Throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, main character Janie Crawford is forced to make many internal decisions that render into external actions. Zora Neale Hurston portrays these internal decisions with the sense of excitement, suspense, and the use of climax in order to create lasting and significant events.The decisions to leave her first husband, stand up to Joe, and ultimately end Tea Cake’s life are pushed by Janie’s own thoughts and actions.
Up until the time when Janie is married off to Logan Killicks, she does not get to make many of her own decisions. Her life is mainly dictated by her grandmother. Her first real decision is to leave Logan for Joe Starks. Many events lead up to this decision. Janie was never happy with her life with Logan, and was just looking for an excuse to leave. On page 27, Janie purposely jerks the water handle to get Joe’s attention. From that moment, Hurston creates a sense of excitement for the reader who does not know how the whole ordeal will turn out. Then, they began meeting every day in secret, which is exciting in itself. To top it off, Joe asks her to take off and get married with him. That is when the internal decision-making begins, “Janie debated the matter in bed that night.”(page 30) She wakes her husband, Logan, and asks, “S’posin Ah wuz to run off and leave yuh sometime.”(page 30), and after an argument that morning, her mind has been set; she will run away with Joe Starks. All of this is very exciting, it
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happens in an extremely short amount of time, and portrays Janie seeking her own excitement in love and life. “A feeling of sudden newness and change come over her.”(page 32) This change in consciousness became the first decision Janie makes as a married woman purely in defiance, and for her own excitement. Once Janie and Joe are on their own, Janie is not so happy with her new husband and life. They move into a ramshackle colored town where Joe is seemingly instantly elected mayor. Joe becomes very dictatorial toward Jamie in what she wears, says, and how she portrays herself in general. He puts her in charge of the store, and is extremely particular about how she handles things because of her being a woman. He does not like her to fraternize with the local men or ever have her opinion heard. There are small instances where she stands up to him, but the first public one occurs on page 75 when, “Janie did what she had never done before, that is, thrust herself into the conversation.” She is immediately shot down, however, by Joe who remarks that she is becoming too ‘mouthy.’ After that experience, Janie lets her emotions stir for years, “No matter what Jody(Joe) did, she said nothing.”(page 76) This stood until he was on his deathbed with kidney failure. Perhaps the climax of their relationship is only minutes before Jody’s last breath. “All dis bowin’ down, all dis obedience under yo’ voice - dat ain’t whut Ah rushed off down de road tuh find out about you.”(page 87) These were the last words that Joe would hear, that his wife was not happy with their life together. This was a very last minute decision for Janie to make. Had she waited any later to let her feelings be known, then she would have held them forever. Hurston used that last conversation as both a climax and resolution for their relationship, an end all leaving the reader satisfied yet unhappy because Janie had yet to make a decision for the better. The final decision that Janie makes within the realm of the novel is a fatal one. When her third husband, Tea Cake, comes down with mad dog disease he is uncontrollable. The disease sits with him for about a month before he begins to show the symptoms. All the time, suspense is being built around the situation. From the moment the storm hit, the story turned into complete suspense peaking when Tea Cake had to fight off a crazy-eyed dog that was attempting to attack Janie and was bitten under the eye. After this, readers are left wondering about the dog and it’s striking eyes. When the symptoms hit, then is not long before Tea Cake begins to lash out. He is paranoid and moody to the point where he puts a loaded gun underneath of his pillow. This discovery leads Janie to a decision that saves her life; putting her own rifle in the kitchen. Those two decisions lead a fatal action. “She threw up the barrel of the rifle in frenzied hope and fear. Hope that he’d see it and run, desperate fear for her life.”(page 184) The disease had gotten the better of Tea Cake, and gave him the urge and need to kill. Janie held out until her own life was in danger, and shot the rifle at the same time as he had. Tea Cake missed, but Janie’s bullet took his life. This was a seemingly last minute decision, but Janie knew it was coming. She kept waiting for the doctor to come with his medicine, but all along knowing that it was too late. Hurston’s buildup to the moment was impeccably suspenseful. She held out until just the right time, and waited until Janie was in the right mindset, the reader knew that something was going to happen. Ultimately, Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God gives the reader a sense of excitement, suspense, and climax to turn internal thought into external action.
The most significant events, the deaths of two husbands and the leaving of another, are considered by Janie until an external action is forced upon. Even though the reader may not agree with these decisions and actions, they can respect them due to Hurston’s use of elements including suspense, climax, and
discovery.
