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A natural disaster is beyond the control of man. Unpredictable and unbiased, the devastation of a hurricane can cause destruction and rebirth. The hurricane in Zora Neale Hurston’s, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, is a critical event that dramatically changes Janie’s life. When faced with the destruction of the hurricane, Janie and Tea Cake could only watch with terror as it destroyed their lives. The hurricane stripped all judgement, social class, and race, leaving them with the bare bones of their true selves. Before the arrival of the hurricane, race became one of the deciding factors for Janie and Tea Cake to stay in the muck. The native Seminole Indians warned Janie and Tea Cake of the impending doom. They disregard the wise advice of the Seminoles. They disregard the evacuation of their friends, neighbors, and animals. They choose to stay in the muck. They would rather lay faith in what the white man says and believes, even after knowing that the Seminoles could read nature signs. Janie and Tea Cake made a clouded and prejudice judgement in their final point about the Indians. “Dey don’t always know. …show more content…
Indians don’t know much uh nothin’, tuh tell de truth. Else dey’d own dis country still. De white folks ain’t gone nowhere. Dey oughta know if it’s dangerous.” (Hurston 156). Hurston creates irony with the racial prejudice Janie and Tea Cake have for the Indians and her foolish faith in the white man or white society. Janie denying the abilities and judgements of the minority group begins her ruin (Awkward 116). Social class affirmed their decision to stay. “Man, de money’s too good on the muck. It’s liable tuh fair off by tuhmorroer” (Hurston 156). Tea Cake’s financial restraints are the primary reason they refuse to leave the Everglades. The same financial restraints caused many families in New Orleans to wait out the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Many residents did not have the financial ability to move out of town for a few days. A lot of residents lacked the transportation to leave the city of New Orleans. Hurston shows the reliance of social classes in “the bossman might have the thing stopped by morning” (Hurston 158). This quote resembles the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) failures during Katrina. The families without transportation waited on seven hundred buses requested by the Louisiana National Guard. Only one hundred buses arrived to evacuate the many left in New Orleans (Mullaney 128-129). As the hurricane worsened, Janie came to a revelation. “The time was past for asking the white folks what to look for through that door. Six eyes were questioning God” (Hurston 151). They are able to find clarity in life within the obscure destruction of the storm. The thoughtless dependence and internalization of white society revealed itself to Janie. Janie comes to the understanding that white society controlled her thought process and lifestyle. The hurricane physically and mentally forced those left behind to shed their former personalities and social judgements. The hurricane reduced them down to only the essential traits needed to survive (Kubitschek 111). They began to find themselves when “They seemed to be staring at the dark but their eyes were watching God” (Hurston 151). In this passage, the dark could be an interpretation of black or blackness. To be staring at the black or blackness would mean that the answer to survival has been within them the entire time. They searched for answers from God. In their search, they found that the answer is not within another race or class. They must look within themselves to pursue life through and after every storm that may come their way (Awkward 117). This self-discovery allowed Janie to admit to Tea Cake the love she had for him. Tea Cake accepted this as truth. “Well then, Janie, you meant whut you didn’t say, ‘cause Ah never knowed you wuz so satisfied wid me lak dat” (Hurston 160). This allows Tea Cake to grow into a protector and leader. Janie also changes in character. She had to make a difficult decision on the safety of herself and Tea Cake. Janie, for the first time, must think of the death of a loved one and her own death. She shows acceptance and peaceful happiness in the life she lived through her words “If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk” (Hurston 159). Janie and Tea Cake were able to overcome the hurricane’s obstacles and grow as individuals.
The control that race and classes had over them was their weakest qualities. Throughout Janie’s life, these things controlled her. Nanny’s understandably tragic view of black women in the world led to Janie’s first loveless marriage. Joe Starks, Janie’s second husband, had a need for a big voice. This boosted his social class and led to the control over every aspect of Janie’s life. The hurricane diminished Janie and Tea Cake’s personalities and forced them to their physical limits. This allowed them to understand humanity’s complex relationship with nature, life, and death. The hurricane destroyed all the people and things that controlled Janie’s life. Race and society could not touch her. She was reborn after the storm and finally found her
voice.
