"Their Eyes were Watching God"

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Books that challenge my views and beliefs earn a place on my required reading list, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, a beautiful work of fiction, is such a book. Growing up, I believed that I was “colorblind” and certainly tried to act that way. Reading this book helped me understand that racism is something we are all born with and must struggle against every day. With this work of masterful storytelling, Zora Neale Hurston opens a window into the history and culture of black Americans. After reading it, I felt a new appreciation for the creativity, courage, and spirituality that helped this nation’s slaves endure abuse, torture, and, after emancipation, abandonment by the only world they knew.

Their Eyes Were Watching God takes place in Georgia and Florida in the years following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. After being freed, many former slaves were at loose ends and never emerged from poverty. Some of them, however, had the means and the knowledge to form towns and enjoy prosperity. Eatonville, Florida, (near Orlando) was one such town, and on August 15, 1887, became incorporated. Zora Neale Hurston’s father moved the family there in the early 1890s and was elected mayor for several terms. A keen observer of human behavior and recorder of speech, Ms. Hurston used her experience growing up in that town as the backdrop for her story of this time of great change for America’s newly freed slaves.

Janie, the main character, is a teenager being raised by her grandmother, a woman whose world view and beliefs were formed during her years of enslavement. Janie has an intuitive sense of the possibilities that life has to offer and yearns to find a way to live in harmony and happiness. Nanny, however, sees things differently. Out of a desperate need to protect young Janie and ensure her long-term security, Nanny arranges a marriage to a much older man with property and money. Janie is horrified but has no choice other than to submit. When the marriage becomes intolerable, Janie does the unthinkable: she runs off with a man who seems to offer the promise of romance and happiness that she craves.

Janie and Jody Starks travel to what will become Eatonville, Florida. When they arrive, it is clear that the settlers have no idea of how to form a town in a way that it will work to anyone’s benefit. Jody offers the vision and leadership which is sorely lacking and as a result becomes mayor. Janie, meanwhile, has married him and does his bidding by being well dressed and setting an example for the town. Behind closed doors, however, Jody can be a mean and abusive husband. Janie, like her slave ancestors, learns to take the abuse while protecting her heart and soul by not letting the hurt in. This is not to say she is meek, quite the contrary; when provoked, she has choice words for her husband.

After Jody’s death, Janie, now in her forties, meets a handsome, young stranger and the two fall in love. “Tea Cake” takes Janie away from Eatonville to the Glades just south of Lake Okeechobee. The two work as farm laborers and enjoy a lively social life until a deadly hurricane breaches the dikes holding back the lake. “The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God”. Thousands perish, but Janie and Tea Cake manage to survive the flood at a terrible cost.

As a story, this book could stand on its own, however, Ms. Hurston wrote the dialog in southern black dialect which gives it richness and authenticity. I found that I had to read the characters’ words slowly in order to translate the “Black English” into English. In so doing, I felt transported into a new world and was delighted by the clever word play she recorded and beautiful ways the author had of describing her characters’ lives. Savoring the dialog in this way broke through my preconceived belief that Black English was silly nonsense. Black English enabled the slaves to communicate amongst themselves and create their own subculture which white people could not and would not penetrate. It helped them survive the horrors of life in chains.

Their Eyes Were Watching God did not enjoy much success when first published because it was not a “political” book, in that Ms. Hurston was not publishing as a means of communicating a message about the wrongs of social injustice. Ms. Hurston did explore the topic of racism in its most insidious form: between African Americans. Janie becomes acquainted with a woman, Mrs. Turner, who is light skinned and says “Ah can’t stand black niggers. Ah don’t blame de white folks from hating’ ‘em ‘cause Ah can’t stand ‘em mahself”. She goes on to say “Ah got white folks’ features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain’t fair”. Ms. Hurston likened this type of racism to “the pecking order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t”. This was not a message that early civil rights philosophers and activists were willing to hear.

During her working life, Zora Neale Hurston made her home in New York City and was part of the “Harlem Renaissance” which more militant African Americans rejected as bourgeois. In spite of being a highly educated anthropologist, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, and publishing a number of works, Ms. Hurston fell into obscurity. She returned to Florida in mid-life and worked as a maid until suffering a stroke in the late 1950s. This brilliant American writer died unknown and penniless a few years later and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Like many great artists, Zora Neale Hurston was ahead of her time and was unwilling to cater to popular culture. She wrote what was in her heart and mind and lived as a woman of free will. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, discovered Zora Neale Hurston’s work in the 1960s and endeavored to learn more about this gifted and largely unknown writer. It is thanks to her that Ms. Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as other works resurfaced to be enjoyed by scholars and readers of American fiction. Ms. Walker’s research enabled her to locate Ms. Hurston’s grave and in 1973, she placed a marker on it which reads “A genius of the South”. An understatement if you ask me.

