Their Eyes Were Watching God, and God IS Love

I agree with my fellow classmates that the title comes from the hurricane scene and that it is a representation of the fact that Janie is shaped by uncontrollable forces in her life. Like a weak structure in a hurricane, her emotions and dreams are vulnerable to every external and unchangeable force around her. However, even before I reached the scene in which the exact line "their eyes were watching God" appeared, I pondered its significance to a novel written about a black woman in the early twentieth century. God is a manifestation of love, and of love that is unconditional and pays no attention to things like race, gender and class, which we discussed as so crucial to this novel. Janie is oppressed by her society because of her identifying factors which are beyond her control, but she seems to have something that keeps her holding on. Perhaps that something is the knowledge in her heart that there is a higher power which pays no regard to the prejudices and ignorance of this world.