Their Eyes Were Watching God book club questions

1. 1.

   Janie tells her story to Pheoby rather than to the town — why does that choice matter, and what does it say about who she trusts?

2. 2.

   Nanny arranges Janie's first marriage out of genuine love and genuine terror. Does the novel treat her as wrong? Should we?

3. 3.

   Joe Starks's need to silence Janie — is that a personal failing, a product of his ambitions, or something the novel presents as structural?

4. 4.

   Tea Cake hits Janie at one point. Hurston keeps this in without editorializing. How did you respond to that scene, and what do you think Hurston intended?

5. 5.

   The novel was criticized by Richard Wright for having no protest politics. Having read it, do you think that criticism is fair, or does it mistake the book's subject for something else?

6. 6.

   Hurston renders the dialect phonetically throughout. Did that enrich or slow your reading? What would the novel lose if it were written in standard English?

7. 7.

   The ending requires Janie to kill someone she loves. Was that ending earned by what came before, or does it feel imposed?

8. 8.

   The porch-sitters in Eatonville gossip and judge constantly. Are they antagonists, or does the novel treat them more ambivalently than that?

9. 9.

   Janie's three marriages map onto three different ideas of what a woman's life should look like. Which of those ideas does the novel most clearly reject?

10. 10.

    Alice Walker described Hurston as a 'genius of the South.' How does the specific geography of the novel — Eatonville, the Everglades, the muck — shape its meaning?

11. 11.

    Compared to Toni Morrison's Sula, which also centers Black women's interiority, where does Hurston's novel feel different in its ambitions?

12. 12.

    By the end, Janie says she's 'been to the horizon and back.' What do you think she means by that, and does the novel's action support the metaphor?

How to run the discussion

• Pick six to eight, not all of them. An hour of real discussion covers fewer questions than anyone expects, and racing the list is what makes a book club feel like homework.
• Open with what people noticed, not what they concluded. Asking for a verdict first hardens opinions before anyone has heard each other.
• Let the disagreement run. The questions below that split a room are the ones worth the time; the ones everyone answers the same way can be skipped.
• Ask the quiet person a specific question. A direct, narrow question is far easier to answer than an open invitation to contribute.