Last month I read Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. It was incredibly well-written, and I really enjoyed the dialect that Hurston used in her dialogue. The only other book I’ve read that uses dialect was Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, which I listened to as an audiobook. 

My writing assignment was to create a playlist with songs that would call to mind characters, symbols, or scenes from the novel. I’ve never done a project like this before, and I really liked it! So I thought for this week’s post, I would share three of the songs from my playlist. 

Song Title: “Labour”

Artist: Paris Paloma

This song relates to Janie’s marriage with Jody, specifically when she joins into the men’s conversation and tells him off for ordering her around. These lyrics from “Labour” exemplify how exhausted Janie is by Jody’s constant commands, and how she really believed he was her savior from her previous marriage: 

“For somebody I thought was my savior 

You sure make me do a whole lot of labor.” 

She didn’t expect how much work she’d have to do in this new marriage. After all, Jody implied to her that she’d never have to do manual labor with him: “ A pretty doll-baby lak you is made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan yo’self and eat p’taters dat other folks plant just special for you” (29).  But he did not say anything about mental labor. And he eventually broke his promise, making her work in his store. 

Jody is incredibly possessive of Janie, forcing her to tie up her hair in the store, and not letting her speak in public. Janie does all this work, which she’s not used to, silently. When she makes even a small mistake, Jody reprimands her. And Janie notices throughout her relationship with Jody that for all her apologies, he doesn’t even once admit a mistake of his own. Paloma’s line from the song shows Janie’s feelings towards the end of her marriage with Jody: “Apologies from my tongue, and never yours.”  Jody blames Janie for his own mistakes, and in the end, she’d had enough. 

Song Title: “Riders on the Storm”

Artist: The Doors

The song is slightly eerie, and with its references to a dog, it’s curiously similar to the hurricane scenes in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The rain playing in the background of the music is atmospheric and adds to the vaguely hopeless feeling. 

“Into this house we’re born 

Into this world we’re thrown 

Like a dog without a bone” 

The contrast of the crashing thunder and the simple, slow keyboard melody calls back to Hurston’s contrasting use of elegant language and biting action. At the beginning of the hurricane’s arrival, Tea Cake exclaims “De lake is comin’!”  And the narrator continues: “A house down, here and there, frightened cattle. But above all the drive of the wind and the water. And the lake. Under its multiplied roar could be heard a mighty sound of grinding rock and timber and a wail” (161).

The short and clipped sentences here give a great sense of anxiety, of impending doom. The lyrics of the song are similarly pieced together through its seven minutes, with no clear sense of when the singer will begin or end. 

Song Title: “Somewhere in Between”

Artist: Jacob LaVallee

This is a classical piece, but so reminiscent of a horizon to me. The music is ethereal and melodic, while also a bit melancholy in tone. Janie feels this way at the very end of the novel, when Tea Cake has died, and she is a social outcast once again in her town. But she also feels free. For the first time, she hasn’t been chasing after or yearning for a relationship, or even just companionship. The song feels like the end of this novel. Hurston’s final lines are wistful, and the novel finishes on a note that at once satisfies the reader and leaves them wanting more of Janie’s story. 

“She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (193).