In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God we follow, main character, Janie Crawford as she struggles in her quest of selfhood and tries to find her voice, in a time when women were typically defined by the men the associated themselves with. Three men, Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake all made a mark on her life, although Joe Starks left deepest impression on Janie. Each of the men in Janie’s life came to her right when she needed them. When Janie found Joe she still had some of her grandmother’s values, of stability and social status, instilled in her, but because of Logan who treated her as a burden and an object, she wanted a relationship that allowed her to be herself. Joe was that freedom to Janie; Joe represented stability and security, …show more content…
Janie leaves Logan for Joe, thinking that she has finally gotten to choose who she gets to be with and that nothing could possibly going wrong. The love that Janie experiences with Joe is a possessive love. Joe overcompensates for his real fear that Janie will leave him, by controlling Janie in all aspects. From the moment Joe is made mayor he makes it clear that Janie is just a figurehead and has nothing valuable to say, Janie is unsure of why this makes her so uncomfortable but thinks “It must have been the way Joe spoke without giving her a chance to say anything one way or another that took the bloom off of things.” (43) In this quote Janie is realizing Joe’s misconceptions of manhood and how he think that in asserting his dominance to Janie he is asserting his manhood to the town, he is actually appearing weak in needing to be little Janie in order to feel better about himself. “The bloom off of things.” (43) is referring again back to Janie's sexual awakening under the pear tree, and how the once idealistic relationship between Joe and Janie is wearing off. In other words their honeymoon period is coming to a close and they are being faced with the harsh reality of their marriage, that they have next to nothing in common and do not view the world the same way. Joe consistently embarasses and berates Janie publicly and Janie finally returns the favor and tells Joe in front of the town …show more content…
Janie fell in love with Joe for the way he carried himself, his confidence and assertiveness. These traits are those that ended up breaking up their marriage and making Janie fall out of love with Joe. When Janie first meets Joe she is beginning to grow old of Logan’s aloofness and is beginning to want some romanticism. Janie sees Joe and is entranced by is style and how he seems to radiate charisma. Janie at first saw Joe as “a city fied, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn't belong in these parts.” (27). Janie fell in love with an idea of a man. She saw a chance to have love and status and took but didn’t think enough about Joe as the person she would spend her life with. Joe treated Janie like “a pretty doll-baby”(29). Joe was so focused on keeping his status as mayor that he forgot to love and cherish Janie. Janie felt like “Jody classed me off.” (112). Through trying to keep it all together, his status, his job, his wife, Joe lost everything, but in doing so gave Janie the courage to chase what she had wanted all along, the perfect balance between independence and interdependence, which she found with Tea
& nbsp;   ; Second, Janie sees Logan Killicks' perception of marriage. In the beginning it appears to Janie that Logan is a very nice gentleman, who is. constantly treating her well. However, as time goes on, Janie sees Logan's the "true colors" of the.
But Janie is young and her will has not yet been broken. She has enough strength to say "No" and to leave him by running away with Joe. At this point, Janie has found a part of her voice, which is her not willing to be like a slave in her husband's hands. After Janie marries Joe, I think that she discovers that he is not the person she thought he was.
The next man that Janie confides in is Joe Starks. Joe in a sense is Janie's savior in her relationship with Logan Killicks. Joe was a well kept man who worked for "white-folks" all his life and had earned enough money to move himself to a town called Eatonville that was run completely by black people. Janie meets Joe while she is still married to Logan and she begins to lean on him ever so slightly. She has wanted to leave Logan, and she wouldn't have if Joe had not come along. Joe convinced Janie that he would be better off for her by telling her, "Janie, if you think Ah aims to tole you off and make a dog outa you, youse wrong.
For many people love comes easily or within a short time, but for Janie it took much longer. Love was always very important to Janie. With Janie’s first husband which Nanny arranged. Feeling unloved and used Janie decided to leave logan and keep going on her search for love. “The morning road air was like a new dress”. This quote is an example of a simile revealing all the hope Janie still had for herself after leaving Logan. Dealing with many restrictions put by people in her life Janie always just dealt with stuff and went on without complaining like most women did in that time. Jody Sparks played a major role in Janie’s quest of finding herself. “To my thinkin’ mourning oughtn’t tuh last no longer’n grief.” After Jody’s death Janie feels a quick feelings of independence. Jody being represented as a character who tries to be dominate of others and is cruel makes Janie understand that in a relationship there has to be equality in order to be happy. Being a man who saw Janie as an object makes Janie speak up and stop muting herself. She rebels against him and destroys his will. Showing women can gain equality for
From the beginning of society, men and women have always been looked at as having different positions in life. Even in the modern advanced world we live in today, there are still many people who believe men and women should be looked at differently. In the work field, on average women are paid amounts lower than men who may be doing the exact same thing. Throughout the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston brings about controversy on a mans roles. Janie Crawford relationships with Logan, Joe and Tea Cake each bring out the mens feelings on masculine roles in marital life.
“She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
When first introduced to Joe, Janie falls madly in love with his suave attitude, overflowing charisma and drive for ambition. For these same reasons Janie is driven to hate Joe. This is due to the fact that everything that advantageous activity, comes with an even worse disadvantage. In chapters 6-10 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, his true colors are revealed as a dominating misogynist and it is obvious that he doesn't even consider Janie as a human but rather, a puppet to be controlled and gains energy from others submission.
His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where she still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, “This moment lead Janie to ‘grow out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. Knowing not to mix them is knowing that articulate language requires the co-presence of two distinct poles, not their collapse into oneness’ ” (Clarke 608). The marriage carries on like this until Joe lies sick and dies in his death bed.
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
One of the underlying themes Zora Neale Hurston put in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God was feminism. Hurston used each of Janie’s three marriages to represent Janie moving closer to her liberation and freedom from male dominance. She finally found her liberation and became truly independent after graduating from her final relationship with Tea Cake by killing him.
Janie later meets Joe Starks as she is pumping water and falls in love with him. He seems like the perfect guy and as their love began he explained to her all of his ambitious plans and Janie -being a naive girl- becomes extremely excited and decides to leave her husband for Starks. At the beginning of their relationship Starks treated Janie like a she was a precious jewel and because Janie had never experienced anything like Starks she fell head over heels. When Starks first met Janie he tells her “A pretty doll-baby lak you is made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan yo'self
She becomes blinded by Starks appeal, as she so desperately wants him to fit the ideals of her pear tree. However, Joe Starks does “not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees". Instead, he provides Janie with the chance of a new love; one that she again naively believes will blossom into perfection. Her second relationship stems into a jealous and controlling marriage. Starks suppress Janie as he becomes driven by his thirst for power and the need to acquire wealth, forcing her into his shadows. Janie grows dissatisfied and jaded. "She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be." She lives out the rest of her unhappy marriage with Stark until her chance for freedom to once again seek a fulfilling and blissful
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God describes the life of Janie, a black woman at the turn of the century. Janie is raised by her Grandmother and spends her life traveling with different men until she finally returnes home. Robert E. Hemenway has said about the book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God is ... one of the most revealing treatments in modern literature of a woman’s quest for a satisfying life” I partially disagree with Hemenway because, although Janie is on a quest, it is not for a satisfying life. I believe that she is on a quest for someone on whom to lean. Although she achieves a somewhat satisfying life, Janie’s quest is for dependence rather than satisfaction.
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.