Their Eyes Were Watching God Lesson Plan: Discussion Questions, Activities, and Historical Context Ideas

Getting students interested in Janie’s story isn’t necessarily the hard part of teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God. There’s love, heartbreak, and a woman who literally walks away when she doesn’t find what she wants for her life.

And there are so many great questions to tackle: How do we chase our own dreams and not those that we inherit? What do people need to have in their lives in order to feel free? How do we deal with outward expectations when they don’t match our inner desires?

The hard part is doing this incredible novel justice.

It’s definitely possible to teach a unit in which students follow Janie’s journey, identify the pear tree as an extended metaphor, and write an essay comparing her three husbands. (I’ve done it myself!) But this would barely scratch the surface of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

What I really want is for students to experience how amazingly good this book is. 

It’s not just the compelling story that makes Their Eyes Were Watching God great, it’s how all the parts come together—the challenging dialect, the seemingly random subplots, the imperfect characters, the historical references, the big ideas, and so so much figurative language. 

It’s complicated and strange and lovely and challenging and so heartbreakingly beautiful. So much of that beauty comes from how all those pieces work together—even the ones that initially seem random or frustrating—and I don’t want students to miss out on that experience. 

Teaching a book I love this much comes with a lot of questions. Here are the ones I kept coming back to as I developed my unit on Their Eyes Were Watching God—and how I approach each of them.

What should a pre-reading unit include?

Obviously the novel is the main attraction, but I do think that some pre-reading units to help students prepare a bit for the novel are worth the time.  I know that a lot of people might start off with one of Hurston’s short stories, but for me they’re too similar to the novel.  Instead, I like to choose from a few options depending on the class and how I want them to be prepared for their reading. 

If I want to get in a short writing assignment and get students thinking about how we tell our stories, I’ll choose a six-word memoir unit.  This is a fun intro for a book about a woman who sits down to tell her life story to a best friend, and it gets students thinking about what we include—and don’t include—when telling our stories.  Similarly, Langston Hughes’ poem “Theme for English B” in which the speaker is tasked with the assignment to “Go home and write / a page tonight” is also a nice choice to get students thinking about how we tell our stories to others.

Since Their Eyes has so many dense and original metaphors, I think getting students thinking about why we humans even use figurative language is another great start to the unit. So I like to start with a few activities from my love metaphors task cards.  Probably my favorite activity from this bunch is the TED Talk “A better way to talk about love” by Mandy Len Catron.  In the talk, Catron’s asserts, “Reframing love as something I get to create with someone I admire, rather than something that just happens to me without my control or consent, is empowering.” This seems perfect as an intro for Janie and Tea Cake’s story.

I also like to use these intro texts to teach students my method for writing reading responses.  They take a whole day to work through the process which involves finding a passage, writing about it, asking questions, and taking some guesses at answers.  I know it sounds bonkers to take a full class for this, but it pays off so much!  Students then write responses throughout their reading of the novel which they’ll use for their final essay.

How do I get students through the opening chapter?

The first chapter of Hurston’s masterful novel can be a lot. We’re thrown right into Janie’s story, but it’s the end of her adventures; we’re given lots of hints about what has happened to her, but we don’t really know what the story is; we’re thrown right into the wonderful, fascinating world of Eatonville, but we don’t get any introduction to its people, ways, or manner of speaking.

So I try to ease them into the novel in a few ways.

As always, I like to start with a bellringer freewrite that gets students thinking about whatever it is that I want them to get out of that day’s reading.  Probably my favorite bellringer freewrite for chapter one is this one: “Write a story of a survivor who has just come back from somewhere but don’t say what has happened to that person; instead, show as much as you can just by the description of the person.” I think it really opens up students to consider the many hints that are given about where Janie has been and what she has done.

Once they’re ready to read, in order to help students through the first chapter, I start with the audio as read by Ruby Dee (which at the time of writing as available for free on YouTube). I’ve found that really listening to this lovely book helps students to get past the challenging dialect and into the story. 

In terms of close reading questions for chapter one, I focus a lot on making sure that students notice what Hurston has to say about the other inhabitants of Eatonville as well as on having students explain in their own words some of the more important statements that Janie and Pheoby make.  I want them to notice some of the big ideas in this chapter as well as how Eatonville is its own world.

So, for example, I make sure students notice the contrast in Hurston’s description of the porch-sitters. During the work day, “Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins,” but once their work is done, they feel “powerful and human.” And I have them explain in their own words phrases like “An envious heart makes a treacherous ear” or “Ah been a delegate to de big ‘ssociation of life.”   These are the kinds of details they might pass over in their attempts to understand what’s going on but that actually carry a lot of weight in the novel as a whole.

