Janie: Their Eyes Were Watching God In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Janie Starks develops her character as she goes from discovering that she is African American to discovering the meaning of being a woman. Janie narrates her story full of hardships to her friend Pheoby Watson. She includes her failed marriages and quests for true love as they help her to find her independence. Throughout the novel, Janie goes on a journey in order to discover her true identity. Janie discovers that she is African American when she sees a picture of herself and asks who that person is. When she was told it was her who had very dark skin, she responded with “Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!” (Hurston Par. 9). For the first time, Janie discovers …show more content…
Janie has an eye-opening experience when “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. So this was a marriage!” (Hurston 11). Janie’s encounter with the flower and the bee changes her as a sixteen year old as it introduces her to womanhood. After this experience, Janie grows as a female character and role model as Hurston “created a character to whom women can look for many of the traits they are traditionally accused of lacking, such as strength, courage, enduring love, and wisdom” (Bailey Par. 5). Janie begins her journey as an innocent little girl; however, she develops into a relatable woman who influences other women throughout time. As Janie learns what it means to be a woman and how to overcome the female stereotype of sitting still while looking pretty, she discovers her true identity and purpose. With this being said, the character of Janie serves as a courageous women who empowers others to realize that opportunities exist in exchange for hard work and …show more content…
She goes on a journey that involves discovering her race, gender, and true love in order to discover her identity. Hurston writes this book to teach other women to embrace being strong, courageous, and independent despite the common stereotype that exists in the
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells about the life of Janie Crawford. Janie’s mother, who suffers a tragic moment in her life, resulting in a mental breakdown, is left for her grandmother to take care of her. Throughout Janie’s life, she comes across several different men, all of which end in a horrible way. All the men that Janie married had a different perception of marriage. After the third husband, Janie finally returns to her home. It is at a belief that Janie is seeking someone who she can truly love, and not someone her grandmother chooses for her. Although Janie eventually lives a humble life, Janie’s quest is questionable.
that they can spend more time together because she missed him when he was at work and he missed her when he was away from home.
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.
Janie Crawford’s Quest in Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie Crawford, the main character of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, strives to find her own voice throughout the novel and, in my opinion, she succeeds even though it takes her over thirty years to do it. Each one of her husbands has a different effect on her ability to find that voice. Janie discovers her will to find her voice when she is living with Logan. Since she did not marry him for love, tensions arise as time moves on and Logan begins to order her around.
Self-esteem is confidence in one’s own worth or abilities or self-respect. Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston and Jefferson from A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines both struggle with establishing a positive self-esteem or a sense of self-worth. Both characters get so overwhelmed by the supremacy of someone or something around them that they doubt their own power, thus, creating a feeling of doubt for themselves and the voice that they have. In order to gain a sense of high self-esteem, a person must endure points of self-doubt.
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.
Janie were pretty well off and had the privilege to live in the yard of white
Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God describes the life of a black woman named Janie. Janie is raised by her grandmother and begins a close to life-long quest that can be viewed as a search for many things. Most scholars believe that this quest is for independence; on the contrary I believe that this quest is to find someone that she can be dependent on, the kind of dependency that "singing bees" have for pear blossoms.
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.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie goes through several marriages in her journey to seek love. As Janie's husbands change so does her wardrobe. Janie's different marriages are symbolized by her very different wardrobes.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about a young woman that is lost in her own world. She longs to be a part of something and to have “a great journey to the horizons in search of people” (85). Janie Crawford’s journey to the horizon is told as a story to her best friend Phoebe. She experiences three marriages and three communities that “represent increasingly wide circles of experience and opportunities for expression of personal choice” (Crabtree). Their Eyes Were Watching God is an important fiction piece that explores relations throughout black communities and families. It also examines different issues such as, gender and class and these issues bring forth the theme of voice. In Janie’s attempt to find herself, she grows into a stronger woman through three marriages.
When Janie is growing up, she is eager to become a woman and is ready to dive into the strain, maturity, and exhilaration of adulthood. In the beginning of Janie’s life story, Hurston introduces the metaphor of the pear tree, a symbol of Janie’s blossoming, and describes how “she had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her,” which successfully captures her excitement and perplexity of entering the adult world (11). Janie’s anxiety of growing up is also articulated with the image of her “looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made” (Hurston 11). In her teenage years, it seems as if her life revolves around the anticipation of womanhood. Even as Janie grows older, she continues to hold on to her aspiration of living an adventurous, invigorating, and passionate life. In criti...
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the journey of Janie Crawford as an African American woman who grows and matures through the hardships and struggles of three different marriages. Although Janie is an African American, the main themes of the novel discusses the oppression of women by men, disregarding race. Janie gets married to three different men, aging from a young and naive girl to a mature and hardened women near the age of 40. Throughout the novel, Janie suffers through these relationships and learns to cope with life by blaming others and escaping her past by running away from it. These relationships are a result of Janie chasing her dreams of finding and experiencing true love, which she ultimately does in the end. Even through the suffering and happiness, Janie’s journey is a mixture of ups and downs, and at the end, she is ultimately content. Zora Neale Hurston utilizes Janie’s metaphorical thoughts and responses of blame and escape, as well as her actions towards success and fulfillment with her relationship with Tea Cake, to suggest that her journey
In ‘How it feels to be colored me’ Neale Hurston opens up to her pride and identity as an African-American. Hurston uses a wide variety of imagery, diction using figurative language freely with metaphors. Her tone is bordering controversial using local lingo.
Since the founding of the United States of States of America, race as played an incredibly important role in society. This idea is true in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston uses race to play important parts of Janie’s life, starting in her youth and ending during middle aged life, when the book ends. As a child Janie is raised with a white family, and only realizes she is black when she sees a picture of herself. Additionally, Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, was raped by her white master and got pregnant; this causes her to make some hasty decisions with Janie’s life. As a young adult, Janie is married off to a wealthy black man, even though she is not remotely in love with him. This is done because Nanny believes black woman have no power and need someone with power and wealth to protect them. As a middle-aged adult, Janie meets Mrs. Turner, a black woman, who is obsessed with white people and believes they are superior to black people. This shows that not only white people are racist towards black people. Additionally, when Janie goes to trial for Tea Cakes murder, she is proven innocent based on the fact that Tea Cake is black, showing the lack of caring for those in the black community. The fact that Janie’s race plays such an important role in her life shows that, despite people’s effort, race still plays an important role in the lives of black people in America.