External Factors in Their Eyes Were Watching God Did you know that Zora Neale Hurston published Their Eyes Were Watching God over 85 years ago, in 1937? The novel starts with Janie Mae Crawford returning to Eatonville, an all-black town. Returning home, the town’s folks gossip about Janie’s love life, and Pheoby, Janie’s best friend, welcomes and defends her. Not fazed by the comments, Janie explained her story to Phoeby. Her childhood began with her and her grandmother, Nanny. Her mother, Leafy, ran away, leaving Nanny to raise Janie in the backyard of a white couple, the Washburns’ home. Bullied for living in a yard, Nanny decides it would be better to move out and own land. Janie finds her favorite hangout spot in her new home under the …show more content…
Later that night, Nanny would catch Johnny and Janie kissing. External factors such as Nanny, death, and the hurricane shaped Janie and her life. An external character, Nanny, influences Janie’s life by convincing her to marry Logan and that her marriage will produce love, shaping her thinking. After Nanny finds Janie kissing Johnny Taylor, Nanny tells Janie that womanhood is upon her and that she wants to get married immediately. As Janie complains and asks who her husband would be, Nanny tells her it is Logan Killicks. Janie refuses to marry him, insulting his appearance and age, saying, “He looks like some ole skullhead in de graveyard” (13). Nanny then explains that it is not Logan that she wants Janie to have, but his protection. Nanny starts to describe her past, where she was once a slave and a victim of rape, resulting in Janie’s mother, Leafy. Leafy, also a victim of rape, is in Janie. Nanny explains that she does not want the same to happen to Janie and asks Janie to have some sympathy for her. Later, Janie marries Logan, “Janie and Logan got married in Nanny’s parlor on a Saturday evening with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken”
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.
Zora Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” depicts the journey of a young woman named Janie Crawford’s journey to finding real love. Her life begins with a romantic and ideal view on love. After Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, soon grows fearful of Janie’s newfound sexuality and quickly marries Janie off to Logan Killicks, an older land owner with his own farm. Janie quickly grows tired of Logan and how he works her like a slave instead of treating her as a wife and runs away with Joe Starks. Joe is older than Janie but younger than Logan and sweet talks Janie into marring him and soon Joe becomes the mayor of an all African American town called Eatonville. Soon Joe begins to force Janie to hide not only her
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston centers around the life of Janie Crawford, an African American young woman, who is seeking ‘the horizon’ comprised of ideal living, experiences, and authentic love. After having two failed marriages, Janie meets Tea Cake, a suave, charming younger man who truly loves Janie. By exposing Janie to the world, and providing her with experiences and memories, Tea Cake directs her to the ‘horizon,’ where she can lead a fulfilling life. The selected passage begins as Janie concludes sharing her story with Phoeby. The flashback comes to its end, and the setting returns to Eatonville, Florida. I selected this passage because it reveals the great impact that Tea Cake has had on shaping Janie’s life.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is written by Zora Neale Hurston in the year of 1937. In the novel, the main character is Janie Crawford. Janie has been treated differently by others during her life because of how she was raised and the choices she has made throughout her life. The community is quick to judge her actions and listen to any gossip about Janie in the town. Janie is known to be “classed off” from other members in her community in various ways. “Classed off” means to be separate or isolated from other people.
Janie’s Growth in Their Eyes Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed us to better understand the restraints that women in society have to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage to Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines. Her wedding to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself.
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 Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses colloquial language to show readers exactly why Nanny raised her granddaughter, Janie Crawford, the way she did. When Janie is sixteen years old, her grandmother wants to marry her off. The teen pleads to her grandmother with claims of not knowing anything about having a husband. Nanny explains the reason she wants to see Janie married off is because she is getting old and fears once she dies, Janie will be lost and will lack protection. Janie’s mother was raped by a school teacher at the young age of seventeen, which is how Janie was brought into the world. Nanny has many regrets about the way her daughter’s life turned out after Janie was born. She resorted to
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a good place to start examining the roles of African-American women. It is written by a woman, Zora Neale Hurston, and from a woman's perspective. This book examines the relationship between Janie and... ... middle of paper ... ...
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
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.
Janie’s nanny always gave Janie advice on life and men. Nanny is the one who convinced and persuaded Janie to marry Logan Killicks. Nanny believed that Logan was a hard working man who would respect Janie and take care of her. Janie was very skeptical of marrying Logan but eventually she did. Janie is a beautiful and youthful women who is married to an old and ugly man. The dearth of material on Logan in the novel is appropriate given the despair and emptiness that he symbolizes to Janie. Logan does not show much affection towards Janie. He has a hard time channeling his anger and he automatically assumes the the ideal of a marriage is for men to have the superiourness and the urge to dominate the woman, in other words, Janie. Logan feels Janie i...
Nanny is Janie’s grandmother who took care of her since her mother abandoned her as a baby. Nanny uses her power as an authority over Janie to make her marry Logan Killicks. Logan Killicks is Janie’s first husband and he is a man she does not want to marry. But Nanny forces her and tells Janie that a marriage for a black woman is about being stable (money and land) and marriage is not about falling in love. She says that love will come later in the marriage and so Janie listens and does as she is told. Instead Logan uses his power (him having money and land) over Janie by telling her she should be working in the field but she is too spoiled. Although he says this he still forces her to do labor around the house when he leaves to buy a new
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
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
“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.