Finding hope in their eyes that looked at God Their eyes that looked at God recognizes that there are problems in the human condition, such as the need to possess, the fear of the unknown and consequent stagnation. But Hurston does not leave us with the desperation of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, rather he extends the recognition and understanding of humanity's need to escape the void. “Dem meatskins got the rattle to let them know they alive (183)” His solution is simple: “You gotta go there, you know there.” Janie, like the characters in the previous novels, embarks on a quest to make sense of her internal questions: an emptiness she knew she possessed from the moment she sat under the pear tree. "She found an answer by looking for it, but where?...where were the shiny bees (11) for her?" Although tragedy invades her life, it does not paralyze her, but strengthens her. Alone at the end of the novel, after having loved and lost, Janie sits in her home, banished by the "feeling of absence and nothingness (183)." Her road of discovery has led her to herself, and she gains a better understanding of the world she lives in and how small happiness is: "If you see the light at dawn, don't worry if you die at dusk." . There are so many people who have never seen joy (151)" Instead of Hurston portraying racial integrity, she depicts the African American as racially wholesome. She was discarded by the black writing movement of the 1930s and 1940s because she imagined the African American as a whole rather than oppressed and oppressed people. Hurston was not a militant, she did not want to prove any theory. Capturing the essence of black femininity was more important to her than social criticism by Hurston is ironic. Although Janie, having...... half of the paper ......ttp: 11 www. usc.edu/ ~ gallaher/ hurston “Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Modern Critical Interpretations: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. 'Tuh de Horizon and Back': The Female Search in Their Eyes Was Watching God." Modern Critical Interpretations: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God Ed. Harold Bloom New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.Pondrom, Cyrena N. "The Role of Myth in American Literature by Hurston 58.2." May 1986): 181-202. Wright, Richard. "Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston - Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and KA Appiah New York, 1993