Some of the themes presented in this novel are language, gender, love, sex, innocence, race, fate, love and independence, power achievement, society and class, jealousy, appearance, pride, mortality, compassion, forgiveness, memories and the past, and dreams, hopes, and plans.
One of the major themes in this novel is the struggle between independence and love.
Throughout the novel, Janie struggles with the choice of gaining her independence or finding love. The novel takes place in early post slavery in the South. In this time it was considered necessary for a woman to be married off to a man. However, when a woman becomes married, she loses an amount of freedom that her husband gains. She must submit to the fact that he has the dominant role
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Southern dialect is used throughout the novel given that the setting is in the Deep South. All characters including, Janie, Tea Cake, and Joe Starks use this dialect. Language is also emphasized as the source of identity and power through many of the characters. Most notably it is identified as a source of power in the main female role of Janie. Janie uses words to stand up to her husband, Joe, after he belittled her in the town store (p.74). This was one of the major turning points in the story when Janie began to use language to defend her identity. Janie also used the power to choose when she would speak. Janie chose not to speak during the trial over Tea Cake’s death, and when she returned to the gossiping people of Eatonville. The language of the men in this novel is almost always divorced from any kind of interiority, and the men are hardly ever shown in the process of growth. Their talking is either a game or method of exerting power. For example: Joe Starks used language to enforce his power by stopping Janie from speaking after he was named mayor (p.40). This was a form of bounding her individuality and eventually created a gap in their marriage. Also, the men of Eatonville mainly used language in the novel when cracking jokes on one another (p.50) or gossiping in front of the town store. Language is also used as a method of building strong bonds between characters. Tea Cake used speech to build respect from Janie and to make himself seem equal to her. This eventually led to a strong friendship and eventual marriage between the
Over time Janie begins to develop her own ideas and ideals. In Their Eyes Watching God. Each principle character has their own perceptions. towards the end of marriage. & nbsp;
... Janie is a strong independent woman, who lives in a society that does not encourage that kind of behavior in women. During the novel she is told what to do, how to do it and at one point who to marry. She struggles with her growing unhappiness until she finally meets her true love. Bibliography Shmoop Editorial Team.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
Throughout the movie of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Oprah Winfrey alternates Zora Neale Hurston’s story of a woman’s journey to the point where nobody even recognizes it. The change in the theme, the characters, and their relationships form a series of major differences between the book and the movie. Instead of teaching people the important lessons one needs to know to succeed in this precious thing called life, Oprah tells a meaningless love story for the gratification of her viewers. Her inaccurate interpretation of the story caused a dramatic affect in the atmosphere and a whole new attitude for the audience.
The movie and the book of Their Eyes Were Watching God both tell the story of a young woman’s journey to finding love; however, the movie lacks the depth and meaning behind the importance of Janie’s desire for self-fulfillment. Oprah Winfrey’s version alters the idea from the book Zora Neale Hurston wrote, into a despairing love story for the movie. Winfrey changes Hurston’s story in various ways by omitting significant events and characters, which leads to a different theme than what the novel portrays. The symbolisms and metaphors emphasized throughout the book are almost non-existent in the movie, changing the overall essence of the story. While Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal gives a more in depth view of Janie’s journey of self-discovery and need for fulfilling love, Oprah Winfrey’s version focuses mainly on a passionate love story between Janie and Tea Cake.
Their Eyes Were Watching God provides an enlightening look at the journey of a "complete, complex, undiminished human being", Janie Crawford. Her story, based on self-exploration, self-empowerment, and self-liberation, details her loss and attainment of her innocence and freedom as she constantly learns and grows from her experiences with gender issues, racism, and life. The story centers around an important theme; that personal discoveries and life experiences help a person find themselves.
“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.
In the beginning of the story, Janie is stifled and does not truly reveal her identity. When caught kissing Johnny Taylor, a local boy, her nanny marries her off to Logan Killicks. While with Killicks, the reader never learns who the real Janie is. Janie does not make any decisions for herself and displays no personality. Janie takes a brave leap by leaving Killicks for Jody Starks. Starks is a smooth talking power hungry man who never allows Janie express her real self. The Eatonville community views Janie as the typical woman who tends to her husband and their house. Janie does not want to be accepted into the society as the average wife. Before Jody dies, Janie is able to let her suppressed anger out.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.
Janie’s first attempt at love does not turn out quite like she hopes. Her grandmother forces her into marrying Logan Killicks. As the year passes, Janie grows unhappy and miserable. By pure fate, Janie meets Joe Starks and immediately lusts after him. With the knowledge of being wrong and expecting to be ridiculed, she leaves Logan and runs off with Joe to start a new marriage. This is the first time that Janie does what she wants in her search of happiness: “Even if Joe was not waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good…From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (32). Janie’s new outlook on life, although somewhat shadowed by blind love, will keep her satisfied momentarily, but soon she will return to the loneliness she is running from.
Once Janie was of age to have serious relationships, Janie’s grandmother tried to guide Janie in the direction of the upper class and money. The point was so that Janie would never have to work a day in her life and only have to fulfill her normal housewife duties. But once word got
The contrast of these two places reinforces the theme of a search for love and fulfillment. To see what an ideal situation for an independent woman like would be, Hurston must first show the reader what Janie cannot deal with. Hurston has her character Janie go on a quest, one that was begun the day she was forced to marry Logan Killucks. The contrast in the setting is similar to one between good and evil.
The man Janie initially married, Logan Killicks, was an older man who treated Janie very well, and he never once hit her. Janie speaks to Nanny, saying “No’m, he ain’t even talked ‘bout hittin’ me. He says he never mean to lay de weight uh his hand on me in malice. He chops all the wood he think Ah wants and den he totes it inside de kitchen for me. Keeps both water buckets full” (Hurston,p. 22-23). The downfall of their marriage was aggravated by the fact that Janie never fell in love with Logan Killick...
There are many themes that occur and can be interpreted differently throughout the novel. The three main themes that stand out most are healing, communication, and relationships.
In Janie’s younger years, she was consumed with finding love but was unable to because of her ailing grandmother’s matchmaking with a man before she passed away. As Janie ponders whether she will grow to love Logan after they marry, Hurston’s use of rhetorical questions reveals to the readers the early stage of Janie’s hunt for personal identity. “Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day… Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so,” (Hurston 21). When Janie asks herself if her arranged marriage will end her loneliness, will end her hunt for some unknown yearning which she has felt all her life, she knows that it is not possible; but being merely a teenaged girl, she is not quite ready to think for herself and forgo her grandmother’s wishes. Even so, Hurston’s addition of rhetorical questions early in the novel prove that Janie is an intelligent young girl with the desire to think for herself and use her own voice.