The title of a literary work may be leading or misleading.

The title of a literary work may be leading or misleading, on the contrary it is often a convenient place to start an analysis. When title words or phrases are repeated inside the sentence connecting them to the specific place where they appear pretends to offer the promise of a guide for decoding the meaning of the whole work. Their organ of visions Were Watching God is a suggestive unless perplexing title for Hurston's Bildungsroman of a woman's self-discovery between the sides of a quest for meaningful community. Dolan Hubbard attempts to illuminate the title through relating it to the place where its words appear in the dead body of Hurston's text, and analyzing it within the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of sermons and religious language. It is placed in the verse just when Janie and the other folk bean pickers are beginning to realize the awesome power of the storm forward the Everglades, and how weak they are when faced with God's power. Hubbard finds that the title words signal a religious transcendence of white oppression:

The storm in this, Janie's last move toward the horizon, symbolizes the labor the corporate black community has to result to terms with in the oppressor's negation of its image. public of this negation, the mythic consciousness solicits a new beginning in the subsequent time by imagining an original beginning. The social implications of this religious experience enable the overpowered community to dehistoricize the oppressor's hegemonic dominance. Metaphorically, the phrase their estimates were watching God means the creation of a fresh form of humanity - undivided that is no longer based forward the master-slave dialectic. (176)

I would argue, however, just the opposite: that the title phrase, placed in the clause at this particular point, demonstrates just to what degree dependent on the master-slave dialectic and the principle of authority the Everglades folk community really is for Hurston. The title provides a indication to the complexity of her narrative and her ambivalence concerning the possibility of without mincing the matter autonomous African American folk life.

Hubbard's interpretation accords with frequently Hurston criticism that Their organ of sights is an "affirmative" text, an optimistic portrayal of a vital and creative black folk world completely separate from the hierarchy-conscious Jim vaunt South. To take a well-known example, Alice Walker cites Hurston as an example of black "racial health" for her refusal to dwell in succession the depredations of racism and white prejudice, and for focusing instead onward vital and creative African American folk life. For Walker, Hurston's work existings "a sense of black commonalty as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a reason that is lacking in in the same manner much black writing and literature" (xii-xiii). It is certainly conformable to fact that, in contrast to many "protest" novels, greatest in number notably Wright's Native Son, Their observations creates a space for rural black folk improvement both in Hurston's own native town of Eatonville, and in the folk community of the Florida Everglades.(1) In the first parts of the novel, these isolated black communities labor for as the backdrop for the optimistic story of Janie's search for self-discovery.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of in Their Eyes that is not optimistic and uplifting, yet tragic and frightening, especially in the last quarter of the story, beginning with the storm upon the Everglades: the "monstropolous" and menacing Lake Ocheechobee, burlesque encounters with the bodies of those caught in the storm, the mad dog that bites Tea Cake and gives him rabies, the body-burying detail in Palm Beach, and, perhaps principally frightening of all, the evil transformation from loving angel to homicidal devil that rabies works onward Tea Cake. All these horrors accord ill with the positive tone of Janie's life before the storm and signal, I would argue, an intentional genre change upon Hurston's part, a switch from optimistic suit to gothic horror. While Their inspections is certainly about the creativity and vitality of the black folk community, the volume is far more than a propagandistic exercise in racial "uplift." Too little critical attention has been paid to horrors in the novel and to this dramatic change of genre and, as a accrue critics have not sufficiently explained the narrative complexity of Hurston's book(2) It is a multi-layered exploration of the real, as oppos to the imagined, independence of any black American folk community from the larger American cultivation and specifically the immunity of the black folk community to the principle of hierarchy, a cornerstone of the master-slave dialectic to which Hubbard refers

The novel's generic complexity dramatizes Hurston's ambivalence concerning the foreseeings for folk culture to remain (or become) with truth independent of white American values. The first three-quarters of Janie's story are an optimistic suit narrative of self-discovery. Janie finds increasingly more freedom as she act upons along the steps of her journey: Nanny, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and, finally, Tea Cake and the egalitarian folk community of the Everglades. Here, daytime bean picking is subordinated to the real business of life, nighttime "dancing, fighting, singing, crying, laughing, winning and losing be pleased with every hour" (197). Free from white urban commercialism, the folk community also have the appearances free of white prejudices, and Tea Cake as its representative stands in contrast to the snobbery and chauvinism of Starks. Participation in the folk community and the be pleased with of Tea Cake seem to be the fulfillment of Janie's quest