Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about Janie Crawford, a Black woman who fights to find her own voice and purpose in a world that expects her to just exist without being. Throughout her life, Janie experiences different relationships and problems that help her understand what it is like to live. She is a strong, independent woman. This essay explores how the author Hurston portrays women's empowerment and old-day feminism through Janie's experiences. A young Janie who doesn't quite understand the love in life or the happiness in life. Her grandmother, Nanny, pushed her into a marriage with Logan Killicks, hoping for Janie to have a secure, comfortable life. But, Janie felt trapped without escape in a marriage without love. She wants …show more content…
Tea Cake sees Janie as his equal. She is not someone that he can presume or someone to assume she is her love. He wanted her to have a voice and honor her wishes. This sense of freedom allows Janie to face challenges together with him. For example, there was a devastating hurricane, where Janie's force and new confidence helped them weather the storm together. Also, in the courtroom scene, Janie goes through a big transformation. Here, she finally puts her voice, and speaks up for herself and her experiences. In doing so, Janie refuses one more time to be silenced, clearly defining a change. She is not the property of anyone, she is human and she is herself. This moment shows Janie's story towards empowerment and black feminism as she finds her voice and uses her autonomy in a relationship with Tea Cake. Janie's journey towards independence in Their Eyes Were Watching God is evidence of her feminist spirit. From the early experiences of being pushed into marriage for security rather than love, to her awakening and finding the importance of finding her own voice. Janie goes through bad relationships, breaking society rules and norms imposed on women of her
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or other. Grandma’s worship of Jesus and the “Good Lawd,” Joe Starks’ worship of himself, Mrs. Turner’s worship of white characteristics, and Janie’s worship of love, all stem from a lack of jurisdiction in the society they inhabit. All these Gods represent a need for something to believe in and work for: an ideal, which they wish to achieve, to aspire to. Each individual character is thus able to find himself or herself in the God that they worship.
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.
Tea Cake, in this moment, takes the initiative for Janie allowing her to move forward in her life. Through his actions, Tea Cake breaks these boundaries set by Joe thereby creating a new impression of gender
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.
The beginning of Janie’s marriage to Joe shows promise and adventure, something that young Janie is quickly attracted to. She longs to get out of her loveless marriage to Logan Killicks and Joe’s big dreams captivate Janie. Once again she hopes to find the true love she’s always dreamed of. Joe and Janie’s life is first blissful. He gives her whatever she wants and after he becomes the mayor of a small African American town called Eatonville, they are the most respected couple in town. Joe uses his newfound power to control Janie. When she is asked to make a speech at a town event, she can’t even get out a word before Joe denies her the privilege. He starts making her work in the store he opens and punishes her for any mistakes she makes. He enjoys the power and respect her gets when o...
The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, is a novel that is a perfect representation of its time period. The novel was written in the 1930’s which was a time period filled with racism and sexual oppression, and this time period caused black women in American to become the most oppressed. The numerous symbols within the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God are able to capture these cultural ideals at the time and were influenced heavily by the time period. Specifically, Janie’s hair and her rags are representative of her non-conformity to society's standards which further characterizes her as independent.
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.
So many people in modern society have lost their voices. Laryngitis is not the cause of this sad situation-- they silence themselves, and have been doing so for decades. For many, not having a voice is acceptable socially and internally, because it frees them from the responsibility of having to maintain opinions. For Janie Crawford, it was not: she finds her voice among those lost within the pages of Zora Neale Hurston’s famed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This dynamic character’s natural intelligence, talent for speaking, and uncommon insights made her the perfect candidate to develop into the outspoken, individual woman she has wanted to be all along.
Lee Coker - Lee Coker lives in Eatonville. He was one of the first people to meet Jody and Janie.
Unlike The Odyssey or any other epic tales, Their Eyes Were Watching God has a different perspective of what a hero is. In this novel, Hurston writes a story about an African-American woman named Janie Crawford whose quest is to find her identity and desire as a human being to be loved and appreciated for who she is. Her quest to fulfill those desires is not easy since she has to overcome so many obstacles and challenges in her life. A superiority that her Nanny posses over her to determine Janie's own life when she was a teenager and being a beautiful accessory to the glory of Joe Starks' are some of the experience that she encounters. She also has to make some sacrifices. And yet, just like any other heroes, at the end, she returns to her home with a victory on her hands.
Zora Neale Hurston was a very prestigious and effective writer who wrote a controversial novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie whom is the dynamic character, faces many hardships throughout her life. Janie’s Nanny always told Janie who she should be with. Janie was never truly contented because she felt she was being constricted from her wants and dreams. Janie’s first two marriages were a failure. Throughout the novel, Janie mentions that her dreams have been killed. Janie is saying that men that have been involved and a part of her life have mistreated and underappreciated her doings. The death of her dreams factor Janie’s perception on men and her feelings of the future. Logan and Jody were the men who gave her such a negative attitude towards marriage. Once Tea Cake came along, Janie realized that there are men out there that will appreciate her for who she is. Janie throughout the novel, comes into contact with many obstacles that alter her perspective on men and life overall.
herself. Janie, all her life, had been pushed around and told what to do and how to live her life. She searched and searched high and low to find a peace that makes her whole and makes her feel like a complete person. To make her feel like she is in fact an individual and that she’s not like everyone else around her. During the time of ‘Their Eyes’, the correct way to treat women was to show them who was in charge and who was inferior. Men were looked to as the superior being, the one who women were supposed to look up to and serve. Especially in the fact that Janie was an African American women during these oppressed times. Throughout this book, it looks as though Janie makes many mistakes in trying to find who she really is, and achieving the respect that she deserves.
Written in seven weeks, Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God post-Harlem Renaissance in the Caribbean. Although sternly critiqued by the male African American in the literary community, Alice Walker who is a prominent female figure in the literary scene, shed light on the novel reviving and revealing the richness of themes the book holds. The setting takes place in Eatonville, Florida which was the first all-black community in the United States, and also where Hurston grew up. (citation) In the midst of a hostile, externally and internally racist, and sexist environment Janie Crawford is put in, Hurston portrays a female character who is fiercely independent and bold in her ideology of love, marriage, and sexuality. Throughout the novel, the reader is brought through Janie’s journey of self-identity. In this, Hurston expresses her views on how society looks at women, specifically African-American women, without explicitly stating it. Hurston cleverly creates Janie to be the unideal women of society during that time to able
In Zora Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie Crawford was an attractive, confident, middle-aged black woman. Janie defied gender stereotypes and realized others cruelty toward her throughout the novel. Behind her defiance was curiosity and confidence that drove her to experience the world and become conscious of her relation to it. Janie’s idealized definition of love stemmed from her experience under a pear tree, an experience that was highly romanticized and glamorized in her sixteen year old eyes. Janie’s ability to free herself from the confining, understood, stereotypical roles enforced upon her allowed her to not only find true love but define true love as well.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, follows the life of a mixed black woman’s search for love. The speaker of the novel, Janie Crawford, tells her story to a friend upon returning to Eatonville, Florida. When published, the novel didn’t receive much positive feedback; instead it was heavily criticized for portraying a black community in such a way that opens up more discrimination from the white men surrounding them. However, Hurston presents the black community in a way that she observed and further uses it to represent humanity as a whole. The stories of love and ambition surrounding Janie aren’t only associated with the black community, but with everyone.