Taking it super slow to start is so worth it—time spent on the first chapters will pay off later.

What do students need to know about the historical context—and what’s the best way to give them that information?

Students might have a some understanding of the Great Depression, racism, and Jim Crow, but they often haven’t explored topics like colorism, “40 acres and a mule,” the artistic debates of the Harlem Renaissance, or the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928. 

Honestly, I could spend ages just exploring the historical context of this novel—there is really that much!  But, alas, students would probably not stand for that. So I try to focus on the biggest bang for their buck in terms of how the context will both help them understand the novel better and help them to have a more complex understanding of the themes.

For example, if students don’t know the background of the “40 Acres and a Mule” promise, they won’t understand why Logan Killicks’ 60 acres is so appealing to Nanny.  We might see Logan as a boring old man who just cares about plowing his fields, but for someone who has gone through what Nanny has gone through, he’s literally living her dream.

Or if students have the assumption that all enslaved people were simply Black, they need to know that it wasn’t that straightforward at all. Janie’s father and grandfather were both White (and likely her great grandfather was White as well).  But when they learn about the “One Drop Rule” and colorism, students have a better understanding of what’s happening in the book (like why people make such a big deal about Janie’s hair or why Mrs. Turner favors her so much) and also have a much more nuanced grasp of the themes around race, privilege, and power. 

My favorite way to give students this kind of historical context is if at all possible to integrate videos—this makes for a nice break for everyone.  For example, I like the 10-minute TED Talk “How colorism shapes our standards of beauty” by Chika Okoro. And I really love watching a scene from  Spike Lee’s film School Daze. Focusing largely on very ‘80s hair, this fun/serious exploration of colorism gives students some much-needed context for Their Eyes.

Some of these topics I think are worth exploring before reading while some can be quick end-of-class activities.

I also think that exploring the historical context of literature helps make it more engaging for students who don’t get the point of reading “made-up stories.”  When they can see that actually Hurston is engaging with a lot of real-life issues, they see the book as more relevant and worth reading.

How do I get students to care about the figurative language?

I could just swim in the language of this novel—it’s so rich and gorgeous.  But I also understand that figurative language is not exactly high on most high schooler’s lists of things they care about.  I can hardly blame them if they have mostly been taught to just identify it and move on.  (And if they have missed a question on a quiz because they confused personification and anthropomorphism, then I really don’t blame them for thinking figurative language is boring!)

As Janie looks for ways to explain the unexplainable—her journey to the horizon and back, her discovery of real love, and all that she learned and felt in the process—she uses a lot of figurative language.  And that’s what I want students to understand—we don’t use figurative language as decoration or to make something fancy but rather as a way of expressing the inexpressible.  

The way that I get students to care about the figurative language is first by framing it with Mandy Len Catron’s TED Talk to get them thinking about why the language we use matters. And then I get them to interact with the figurative language in the novel in multiple different ways. 

For example, in order to get students to fully explore the metaphor of the pear tree, I have them spend some time either drawing images from the passage (trust me, this is a highly effective way to get them to notice the details!) or completing a close reading of the passage using a focused handout.  I’ve found that having students focus on one element at a time and answer concrete questions about each helps them move beyond identifying devices to analyzing how Hurston’s choices create meaning.  

Then, students work through a comparison of Janie’s tree to all the tree metaphors thus far in the book. When they trace all of the metaphors in just the first two chapters of the book—that Janie sees her life like a tree, that she sees perfect love in a pear tree, that Nanny is compared to a stump that has weathered too many storms, that Nanny compares Black people to trees without roots, and that Janie sees the wagon seat as a lone stump in the forest—they see how meaning in literature is so much more than the sum of its parts. When students also remember that Janie’s mother was named “Leafy,” they really start to comprehend the mastery of Hurston’s writing, the heartbreak of the characters, and why we humans need comparisons to understand our world.

Continuing to focus on what Hurston does through the figurative language and why it matters to the meaning and experience of reading the novel helps students to really get why it’s worth their time. 

How do I make the subplots and seemingly random scenes part of the whole and not something we ignore?

Janie’s search for her own happiness is such a compelling story that it’s easy to ignore the other characters and subplots.  And one of the absolute most challenging parts of teaching this novel is dealing with chapter 6.  It’s long, it’s honestly kind of boring, and it doesn’t seem to relate much—buzzard scene anyone? 

