Tag Archives: Adam and Eve

Genesis in Their Eyes Were Watching God


Neale Hurston, Zora. Their eyes were watching God. Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition, 2006. 1.

It’s interesting how this passage starts off with the division of men and women. It shows how dreams are interpreted to men and how they are for women. The beginning of the book starts off as Genesis when they describe the fall of man and woman. It shows the difference between men and women and stresses on the dreams that they each hold.

The Garden of Eden

“And he recalled the familiar sight of all those Hindu men and women who could be seen squatting in the open, outside the city every morning. ‘So shameless,’ he thought; ‘they don’t seem to care who looks at them, sitting there like that’ ” (Anand 19).


This passage reminds me of the Garden of Eden. The Hindu men and women are like Adam and Eve before they ate the apple and Bakha is them after. After being exposed to the tree of life and sin, which in this case could be symbolized by the Englishmen, he finds something so normal to his culture to be shameful. The English represent the tree of life because they are, in many ways, more modern than India, but they also represent sin because they are taking away the land and rights of people solely because they believe they have the right to due to their skin color. Also because they have stolen from these people and killed many innocents in the process of expanding there own empire, kind of like Satan one could argue.