English 3 Honors

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  • Today’s Lesson: Last quarter we finished an excerpt from Zora Neale Hurston’s autobiography Dust Tracks on the Road. Today you will learn more about what became of that young girl with a passion for reading, and then you will sample a little bit of her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

    A few notes about Zora Neale Hurston:

    • Zora Neale Hurston was actually born in Alabama in 1891, but as a young girl she moved to Eatonville, Florida, where the excerpt from Dust Tracks on a Road was set. When she was 9, her mother died and her father remarried. She did not get along with her step-mother and was sent to live with her older brother in Jacksonville. She spent the next decade in Jacksonville.
    • According to The Florida Times-Union story from October 27, 2019,“She attended the Florida Baptist Academy boarding school in Jacksonville but was expelled in 1905 because she was unable to pay her tuition. In Jacksonville, for the first time in her life, Hurston encountered racism that, she explained, “made me know that I was a little colored girl.”
    • Eventually she graduated high school in Baltimore, and then proceeded to earn degrees from colleges in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In New York, Hurston became a part of the historic Harlem Renaissance literary scene, but she still returned to Jacksonville throughout her writing career.
    • According to the same Times-Union story: Some of Hurston’s most influential and important work came in Jacksonville with The Federal Writers Project from 1935-1937 during the Great Depression. Hurston was in charge of the “Negro Unit,” which was located at the Clara White Mission on West Ashley Street.
    • Hurston’s most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in 1937 while Hurston was in Haiti. Though fictional, the story is set largely in her childhood hometown of Eatonville.
    • Despite having published four novels, two folklore books, an autobiography, short stories, essays, and articles, Hurston died in poverty in 1960.

    Their Eyes Were Watching God Assignment

    Their Eyes Were Watching God is a fictional story set in Hurston’s childhood town of Eatonville and other Florida locations during the 1920s-1930s. The main character is Janie, who suddenly returns to Eatonville after a long absence. Janie tells of her life journey, starting with where she came from as a teenager living first with her grandmother and then in an arranged marriage. Then she recalls her time in Eatonville, where she gained status alongside her overconfident and controlling second husband. Finally, she reveals where she has been since leaving Eatonville, traveling with a man who became her third husband and only true love.

    For the following assignment you will view a clip from the film adaptation of the novel and read the opening excerpt from the text of the novel. Links to the film, which I will play for the class, and for the text, are included in the following assignment: https://forms.office.com/r/rt2GEd2AN4

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