But I also believe that a masterpiece like TEWWG doesn’t have unnecessary elements.  And so when I was working on developing my unit, I forced myself to slow down and really unpack the parts I found boring or unrelated to the main story.  What I found was that the seemingly unrelated little elements actually have a lot to add to the overall meaning of the novel and our experience as readers. 

Rather than seeing the seemingly random or strange parts of the novel as something to get through or distractions from the main text, I like to center them in students’ analysis whenever possible.

In order to get students to focus on these elements in chapter 6, for example, I have them use a comparison chart as an analysis tool. They look at what happens, how Janie reacts, how that event illuminates the themes of the novel as a whole, and what it suggests about the values, beliefs, traditions, or expectations of Eatonville.  

So, for example, when Joe frees the Mule, Janie gives a speech comparing Joe to Lincoln and Washington.  This seemingly small moment shows how Janie is starting to find her voice, that she and others realize that she is good at talking too, and that she is starting to push boundaries which Joe doesn’t like.  Students also notice how in Eatonville, symbol and spectacle are important.

Yes, Their Eyes is one of the greatest love stories of all time, but also it’s a story of a fascinating time and place full of people with their own struggles and stories, and just focusing on Janie and her three husbands takes away a lot of what makes this novel truly extraordinary.

What do we do with characters we love who do things we don’t?

I love love love Tea Cake and also the dude does a lot that is just not okay.  Similarly, Janie makes a lot of questionable choices throughout the novel. We can love these characters and still not agree with their choices.

My approach to teaching this book full of imperfect humans is to get students understanding the context as much as possible, get them thinking about multiple sides of an issue, and to help them consider how Janie’s own biases and beliefs shape her story. 

Of course, the really tough question to examine when reading this classic novel is “Does Hurston seem to condone Tea Cake’s decision to beat Janie?”  I work up to this challenging moment by following my usual routines. I have students start off by writing on a freewrite prompt “Are there any circumstances when violence is acceptable? Explain.”  Then I have students thoroughly unpack the description of Tea Cake’s decision to beat Janie, Sop-de-Bottom’s reaction, and the reason that Tea Cake gives Sop-de-Bottom.  

By the time students discuss whether or not Hurston seems to condone Tea Cake’s actions, they have a lot to bring to the discussion—their own ideas which they have worked through before reading, the details of the text, and the different reactions of the characters. Students can then use all of that information to look at the ways in which Hurston both does and doesn’t condone this choice.

By this point in the book, I want students to embrace the complexity of the characters and to understand that the book as a whole doesn’t really judge any of the characters as “bad” or “evil.” 

How do I get students to move beyond identifying themes to really thinking about them?

My goal in reading any great literature is to get students to understand the themes of the text, yes, but ultimately, it’s to get them to challenge and refine their own ideas. Honestly, that is one of my favorite parts of teaching teenagers—they’re so interested in figuring out their world and how they relate to it, and they’re still open to change.

But I don’t think it’s obvious for many students to understand how they can learn about their own ideas and values by examining Janie’s story.  

Again, I turn to bellringer freewrites to do a lot of the heavy lifting.  When I want students to make the connection between their own experiences and Janie’s (when I think it might be a stretch for them to understand why she does what she does or to even relate to her story) then I choose a personal prompt.  An example of a personal prompt I especially like is this one: “Write about a time when you felt powerless to change your situation. Next, write about a time when you felt empowered to change your life. What do you think makes the difference?”

If I want them to start opening up and getting ready for the big ideas of the chapter, I have them spend some time writing on their own views of a topic before we delve into the way the novel explores it. An example of a big idea prompt for chapter 4 is this one: “Hurston says of Logan, ‘He hoped that he had hurt her as she had hurt him.’ Why do people hurt others when they have been hurt?”

Another fun exploration of big ideas happens in chapters 7-9; at this point in the novel, there are so many big questions that I wanted students to just work through as many as they could!  So after reading these chapters, I have them do “speed dating” style discussions on the big questions.  For this activity, students sit in two circles, so that each student has a partner they are facing. Once they see a question projected on the board, they have 5 minutes to discuss the question with their partner. When the five minutes are up, students in the outer circle move one seat to the right so that they have a new partner each time. Questions like “What do you think keeps most people from living the fullest life that they can?” or “How do we chase our own dreams and not those that we inherit?” give them a lot to chew on—obviously, these are the kinds of questions we take our whole lives to answer, which is why I think it’s especially funny that students only have five minutes. 

But I imagine them going off into their lives and considering these questions for a while.  Maybe they’ll realize something about their own values or beliefs or life goals that they hadn’t thought of before, or maybe they’ll start to think about what they need to do to live their own full lives.

How do I get beyond the essay with one paragraph per husband?

