In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were
Watching God, many of the scenes set outdoors imply the beauty, vitality, and
inspirational qualities of nature. This is especially true, for instance, in the
episode involving the pear tree. However, Hurston obviously knew that emphasizing only
these aspects of nature would open her novel to charges of sentimentality and
excessively optimistic Romanticism. Hurston therefore stresses that nature can also seem
indifferent or even hostile to humanity. Nature can change suddenly and can ruin
humanity's achievements and plans in an instant. This is obviously what happens in the
famous section of the novel involving the hurricane. That storm not only kills many
people but also kills animals and devastates the landscape. It ultimately results in
death for Teacake as well as in tragedy for Janie, the novel's
heroine.
At one point, the hurricane literally lifts Janie
into the air and carries her off:
She screamed terribly and released the roofing
which sailed away as she plunged downward into the
water.
The hurricane in
Their Eyes Were Watching God is perhaps one of the most memorable
scenes of destructive weather in all of canonical American literature, and it certainly
shows Hurston's awareness that nature was not always benevolent or beneficial to human
beings. Hurston's emphasis on the dark powers of nature (as well as its bright ones)
helps give her book a kind of balance and wisdom it might otherwise have
lacked.
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