"River of Grass"

The Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Every once in a while, something good happens which makes the national news. On Thursday, November 8, 2007, according to a CNN report, “The Senate … handed President Bush his first veto override -- authorizing $23 billion in new water projects.” Two billion dollars of these funds are earmarked for Florida and of that, most will go towards Everglades restoration. If Marjory Stoneman Douglas were still alive, she would be smiling.

In addition to living 108 years, Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 - May 14, 1998) was unusual in that she was a professional woman in an era when most women did not work outside of the home, and those who did were employed in clerical work. After divorcing her husband, Kenneth Douglas, in 1917 after one year of marriage, Ms. Douglas moved to Miami to work for her father who was the editor of a newspaper which would eventually become the Miami Herald. Across the next several decades, she wrote many short stories and articles for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Woman's Home Companion, as well as a number of novels.

Everglades: River of Grass was published in 1947 – when development of south Florida was in full swing along the east and west coasts. As more people moved down to enjoy the beautiful winters, demand for buildable land led to the creation of a vast network of canals to convert the wetlands to dry so that development could continue to move inland. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers was so successful in drying the swamps that in addition to almost killing the Everglades, it brought south Florida to the brink of ecological collapse. What no one seemed to understand was that the slow, southward flow of water through the river of grass prevented salt water from seeping into the aquifers which provide Florida’s fresh water. If not for Marjory Stoneman Douglas and her efforts to save the Everglades, south Florida might have become uninhabitable.

In 2007, Pineapple Press published a 50th anniversary edition of River of Grass. It includes two additional chapters which provide an updated look at the state of the Everglades as well as the efforts to reverse some of the damage. Without these new chapters, the book might seem dated as so much has happened, both good and bad, since its initial publication. Just the same, the original work is a timeless and well-researched piece of journalism. Ms. Douglas begins the book with a rapturous description of the vast sea of grass which reads like an epic poem. Her beautiful prose reveals the passion and tenderness she had for the strong, yet fragile, Everglades. In the first chapter, she analyzes each sub-system of the overall: the grass, the water, the rock, the plants and animals, and the people. Her research covers natural and human history which, taken together, enable the reader to understand why the Everglades nearly died, why this ecosystem must be saved, and what the goals of restoration must include.

Even without the drama of saving the Everglades, Florida’s history is fascinating to learn about and River of Grass presents an overview which is detailed enough to give the reader an appreciation of this. Humans have inhabited the Florida peninsula for almost 20,000 years when the last great ice age created mass migrations southward. The tribes settled on the coastlines where fish were plentiful and their descendents – the Seminoles – still live here. Life was predictable for millennia until the Europeans mastered the open ocean in the 1400s and the great age of discovery began.

Christopher Columbus was credited with discovering the American continent, although he made landfall on one of the islands of the Bahamas. It took several voyages for Spain to reach the great continent which would be called “the new world”. During this time, the Spanish proceeded to enslave and exterminate the natives on every island they took. When the Spanish slave ships made their way to the Florida peninsula, the native Floridians, understanding the threat, were prepared to fight and much Spanish blood was shed. The Spaniards did not go away, however, they returned again and again with more men and superior weapons. At the same time, other explorers began encroaching on the Spanish territory. The natives, however, were cunning warriors who refused to be defeated and kept the conquerors at bay.

For approximately 300 years, the natives lived peacefully in and around the Everglades. The Spaniards remained in the north, establishing harbor towns and forts, choosing to leave the natives alone in their watery wasteland. Other Europeans continued to make attempts to encroach on south Florida and as the United States formed and began expanding its boundaries, the native Americans came under attack with increasing frequency.

In the years before the Civil War, escaping slaves often made their way to Florida where they were out of reach of the slave bounty hunters. Some were taken in by the natives and others learned to survive in the wet Florida wilderness. Confederate Army deserters, too, found Florida a good place to disappear and thus the non-native population began to grow and change the nature of the environment by introducing land cultivation and cattle farming. Meanwhile, the United States Government recognized that Florida had both economic and strategic value and began a campaign to kill the natives and displace any survivors by coercing them into signing treaties which took advantage of their naiveté in matters of money and real estate. Some of the natives, understanding that their world had been taken, retreated into the impenetrable cypress swamps where they would be safe for a time. Others, defeated and dispirited, followed the trail of tears to strange and hostile new homelands.

