, not in a business sense or with finances but intelligent just the same, despite being uneducated. It is not intelligence that impressed the black writers of Hurston's time though, for they were generally more interested in successful white people's opinion and the esteem of society's creme de la creme than they actually were in true intellect. These writers tend to view their own writing as it is relative and comparable to "the white man", while Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eye's Were Watching God writes in her own definitive voice, not attempting to be somebody who she's not and staying true to herself. Being black is secondary, merely a result of the fidelity to herself in her writing. This could be the element which causes her novel to rise to success in modern times, more popular now than it was in the author's life time with a theatrical play created, a movie having been filmed, and the novel being added to Oprah's book club. Hurston writes in her native tongue not as an African American but as herself, a point she admits in a separate work titled How It Feels To Be Colored Me.

“At certain times I have no race, I am me. When I set my hat at a certain angle, and saunter down seventh avenue…”

Although this quote proves the point quite effectively, it also indicates that being her is actually being black, whether she chooses to admit it or not.

The plot of the novel in itself parallels the black experience in America. In the book, Janie Crawford as a little girl is questing for a sense of identity but enslaved to her grandmother's wishes, a grandmother who had herself experienced slavery. We see this in the scene where her grandmother forces her (though not physically) to marry Logan Killicks telling her it is the right thing to do. This would represent the arrival of the Negro in America in chains. The next stage of the book is where Janie runs away with Joe Starks in search of love- her quest for freedom as well as romance, indicative of the era Hurston herself was living through when she wrote this novel, the period of the Harlem Renaissance. During this time Blacks in America were attempting to attain complete freedom; breaking down racist ideologies and stereotypes through the power of the press as well as with music and other media types.

When Janie meets Tea Cake and experiences true love for herself it is prophetic- symbolic of the result of the sixties where Martin Luther King's dream was realized (no specific date since society woke up at different times according to different places) and black people were no longer under physical chains or being discriminated against in most establishments or walks of life here in the west. Tea Cake is Janie's Malcom, her Martin Luther King, her Huey P. Newton. He is her Moses, her emancipator, her liberator, her rescuer. He is all this and more, for he saves, loves, cherishes, strengthens, rebuilds, and revives her, without him she would have been lost, just like the black race would be lost today if it weren't for the leaders who stood up and fought for them through both the pen and the sword. It is because of his love for her why he dies, just like the black activists of the sixties with Martin Luther King as no exception.

Janie's symbolic experience and relationship with Tea Cake was prophetic in the sense that not Hurston, the author, nor any of her characters were ever able to actually live through this period their selves; these days where the results of Rosa Park's resistance, among other acts for progressive defiance, were fully achieved. Finally in the last leg of her journey, Janie's life after Tea Cake could be compared to modern times. In this section she has found love and realized complete and total independence from men, with a bit of mystery left in the air. Now with slavery over and equality accomplished, with dreams realized and a future of possibilities ahead, can the African in America of today look towards the horizon or must they dwell in the past?

The main character, Janie Crawford, gives an insightful message that is timelessly applicable when she states “It's a known fact, Phoeby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh.”

It is impossible to understand or fathom the misery and pain that blacks went through both during and as a result of slavery without first hand experience. This is also true for other unfortunate tragedies such as the Holocaust during World War II and much more recently the genocide in Rwanda, no amount of imagination can fully comprehend the pain and suffering these victims have withstood. Zora Neale Hurston's outlook was not one of suffering or that of being a "victim" as many African Americans claim to be. Although she must have "had tuh go there tuh know there" a little bit, she writes in her selection How It Feels To Be Colored Me that

“I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negro hood who hold that nature somehow has given them a low down dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less.”

This last sentence well displays our author's positive (although possibly false) outlook on life who has faith that the race is to the swift and not the weak of heart, that no matter where one is born, an equal opportunity is available to endeavor to better themselves. Accepting her disposition with a twinkle in her eye, she tackles life with two feet first, no resentment or bitterness inside her.

Janie experiences racism from her own people as well as whites. A common occurrence throughout the story is for other black people to be jealous of Janie because of her decidedly white features such as her straight soft hair and light complexion. This element indicated to the darker shades of brown-skinned and kinky haired individuals that she received better treatment and favoritism from Caucasians and therefore would naturally make them envious, feeling like she was able to bridge the gap between the right and wrong side to be on which they themselves would never be able to cross. A popular belief of the time was that the degree of shade in one's skin complexion was a reflection of a lack of intelligence. Ms. Turner, an opinionated but biased married woman is just such a character which she openly shares to Janie.

“Janie's coffee-and-cream complexion and her luxurious hair made Mrs. Turner forgive her for wearing overalls like the other women in the fields.”

“Ah can't stand black niggers. Ah don't blame de white folks from hatin' "em cause Ah can"t stand "em mahself. "Nother thing, ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid "em”

This issue is as relevant today as it was during the first years of the novel"s publication, for even today many light skinned African Americans criticize their more heavily shaded counterparts as being "too dark" to be attractive, and the myth that light-skin people are more intelligent than darker-skinned Africans is as alive today among black people as it was in Hurston's time among everyone. The intellects know better and the masses remain ignorant. The term "dark" in Jamaican Patois, a language from an island not far from Florida, is actually defined as "being ignorant". This definition would no doubt stem from the days of slavery when the mulatto children of raped African women would receive special treatment and work around the master's mansion or inside his house. The derogatory term "house-nigger" is likely to have originated from mulatto slaves doing domesticated labour as well, a testament to the effectiveness of the British colonial policy to "divide and rule".

Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a book which holds invaluable worth to modern literature and documents southern black culture besides making an interesting study to the intellectual reader. Racism among one's own ethnic group is exposed in its everyday form as a young lively girl journeys on her quest for love. Experiences of the common people are taken from the dark shadows and displayed in glass showcases, and an analogy can be made between the journey of the main character to that greater one of the African in America: from chains of bondage to chimes of freedom.