Mrs. Turner is a mixed woman who dislikes and is racist towards darker black people. Mrs. Turner wants Janie to leave Tea Cake and go with her light-skinned brother. Janie isn’t interested, and Tea Cake despises Mrs. Turner. She views white people as some type of god whereas the black people are merely worshipers. Janie is also lighter skinned, so Mrs. Turner enjoys Janie’s company. Janie’s uninterested self feels that Mrs. Turner is racist but harmless. Tea Cake goes out of his way to get rid of Mrs. Turner with the fight in her restaurant.
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.
Janie’s character undergoes a major change after Joe’s death. She has freedom. While the town goes to watch a ball game Janie meets Tea Cake. Tea Cake teaches Janie how to play checkers, hunt, and fish. That made Janie happy. “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice. She looked him over and got little thrills from every one of his good points” (Hurston 96). Tea Cake gave her the comfort of feeling wanted. Janie realizes Tea Cake’s difference from her prior relationships because he wants her to become happy and cares about what she likes to do. Janie tells Pheoby about moving away with Tea Cake and Pheoby tells her that people disapprove of the way she behaves right after the death of her husband. Janie says she controls her life and it has become time for her to live it her way. “Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). Janie becomes stronger as she dates Tea Cake because she no longer does for everyone else. Janie and Tea Cake decided to move to the Everglades, the muck. One afternoon, a hurricane came. The hurricane symbolizes disaster and another change in Janie’s life. “Capricious but impersonal, it is a concrete example of the destructive power found in nature. Janie, Tea Cake, and their friends can only look on in terror as the hurricane destroys the
Janie’s first parental, godlike figure is Nanny, and she is the first to assume the form of a metaphorical hurricane or “[s]omething resembling a hurricane in force or speed” (“Hurricane”). Nanny establishes her parental, godlike status to Janie when she says, “’You ain’t got no papa, you might jus’ as well say no mama, for de good she do yuh. You ain’t got nobody but me…Neither can you stand alone by yo’self’” (15). While acting as the sole provider of love and protection to Janie, Nanny assumes the speed and force of a hurricane; “she bolt[s] upright” upon witnessing Janie’s first kiss an...
Through her three marriages, the death of her one true love, and proving her innocence in Tea Cake’s death, Janie learns to look within herself to find her hidden voice. Growing as a person from the many obstacles she has overcome during her forty years of life, Janie finally speaks her thoughts, feelings and opinions. From this, she finds what she has been searching for her whole life, happiness.
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.
Janie’s life with Joe fulfilled a need -- she had no financial worries and was more than set for life. She had a beautiful white home, a neat lawn and garden, a successful husband, and lots of cash. Everything was clean, almost too clean. A sense of restraint is present in this setting, and this relates to the work as a whole due to the fact that this is the epitome of unhappiness for Janie.
Almost 2,000 died the night of the 1928 storm in Florida. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston realistically depicts the Okeechobee hurricane that struck the coast of South Florida. The incredulous, category four storm produced winds as high as 150 mph and flood waters of up to eight feet. Hurston describes their heart wrenching experience throughout the end of the novel when Janie, the protagonist of the story, survives the devastating hurricane with her husband, Tea Cake. The book shows similarities between the overflow of Lake Okeechobee and the specific weather conditions of the hurricane, but differs regarding the aftermath of the storm.
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.
Lee Coker - Lee Coker lives in Eatonville. He was one of the first people to meet Jody and Janie.
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.
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.
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.
Janie associates God with love as many people do, calling on religion only in the best and worst times of life. The first two thirds of the novel does not have many points in which God seems relevant to Janie's life. This all changes when Janie falls in love because she feels like she needs to thank God for bringing Janie and Teacake together. The hurricane scene is one area in the novel where love and the relationship between God and nature is brought up. When the hurricane is worsening in severity, Teacake guiltily asks Janie if she wishes she were back in her big house instead of with him.