SOURCE: Curren, Erik D. “Should Their Eyes Have Been Watching God?: Hurston's Use of Religious Experience and Gothic Horror.” African American Review 29, no. 1 (spring 1995): 17-25.

In the following essay, Curren proposes that Hurston uses gothic devices in Their Eyes Were Watching God to effectively convey the politics of the master-slave relationship, while also ratifying the vitality and nurturing nature of African religious practice.

The title of a literary work may be leading or misleading, but it is often a good place to start an analysis. When title words or phrases are repeated inside the text, connecting them to the specific place where they appear seems to offer the promise of a key for decoding the meaning of the whole work. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a suggestive but perplexing title for Hurston's Bildungsroman of a woman's self-discovery through a quest for meaningful community. Dolan Hubbard attempts to...