Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston Theme Many times the love that a person is looking for is the one that a person doesn't realize. Setting The author begins and ends the book on a porch where Janie is telling her story to her friend Pheobe Watson. The book begins in the morning on the porch and then ends at night, symbolic of beginning and end. In between these two times Janie …showed first 75 words of 6228 total…

…showed last 75 words of 6228 total…in coming, especially because she discarded her mourning colors. She was free of Jody, so she also took steps to defy the restrictions that social convention placed on her behavior. Gaining personal freedom was a two-fold process. First, she had to be free in her private life, but she also had to free herself from restricting social attitudes. Only then could she begin to heal the rift between her outside self and her inside self.