Their Eyes Were Watching God - reflections

So, it took me a little longer than I expected to reread Their Eyes Were Watching God - I was pleasantly sidetracked by rereading (ironically enough, given my general reluctance to reread anything) a childhood favorite, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. (As a long sidenote, we picked this up for our eight-year-old nephew for Hanukkah and I offered to read it alongside him... it was interesting how differently it struck me as an adult - how scary the story is, unrelentingly scary - and how thick with religious undertones, though no particular religion... at least, no particular monotheistic religion. I'm looking forward to hearing what my nephew thinks of it...)

But with a box of tissues and stubborn unwillingness to answer my phone, I took the book and my (now finally ended) cold to bed one afternoon and plowed through it. As with my first three readings of Their Eyes, the book hit me differently this time...

I was in high school the first time I read it, and was a romantic with seriously unhealthy tendencies (particularly when it came to romance) so I was primarily swept away by Janie and Tea Cake's romance - they had found true love, their soul mates. Sure, they hit one another, and sure, Tea Cake did some questionable stuff but such are the complexities of amore, I thought.

In subsequent readings, I was lost in Hurston's language which is often breathtakingly beautiful.

She pulled the horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders."

In those readings, I lost the romance in my anger at Tea Cake.

Perhaps it's being older... perhaps it's being (slightly) less judgemental, but this time, I didn't feel like I had to defend Janie or Tea Cake - I just had to join them. I missed the language for being lost in the story, discovering love with Janie under the pear tree; running away with her to Joe Starks, then sitting uncomfortably in his store; falling in love with Tea Cake and loving him despite his human shortcomings...

I occasionally go through phases where I value non-fiction more than fiction because I want fact, the truth of the world. But Their Eyes are Watching God is a great reminder that truth and fact are often not the same thing.