At the same time the United States was fighting the final battles against the native Americans, Spain was causing trouble from its colony, Cuba. Once the United States won the Spanish-American War, trade with Cuba opened up. It was a time of extreme lawlessness on the peninsula with pirates seizing ships and outlaws hiding in the Ten Thousand Islands. Plume hunters ravaged bird rookeries and alligator hunters nearly brought the species to extinction. Mosquitoes plagued everyone and yet, once the natives and the Spanish had been dispatched, industrialists like Henry Flagler and Henry Plant saw opportunities in the swampy south. But, it was Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward who took the idea of draining the swamps and made it happen.

The Army Corps of Engineers, recognizing that Lake Okeechobee turned into an overflowing saucer during hurricanes, built up a levee around its southern shore. In addition to flood control, this levee severely restricted the flow of water out of the lake into the river of grass rather than allowing the water to flow south. Instead, the engineers created canals to channel the water east and west into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers where it emptied into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Healthy, meandering rivers became straight water conduits leaving dried out swamps which no longer could support indigenous plants and animals in their wake. As farming increased, runoff contaminated the water in the lake and consequently, the rivers.

As the Everglades receded, the area around Miami began expanding in all directions. The beautiful climate attracted winter and year-round residents alike and that created a building boom. In the north, from the panhandle and Jacksonville, development along the coasts advanced rapidly, too, surrounding the swampy southern interior and creating additional pressure for drainage. Great fortunes were made in real estate speculation, but not everyone was happy with the changes being wrought in Florida. Some, like Marjory Stoneman Douglas, decided that enough was enough. As champion of the Everglades, Ms. Douglas took on politicians and developers alike in her formidable campaign to save what was left of the Everglades.

Ms. Douglas’ work on the Everglades began as a result of an assignment to write about the Miami River as part of a series on American rivers. In the course of field studies of her subject, she came to understand that without the Everglades, the Miami River would shrivel up and die, along with all the plants and animals living in and around it. Her editor agreed to let her expand the scope of her report and her life’s work was born.

It has taken a long time for us as a nation to appreciate the singular beauty of the Everglades and stop thinking of it as a watery wasteland in need of draining and filling. We should all give thanks to Marjory Stoneman Douglas for being like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike and stopping a catastrophe.

The "Mr. Watson" Trilogy

REQUIRED READING

Killing Mr. Watson
Lost Man’s River
Bone by Bone

A trilogy by Peter Mathiessen

Book Review by Teresa Friedlander (copyright 2007)

Suppose you reside in a peaceful backwater, making a living off the land and providing for your family, when one day a stranger appears and changes everything. This stranger, a well-mannered and nicely dressed gentleman, has a menacing air about him and likes the isolation of your corner of the Everglades. While his public behavior is proper and he establishes a productive sugarcane plantation, rumors surface that he murdered a famous outlaw, that he broke out of jail to avoid a lynch mob, and that he killed his employees on pay day when money was tight. Even more alarming is his reputation as a sharpshooter. After a time, it seems everyone in your community is afraid of him and is therefore relieved when he abruptly leaves his loving family, his successful plantation and the fine home he has built, in the wake of a grisly double murder on the property. You and your neighbors assume that he either did the crime or caused it to happen, and everyone hopes he never returns because there is no law enforcement in this place and time – southwest Florida in the early 1900s – and thus you might be required to take the law into your own hands.

Edgar J. Watson (1855-1910) is one of Florida’s most notorious historical figures. He was tall, powerful, and ruggedly handsome, but it was the look in his eyes that revealed his cold soul. While very few facts about him are known, many stories exist of crimes he is alleged to have committed as well as of his skill at farming and of his larger-than-life personality. He settled in a part of south Florida – the Everglades and the 10,000 Islands – which was largely empty of people because it barely qualified as land. Through intimidation and an understanding of land rights, Mr. Watson laid claim to the highest and most fertile parcel of land in the region. He built a grand home on his sugar cane plantation and was the only man in the Chokoloskee Bay area to own a motor boat. From his plantation overlooking the Chatham River, Mr. Watson could see a boat approaching his island home from almost any direction and was, therefore, never surprised by a visitor. He valued his privacy and made sure that everyone knew it.

