Question ID:PT17 S4 Q5 Passage:Many literary scholars believe that Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) has been the primary influence on some of the most accomplished Black women writing in the United States today. Indeed, Alice Walker, the author of the prize-winning novel The Color Purple, has said of Their Eyes, “There is no book more important to me than this one.” Thus, it seems necessary to ask why Their Eyes, a work now viewed by a multitude of readers as remarkably successful in its complex depiction of a Black woman’s search for self and community, was ever relegated to the margins of the literary canon.The details of the novel’s initial reception help answer this question. Unlike the recently rediscovered and reexamined work of Harriet Wilson, Their Eyes was not totally ignored by book reviewers upon its publication. In fact, it received a mixture of positive and negative reviews both from White book reviewers working for prominent periodicals and from important figures within Black literary circles. In the Saturday Review of Literature, George Stevens wrote that “the narration is exactly right, because most of it is dialogue and the dialogue gives us a constant sense of character in action.” The negative criticism was partially a result of Hurston’s ideological differences with other members of the Black literary community about the depiction of Black Americans in literature. Black writers of the 1940s believed that the Black artist’s primary responsibility was to create protest fiction that explored the negative effects of racism in the United States. For example, Richard Wright, the author of the much acclaimed Native Son (1940), wrote that Their Eyes had “no theme” and “no message.” Most critics’ and readers’ expectations of Black literature rendered them unable to appreciate Hurston’s subtle delineation of the life of an ordinary Black woman in a Black community, and the novel went quietly out of print.Recent acclaim for Their Eyes results from the emergence of feminist literary criticism and the development of standards of evaluation specific to the work of Black writers; these kinds of criticism changed readers’ expectations of art and enabled them to appreciate Hurston’s novel. The emergence of feminist literary criticism was crucial because such criticism brought new attention to neglected works such as Hurston’s and alerted readers to Hurston’s exploration of women’s issues in her fiction. The Afrocentric standards of evaluation were equally important to the rediscovery of Their Eyes, for such standards provided readers with the tools to recognize and appreciate the Black folklore and oral storytelling traditions Hurston incorporated within her work. In one of the most illuminating discussions of the novel to date, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., states that “Hurston’s strategy seems to concern itself with the possibilities of representation of the speaking Black voice in writing.” Stem:The passage suggests that Native Son differs from Their Eyes Were Watching God in which one of the following ways? Correct Answer Choice:CChoice A:It received fewer positive reviews at the time of its publication than did Their Eyes. Choice B:It is less typical of literature written by Black Americans during the 1940s than is Their Eyes. Choice C:It is less focused on an ordinary individual’s search for self within a Black community than is Their Eyes. Choice D:It depicts more aspects of Black American folklore than does Their Eyes. Choice E:It has received more attention from feminist and Afrocentric literary critics than has Their Eyes.