Articulating the Self, Culture, And Identity in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Ms. Sindhu R¹, Dr. P. Beena²

¹Research Scholar, Department of English, Shrimathi Devkunvar Nanalal Bhatt Vaishnav College for Women, Chrompet, Chennai. 

²Research Supervisor & Associate Professor, Department of English, Shrimathi Devkunvar Nanalal Bhatt Vaishnav College for Women, Chrompet, Chennai.

Abstract

The paper foregrounds the significance of semiotics and culture in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Semiotics plays a dominant role in intensifying the arbitrariness of a culture. The research demonstrates the cultural and semiotic legacy by closely examining the novel to interpret the function of meaning. The novel celebrates the African Socio-cultural lifestyle and its rich values. The various cultural symbols used in the novel serve as a medium to reinstate identity, religion, belief, custom and so on. The focus of the research is to explore the meaning and the function that the cultural symbols as a sign try to obtain. Further, the study enlightens the importance of culture and history, and its interpretive response by understanding semiotics through culture. Racism and community are the embedded signs which help in analysing the semiotic function of culture in the novel. The article further explores the significance of identity, autonomous voice, and the collective dimensions of memory articulated by the central character, Janie Crawford. 

Keywords: Semiotics, Culture, Signs, Symbols, Identity, Racism, Community.