I’ve read many versions of this essay, and I’m sure you have too.  Honestly, it’s not the worst, but students can do so much more!  Though I do have an activity in chapter 10 where students compare Janie’s different husbands, I hope that after all the work they’ve done to explore the many facets of the novel they are able to focus on their own interests in the final essay.

One strategy I have to get students writing on more interesting and diverse topics is to have them use their own reading responses as the basis for their essays.  Rather than give them prompts or questions to write on, I have them look through their own writing to find trends or patterns or ideas that they return to again and again. They often need to go back to the book to find more quotes or to reread different passages, but this process really helps them to come up with more original thesis statements and essays.  I then have them write their essays in a writing workshop and meet with them during the process.

For classes that are not ready to delve into such in-depth literary analysis, I have them write an in-class essay comparing the sources in the love task cards to the portrayal of love in the novel as a whole.  This is a great structured essay that is done entirely in class with a graphic organizer one day and the writing the next.  Again, students are choosing their own sources for the essay so they are all writing very different essays.

How do I teach Their Eyes Were Watching God for AP Literature?

Probably the biggest challenge of teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God with the AP standards is that you’re limited in time—and, as you might have noticed, there’s a lot you can do with this novel! If you need to teach the novel in 17 days, then I would (sadly) cut the pre-reading sources and some of the historical context. There are a few things that I would make sure to include, and if you can teach it for longer, then obviously include more! 

I would definitely keep the freewrites, close reading questions, discussion questions, and reading responses. I think that the freewrites really help students to become more fluid, confident, and natural in their writing. The close reading questions, while they’re not structured like multiple choice, help students to understand and familiarize themselves with the kinds of details they’ll need to notice on the test and they give students lots of practice writing about how details help create meaning in literature.  And the reading responses really challenge them to grapple with the text and, again!, write more and write often.

All of that work will help students to discuss the novel, and the discussion questions are where students are really going to get into the complexity of ideas. I know that a lot of AP teachers are really chasing that concept of complexity and how to teach it, and I think that the way you do that is by teaching a novel that has lots of big ideas and nuance and really digging into that.  Additionally, by discussing and writing about these big questions, students will better learn how to integrate argument and defensible claims into their literary analysis writing. 

In other words, while the required skills for the AP Literature course focus on elements of fiction such as character and setting, it’s not enough to simply identify those elements in the writing—students need to understand and explain their function in the text, and the better sense they have of the big ideas of the text the more they can do that.

Another element I would definitely include is the close reading of a literary passage. The more they work through this process, the more comfortable they will be analyzing a prose passage for meaning and literary elements, as they will have to do for the second essay on the AP exam. And the more comfortable they’ll be analyzing literature on their own.

Finally, I would also include the final essay based on reading responses, as I explained above. I have found this process to be very effective in getting students to have confidence in their own original ideas as well as teaching them to base their thesis statements in the evidence. 

Ooh, one more thing!  If you have the time, another fun low-key assignment is a tracking poster in which students trace and briefly analyze one motif in the novel and then make a poster with whatever visuals they want to show the quotes they have chosen.  This is yet another way to get students interacting with the text and going beyond just identifying literary elements.

How do I decide what to leave out when I want to teach everything?

Uh, yeah, eventually you do have to move on to the next book. The good news is that there’s plenty to choose from; the hard part is deciding what to leave out.

My suggestion is to have a focus for each day, to choose according to that, and to try to vary from day to day so students have a good mix of discussion, supplementary sources, writing, and close reading.  

For example, if you want students to consider Nanny’s dreams and why they are so important to her, I’d have students start class by watching the video on the “40 Acres and a Mule” promise.  If you want to delve into the figurative language of a chapter, then I’d suggest starting off with an opening activity that gets students writing their own metaphors and similes and ends with them drawing three examples of figurative language from the text.  If, as I explained above, you want to have a really nuanced discussion on the time when Tea Cake beats Janie, then I’d choose the freewrite that fits that prompt and make sure to spend time on the related close reading questions. 

Clearly, I have a lot to say about this book that I really and truly love so much.  It’s a funny challenge that English teachers often have—we got into the work because we love literature, but now we have to figure out how to get teenagers to read it too and hopefully pick up a bit on our enthusiasm.  I hope you’ve got some good ideas here on how to convey some of that appreciation to your students.

If you only take one thing from this (probably overly-long) post I highly recommend the TED Talks on colorism and love metaphors. 

This book is so good it really deserves as much time as you can give it! Making my complete unit on Their Eyes Were Watching God was definitely a joy, even if I did have to wrap my head around how to make teens care about the buzzard funeral.