Shortly after his arrival in the 10,000 Islands, rumors began circulating that Watson had ambushed Belle Starr, a legendary outlaw, in 1889. Miss Starr, an accomplished horse thief, aided and abetted fugitives and criminals by allowing them to hide on her land within Choctaw and Cherokee Territories. Mr. Watson supposedly was dodging a murder charge and repaid Miss Starr’s kindness by gunning her down when she threatened to turn him over to the authorities. This was never proven and there are discrepancies in the stories which provide room for doubt that the Edgar Watson of southwestern Florida was the same man who murdered Belle Starr.

Mr. Watson married three times, had two common-law wives, and fathered 10 children. During his life, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of murder. Many people he knew including several in his employ, disappeared or were brutally murdered. Circumstantial evidence implicated Watson in several of these murders, but rarely was there enough hard evidence to have him arrested and convicted. On October 24, 1910, an informal posse of his neighbors gunned him down at Chokoloskee Bay upon his return from a brief exile. No one in the posse would say who fired the shot that killed Mr. Watson. These are the facts around which Peter Mathiessen created his trilogy on the life and times of Edgar J. Watson.

Peter Mathiessen is both novelist and natural historian. He delves into the history of people and places in crafting his books, and seamlessly tells the story of how places change as a result of human activity over time. Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone tell the same story – how it is that Edgar J. Watson came to be executed by his neighbors at Chokoloskee Bay – in three different ways. Mr. Mathiessen clearly immersed himself in his subject and was apparently unable to write a single book about the legendary Mr. Watson. Even though the first book starts with Mr. Watson’s execution, each book compels the reader to want more information and understanding of this man who evoked such passionate feelings in those who knew him.

In Killing Mr. Watson, the author seems to believe that most of the stories about Mr. Watson are overblown gossip; the product of overactive imaginations and embellished memories. Killing Mr. Watson, is a series of imagined first person recollections by neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives of Mr. Watson and the world they inhabited. Mr. Mathiessen brings each character to life with the skillful use of dialect and diction which in turn motivate the reader to piece together a complete picture of what it was like to be in Mr. Watson’s world. At the end, which is also how the book begins, the reader is in the middle of that posse, gun in hand and index finger ready to squeeze the trigger when Mr. Watson walks across the invisible, but clear, line in the sand at the river’s edge.

The second book, Lost Man’s River, is an imaginary quest by Mr. Watson’s son Lucius to learn the truth about his “beloved Papa”. Lucius, in his sixties, had made a career as a historian and was somewhat famous for his book History of Southwest Florida. Haunted his entire life by the death of his father and frustrated by his family’s refusals to discuss the man, Lucius placed an ad in a newspaper asking anyone for information about E. J. Watson. The book opens with an anonymous response to the ad which is the deposition of one of the men in the posse. This deposition triggers Lucius to contact the executioners of his father and journey back in time. In addition to discovering the truth about his father, he learns how brutally the Florida landscape was ravaged and what the ugly legacy of racism has wrought.

Finally, Bone by Bone is Mr. Watson’s chance to explain himself and how he became a cold-blooded serial murderer. Mr. Mathiessen seemingly channels Mr. Watson’s voice as he recounts the hardships and tragedies he endured in his early life which caused him to lose his humanity. This is a gut-wrenching book both because of the pain experienced by Mr. Watson throughout his life as well as his matter-of-fact descriptions of the murders he committed, some of which are truly horrific. Of the three, this book is the most challenging, but arguably the best.

Each book in the Edgar Watson Trilogy can stand on its own but, taken together, the trilogy is a masterpiece of fiction, research, and natural history, not unlike Moby Dick. Mr. Mathiessen’s epic describes southwestern Florida in the period following the Civil War when humans, through hubris and greed, drove many bird and animal species to the brink of extinction and began planning to drain the Everglades. While Henry Flagler was busy building his railroad from St. Augustine to Miami, sowing the seeds of the massive population influx to come, the southwest coast could only be reached by boat. The isolation and impenetrability of the swampy islands made this a popular destination for criminals, outlaws, and others needing to disappear for a while. In each of these three books, Mr. Mathiessen brings the reader deep into this almost uninhabitable place where the law was only a loosely understood concept.

I first read these books long before moving to Florida and found them each to be deeply moving in different ways. Killing Mr. Watson made my heart ache for the Everglades and the animals which were killed with so little thought so that ladies in Paris could be stylishly dressed. The second book is more reflective; the main character not only learns about his father, he also learns about himself and his family. In the end, Lucius is freed from the past. Bone by Bone caught me off guard by the depth and many facets of Mr. Watson’s personality. It is an important reminder of how a brutal childhood can deprive a person of his humanity, something that as a society, we should all be concerned about.