In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, author Hurston tells the story of Janie finding her own freedom, the freedom to use her voice. The people Janie meet along her journey also search for something they want to find. All these people have a “God” helping them find what they desire. In the novel, Hurston uses God as a force, to demonstrate every character’s unique relationship with God.
The passage on page 145 of Their Eyes Were Watching God describes the passage where Mrs. Turner’s worships Janie’s Caucasian body features. This passage relates to the title of the novel because it explains Mrs. Turner’s idea of a God. The point of God in the novel is to highlight how every different person in the storyline has a different relationship with God and what he does for them. For example, Mrs. Turner’s God is one who would help her “attain her paradise” of looking more Caucasian (Hurston, 145). The passage describes the cruelty that her God has put her through because she will never attain the Caucasian characteristics Janie has. Mrs. Turner was made the way she looks, African American, for a reason. Although this truth remains, “she [would] accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity” (145). She accepts this cruelty for the hope that one day she too will be “straight-haired, thin-lipped, [and] high-nose boned” like Janie and other Caucasian females (145). Becoming more Caucasian-like will be a “physical impossibility” forever, it did not “[injure] her faith” (145). Mrs. Turner believes in a God who will help her attain what she desires. Not all of the other characters in the novel look to “god” the same way Mrs. Turner does, showing that God acts as a force, not a single being.
The passage on page 158 includes the start of the hurricane hitting Florida while Janie, Tea Cake, and Motor Boat are together waiting out the storm. Three people sit together and wait out a storm, something scary that has the power to destroy their town and everything...