In Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, goes on a quest to find love. She wanted an unrestricted, satisfying love in her life. Through her quest for love, she also gains independence and strength through her experiences with false love before she finds what she is looking for.
Janie’s quest for love begins while she is sitting under the pear tree, where she develops her idea of love. She witnesses the nature of a bee and a blossom on the pear tree and realizes “So this was a marriage!” (11). She saw a balance in nature that she wanted in her life. Her quest is mainly defined through her three marriages.
Janie first experienced love with Logan Killicks. She hoped the love she craved would develop after they were married, but this was not the case. While she had security from Logan because he owned a farm, she was unhappy because he did not treat her with the love she needed.
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She continued her quest with Joe Sparks, who offered a good life for her.
He was a promising man with a dream to have a voice in the world. Janie thought this would lead to a better life than she had with her last husband. He wanted her to be treated like a queen. The love she had with Joe, however, was a controlling love. After they got married his personality changed. He became a dominant possessive husband. He did not let her participate in the porch activities of the town and constantly ordered her around. He once told her, "Dat’s ‘cause you need tellin’, It would be pitiful if Ah didn’t. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don’t think none theirselves." (71). He went as far as to make her cover her hair from the town. Janie’s hair could be a symbol of her power in the story, since Joe restricted her power with his own. It was only a short time until Janie realized that this was not the love she was looking for
either. She finally found the unconditional love she was looking for with Tea Cake. Unlike her previous husbands, Tea Cake treated her with equality and gave her the freedom that she desired. He offered her everything that she was looking for. Her quest was over and she had found her true love to make her life fulfilling. Tea Cake met the vision of love that Janie had with the pear tree and the bee. Along with finding the love that Janie was on a quest for, she also acquired a sense of independence and strength. Janie had very little independence at the beginning of the novel. She first showed some of her independent personality when she left Logan and went with Joe. It increases again when she spoke up against joe on the porch. She shows it again at Joe’s death bed when she refuses to leave, against his wishes. It took a lot of strength to stand up to him. She has more independence when she is with Tea Cake since allows her to do as she pleases. She is completely independent after he dies and she is alone. She is not restricted by a man in her life. Her strength also increases because she must deal with the judgement of others. They judge her because she does whatever she needs to do to be happy. She has the strength to do the things that they would never consider because it was against their social norms. Janie went on a quest to find love through her marriages with her husbands. It wasn’t until her third husband until she found the love that she had been searching for. Her happiness did not last long because Tea Cake died. Although she lost the love she had searched for her whole life, she did gain independence and strength from her experiences.
After a year of pampering, Logan becomes demanding and rude, he went as far to try to force Janie to do farm work. It was when this happened that Janie decided to take a stand and run away with Joe. At this time, Janie appears to have found a part of her voice and strong will. In a way, she gains a sense of independence and realizes she has the power to walk away from an unhealthy situation and does not have to be a slave to her own husband. After moving to Eatonville and marrying Joe, Janie discovers that people are not always who they seem to be.
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.
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.
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 Janie has to lean on is Joe Starks. He was a kind of salvation for Janie. He was a well-dressed black man who had worked for “white folks” all his life and had earned enough to travel to a place where black people ran the town. Janie met Joe while she was still married to Logan. She wanted to leave Logan, but I do not think she would have if Joe had not come along. Joe convinced her that He would be better for her to depend on by telling her, “Janie, if you think Ah aims to tole you off and make a dog outa you, youse wrong. Ah wants to make a wife outa you.”(p.28) Janie took this invitation as a way to leave Logan without losing the dependency she needed.
Janie were pretty well off and had the privilege to live in the yard of white
For a short time Janie shared her life with her betrothed husband Logan Killicks. She desperately tried to become her new pseudo identity, to conform to the perfect "housewife" persona. Trying to make a marriage work that couldn't survive without love, love that Janie didn't have for Logan. Time and again Janie referred to love and her life in reference to nature, "Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think... She often spoke to falling seeds and said Ah hope you fall on soft grounds... She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether"(24 - 25). Logan had blown out the hope in Janie's heart for any real love; she experienced the death of the childish imagery that life isn't a fairytale, her first dose of reality encountered and it tasted sour.
The first time Janie had noticed this was when he was appointed mayor by the town’s people and she was asked to give a few words on his behalf, but she did not answer, because before she could even accept or decline he had promptly cut her off, “ ‘Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’/Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy/…the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything on way or another that took the bloom off things” (43). This would happen many times during the course of their marriage. He told her that a woman of her class and caliber was not to hang around the low class citizens of Eatonville. In such cases when he would usher her off the front porch of the store when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt Boner’s mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she tie up her hair in head rags while working in the store, “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT to show in the store” (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the community and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when got this way. His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, “This moment lead Janie to ‘grows out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. Knowing not 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 dying in his death bed.
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.
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 Jamie’s begging quest for love she meets her first husband Logan, in which she is tricked in to the illusion of love by her nanny. “Cause you told me Ah mus gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t Maybe if somebody was to tell me how, Ah could do it” (pg. 23). Jamie realizes that nanny portrayed love as money and respect, but Janie wanted both emotional and physical love in which Logan couldn’t provide. Jamie starts meeting a man named Joe Starks who she is an essential alteration in her loveless marriage. “ Every day after that they managed to meet in the scrub oaks across the road and talk about when he would be a big ruler of things with her reaping the benefits. Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon” ( pg. 29). I Janie’s eyes Joe could be her horizon that she is searching for.
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.
She was first brought down by her first husband that her nanny liked for her. He hid her true ambition by being a non-sanitized human being, who did not really care for her as a woman, and tried to get her to work on his land. The next man is the man she thought would give her youth, happiness, and joy to her life. The man Joe seemed to care for her inhibitions at first but as soon as she ran away with him to Eatonville, he became more self centered and only worried about being the mayor of the town. He is the one person who sustained her from the being the actual woman she wanted to be. He made her work in his store that he opened and made her tie up her hair. The moment where she lets her hair go is the moment her and Joe have an argument, and the moment he dies, the first thing she does is to look in the mirror to make sure she knows she is there. She realizes that she is still that woman. A woman’s hair represents her beauty and youthness. Making a woman tie up or hide her hair is impeccable. When Janie looked in the mirror and saw her beauty through the wrinkles. she knew that it was time for her to shake off the past from her shoulders, and find a life suited just for
As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...
Finally, when Joe threatens to “take holt uh dat ax … and kill [her]” (31), Janie leaves and in desperation marries Joe, a man whom “new words would have to be made and said to fit him” (32). Immediately after Joe is pronounced the mayor of the new town, Janie is offered to make a speech; however, Joe claims that Janie “don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’” (43), thus further suppressing Janie and indicating that their future relationship will definitely not be based on equal love. Moreover, Joe continues to suppress Janie especially after the mule incident, where Janie makes such a profound speech that she is described as “uh born orator” (58). Thus, every time Janie begins to develop her voice, Joe, out of fear of it, immediately tries to suppress and hide it, leading up to where he forbids Janie to even leave the store. Finally, Janie after now being