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.
In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author takes you on the journey of a woman, Janie, and her search for love, independence, and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit seems to constantly be disregarded, yet Janie continues to hold on to the potential of grasping all that she desires. In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Hurston illustrates the ambiguity of Janie’s voice; the submissiveness of her silence and the independence she reclaims when regaining her voice. The reclaiming of Janie's independence, in the novel, correlates with the development and maturation Janie undergoes during her self discovery.
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.
Of least significance to Janie is her first husband, Logan Killicks. Hurston uses pathos to show that Janie and her first husband are not meant to be even though society thinks otherwise. Nanny thinks that Logan is really made for Janie, but Janie doesn’t love Logan. Janie tells Nanny, “Cause you told me Ah
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.
Oprah Winfrey mutilated the classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston by turning the movie into a story with no resemblance to the book. Throughout Janie Crawford’s life, love is a dream she wished to achieve. Oprah makes changes to Janie’s character, her marriages, and the differences of symbolism, the change of themes, and the significance of Janie’s childhood which will alter the entire moral of the story. Another difference is the way the townspeople gossip. Oprah changes the point of Janie’s life journey to find herself to a love story.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, struggles to find herself and her identity. Throughout the course of the novel she has many different people tell her who she should be and how she should behave, but none of these ideas quite fit Janie. The main people telling Janie who she should be is her grandmother and Janie’s 3 husbands. The people in Janie's life influence her search for identity by teaching her about marriage, hard work, class, society, love and happiness. Janie's outlook on life stems from the system of beliefs that her grandmother, Nanny, instils in her during her life.
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 Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Sweat,” Hurston uses the characters Janie Crawford and Delia Jones to symbolize African-American women as the mules of the world and their only alternative were through their words, in order to illustrate the conditions women suffered and the actions they had to take to maintain or establish their self-esteem.
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
Janie finds her way out when Joe Starks appears. The first thing Joe does after asking for a drink of water is to name himself: "Joe Starks was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in and through Georgy" (47). Hurston's naming of Starks is ironic for several reasons. The word stark is often used as a synonym for barren, and Joe Starks and Janie never have any children. Hurston hints at sexual problems that develop between the pair because of their separate beds and Janie's eventual verbal "castration" of Joe in the store. Starks's name is also ironic because of his focus on capitalistic pursuits. Starks's wealth gives him a false sense of power because the townspeople resent him and the things he does to gain his wealth. Starks's name could also be seen as a comment on his desire to be a "big voice." As Janie eventually finds out, there is not much behind the big voice; it is a facade for the starkness inside Joe.
The beginning of Janie’s journey is with her marriage to Logan Killicks, a man with tons acres of land to his name, but to Janie’s knowledge, is just an ugly old bag that has a huge lack of any love or companionship for her. For example, when Janie talks to Logan one night about their relationship he only says “Considerin’ youse born in a carriage ‘thout no top to it, and yo’ mama and you bein’ born and raised in de white folks back-yard” (30). Logan is emotionally destitute towards Janie in the beginning of the marriage. She cannot relate to him in any way what so ever and they both know it as well. In addition, at a point later on in the marriage Logan asks Janie to help him with chores outside, she replies “you don’t need mah help out dere, Logan. Youse in yo’ place and ah’m in mine,” (31). Not only does Logan have an absence of emotion, he also has an absence of love and he expresses the exact opposite of it through his bitterness and anger for Janie. She can now understand that Logan sees himself as supposedly “higher” than her and she loathes it even more. The marriage between Logan and Janie isn’t equal...
After the negative impact of Janie’s relationship with Logan, she ran off with Jody because he promised her that she would not have to work. These promises were not successful which caused Janie to regret her relationship with Jody. Hurston was able to change the relationship between Janie and Jody by using descriptive diction, imagery, and tone.
With a second delve into Janie’s extensive journey, Hurston presents more than solely self-love’s value over partner-love. She also gushes over the notion of self-love being an expansive journey one must embark on. Instead of a fortune cookie reject to be smiled at and subsequently rebuffed, Hurston opts for Janie’s quest itself to scream an all-embracing expedition of foolish trial and often smashing error, an imperfect odyssey fundamentally designed to test and spurn failure more often than success, as loving oneself merely cannot be learnt instantly, rather gradually developed in bite-sized pieces over years, coming with both defeat and triumph alike. “You got tuh go there tuh know there”, (226) and every single story beat Janie painstakingly