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Society and culture surround everyone at all times. It helps raise and shape the population into what it is from the moment a person is born to their death. It is a very powerful factor in the world. It can cause hatred and war but it can also cause love and acceptance. It affects our behavior, tolerance, and decisions. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, both authors create characters who act in a manner that conforms to the cultural expectations of their time surrounding love for others, work and economical statues, and treatment of others, demonstrating that both men and women hide and ignore parts of themselves that do not coincide with cultural expectations. In Things Fall Apart the main character Okonkwo refuses to show the love he has for his family but within the book there are moments when he does show his feeling for his family. …show more content…
Jody’s treatment towards Janie really shows the male dominance that is expected “Jody stifles Janie's development as he silences her and keeps her from participating in the town's talk on the porch of their store” (Diane Telgen and Kevin Hile). Jody barely give Janie any freedom and publicly talks down to her. Even Tea Cake who is so different from Jody tries to prove that he is the dominate in the relationship. This is shown what Tea Cake says”Ah didn’t whup Janie ‘cause she done nothin’. Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss.” (Hurston 148). While discussing this topic Tracy L. Bealer says “Tea Cake's jealousy and violence is the novel's most intense and disturbing representation of the pervasiveness of domination because he is so unlike Logan and Joe, yet sporadically performs the same dominative masculinity that they do”. Since both Jody and Tea Cake fell to the knees of society's expectations of how men should treat others it causes Janie to suffer and be
There are a lot of good husbands out there, but there are also a lot of bad ones too. A good husband needs to be honest, loyal, and kind. Janie has to marry her first husband, Logan, because her grandma made her because he has money. Then she ran off with Joe who becomes the mayor of the first black town. After Joe dies she marries Tea Cake, who is younger than her. Which one of the husbands is the best for Janie.
Each person, whether they realize it or not, has been shaped by their relationships with others. The effects that piers or family members can have on someone are limitless and often times profound. In many instances, people do not even know that they are being influenced by others. Even if it is in the most subtle manner, all characters in novels are directly influenced by other figures. Authors use rhetorical strategies to demonstrate the different ways in which relationships affect and shape character’s identities.
I believe Janie depended on her past husbands for financial security, and protection from the outside world that she could not make a mends with. Janie's dependence on Tea Cake was a dependence on love, Tea Cake treats her the way she has always wanted to be treated, like the blossom to the bee. When Joe died, he left Janie with money and the store, but she had no one to love nor anyone to keep her company. She needed Tea Cake to fill this void in her life, I believe Janie realizes this when she says, "Tea Cake ain't no Jody Starks...but de minute Ah marries `im gointuh be makin' comparison. Dis ain't no business proposition...
In today’s world, many people find it difficult to see the difference between idealistic and realistic love. Idealistic love and realistic love can remain challenging to see when two people lose themselves in the moment. In a realistic relationship the two companions become a team, they work together for each other rather than themselves. This comes through as a challenge when you can’t always tell if they other person does it for themself or the relationship. On the other hand, when you look back or watch from the sidelines, it can show through easily in many ways. In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Hurston does a really great job of showing the differences between realistic and idealistic
There are various pieces of written work that do not fall into the category of literature work. This is because a piece of writing can be said to be literature when it has distinct features that follows the rules of literature writing. Some of the distinctive features that can be used to classify a piece of writing as a literature are the nature of language, themes and stylistic devices (Irmscher, 1975). Literature does not fully use the rules of grammar and may involve the use of informal writing. Hurston and Toni Morrison applied feature such as using colloquial language, development of various themes and some stylistic devices which have lead to their pieces of work being considered as important literary art. This paper will focus on two pieces of written work written by Hurston and the other by Toni Morrison Their Eyes Were Watching God and Beloved respectively and why they are considered important works of literature.
In the book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, there were many Motifs. For example, one of the Motifs was “community”. “Community” was a Motif in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” because it was a recurring element in the story. An example in the story was the place where janie grew up. In the book, on page 8, it said, “She had a house out in de back-yard and dat’s where Ah wuz born. They was quality white folks up dere in West Florida.” This is an example of community, because it explains Janie’s neighborhood when she grew up. Another example in the book, on page 34, it says, “...he found a buggy to carry them over to the colored town right away.” This demonstrates community because in this line, Janie moved to a colored town, which is a different
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston chapter 10 begins when there is a big baseball game in Winter Park and Janie stays back by herself to work in the store. A man walks into the store just as it is about to close and they completely hit it off. After he invites Janie to play checkers and she does not know how to, so he teaches her. Janie starts to get really excited because she feels he is everything a woman could want in a man. They talk and joke around the whole night and ends up walking Janie home. By the end of the chapter, we know his name is Vergible Woods, however, he goes by Tea Cake. Even though Janie is a little cautious, she feels like she has known him her whole life.
My re-covering of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is not your usual cover of a book. I was trying to incorporate a school math book type of cover onto a regular book cover, what I mean by that is that I used important details from the book and scattered them across the cover. The important details were four symbols that I found throughout the book; Janie’s hair, the mule, checkers, and the hurricane. These symbols give an interesting look at the book.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie wants to find true love. Janie must go through hardships to find true love, she believes true love should blossom like a pear tree.
Sometimes marriages aren't so easy. Freedom isn't always guaranteed. Love isn't something to throw around. In the novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God", Janie, the main character, finds herself confused about love and her own identity, most of the time. After going through three marriages, Janie finds freedom, and the true love she has been seeking.
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 shown 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 the course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when they got this way.
“Running blind in truth. I’ma rains on this bitter love. Tell the sweet I’m new… Freedom! I can’t move. Freedom, cut me loose...I break chains all by myself. Won’t let my freedom rot in hell.” In her song “Freedom,” Beyoncé, notable American musician, describes the relationships between love, freedom, and self-fulfillment. She explains if someone is in a “bitter love,” they can not be autonomous until they liberate themselves from the negative constraints and exercise their right to choose. These relationships may be commonly seen in modern-day pop culture but they are distinctly conveyed in the 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
When Tea Cake enters Janie's life, Janie really starts to come out of her shell. She lets down her hair that was kept up the entire time with Starks. This symbolizes Janie letting all her inhibitions out. In finding Tea Cake, Janie has "completed her voyage" of self-discovery. Tea Cake allows her to feel exhilarated and young again. She makes more friends and becomes more social. During this time in her life Janie is an excellent role model for other black women. She does not give a second look at what other people think about her, which is very admirable. This is shown when Hezekiah Potts tells Janie that Tea Cake is too low of a man for Janie yet, she stills persists on seeing him. Many people also think that Tea Cake is courting Janie for her money only. Janie pays no regard to these onlookers though.
Path to Finding True Love “True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together.” This quote by Ricardo Montalban tells us that true love simply has to develop and it doesn’t happen right away. Janie is the main character from the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and she struggled on the concept of true love. This quote explains exactly why Janie never found true love.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, two settings are contrasted to reinforce the author’s theme of a search for true love. The setting of Eatonville, Florida, where main character Janie experiences life as the mayor’s wife, is contrasted with the Florida Everglades, where Janie lives with Tea Cake in a much more relaxed atmosphere.