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Their Eyes Were Watching God: Silence is Something to Be Valued
Silence: the absence of any sound or noise. The act of being silent or quiet is something that happens everyday, and as a result, often possesses no significance. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston addresses that silence can have a purpose through the main character Janie. Janie, a woman struggling to find and express herself, is often silenced along her journey towards self-revelation. Silence is often an obstacle of hers, yet at the same time it allows time to take in the situation and analyze. Noise can be a distraction or a wall covering a bigger problem. Being quiet allows the true issue to show in its rawest form. Silence, although physically insignificant, can take deeper meaning. Zora Neale Hurston silences Janie to varying degrees to expose male dominance, emphasize conscious thought, and express the lack of a listener.
On Janie's journey towards self discovery and expression, progress is suddenly halted when she encounters controlling men. In respect for Nanny, Janie attempts to live her life through her nanny's expectations and desires. Nanny has taken the hard road in life, and tries her best to help Janie avoid life's unnecessary turmoils: “Yo' Nanny wouldn't harm a hair uh yo' head. She don't want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it” (Hurston 14). Nanny has all the best intentions by setting Janie up with Logan Killicks, an older man who owns sixty acres of land. The man of Nanny's dreams does not match up with Janie's expectations, for Janie wants to be in a blossoming relationship that she is comfortable being a part of. Logan turns out to be a man of labor and “refuses to hear the real meaning behind [Janie'...
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...distractions. Taking time to observe and analyze the silence can bring something to the surface that could never be confronted in any other way. We need to embrace silence presented throughout life, for we will come out with more definitive, powerful voices.
Works Cited
Haurykiewicz, Julie A. "From mules to muliebrity: speech and silence in Their Eyes Were Watching." The Southern Literary Journal 29.2 (1997): 45+. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Feb. 2012.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc,1998. Print. 26 Feb. 2012.
Quashie, Kevin Everod. "The Trouble with Publicness: Toward a Theory of Black Quiet." African American Review 43.2-3 (2009): 329+. Academic OneFile. Web. 26 Feb. 2012.
Washington, Mary Helen. Foreword. Their Eyes Were Watching God. By Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Harper & Row, 1937. xiv. Print
In Orfield Laboratories, Minnesota there exists a room known as an anechoic chamber. Anechoic means free from echoes, the room measures at -9 decibels. 45 minutes marks the longest time anyone has spent in there alone. Lacking outside noises, the quietude of the room allows those inside to hear their own internal organs; occasionally hallucinations occur. The chamber amplifies an unknown fear, dead silence and extreme loneliness. Like many things, silence has a multitude of advantages, but extreme silence can prove devastation. In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen silence as a theme demonstrates destructivity. Devastation caused by silence is shown through Reb’s parenting methods, Danny’s silence between his father, and Reuven’s various experiences with silence.
As Janie is growing up she has to learn to accept her Nanny’s belief of how a woman is supposed to live in society. Nanny grew up in slavery so she believes that the role of men is to support his wife financially. Nanny thinks Janie should marry a man according to how successful he is and Janie should keep up the household responsibilities. Janie’s grandmother said, “Ah been waitin’ a long time, Janie, but nothin’ Ah I
In The Chosen by Chaim Potok, the main character Reuven Malter experiences silence in all forms. This phrase applies to him by the time that he never appreciated how much he and Danny Saunders has been talking and then suddenly Reb Saunders, Danny's father, separated them. This is appointed to in this passage, "I hated the silence between us and thought it unimaginable that Danny and his father never really talked. Silence was ugly, it was black, it leered, it was cancerous, it was death. I hated it, and I hated Reb Saunders for forcing it upon me and his son (Potok 235, Ch 14). Though in this passage Reuven said he hates the silence, it makes him more aware of what is happening and learns to enjoy it and make use of it. "In subsequent weeks, I was grateful for that silence" (Potok 242, Ch 14). This silence has opened his mind and has allowed him to think of more
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
The first two people Janie depended on were her Grandmother, whom she called Nanny, and Logan Killicks. Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks was partially arranged by Nanny. Nanny had felt the need to find someone for Janie to depend on before she died and Janie could no longer depend on her. At first, Janie was very opposed to the marriage. Nanny responded with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. ...He (God) done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life.”(p.14) Nanny instilled the sense of needing a man for safety on Janie that Janie keeps with her throughout her life. After Nanny’s death, Janie continued to stay with Logan despite her dislike for him. She would have left immediately, however, if she did not need to depend on him.
Silence is another way of talking for the Saunders'. It's how Reb Saunders taught Danny because it was the only way he knew how to teach his son. Reb said, "My father never talked to me, except when
Nanny has many regrets about the way her daughter’s life turned out after Janie was born. She resorted to alcoholism and did not lead a stable life—this is not the path that Nanny wants for her granddaughter, so when she sees Janie kissing a boy, she fears that the same thing could happen again: “‘She was only seventeen, and somethin’ lak dat to happen! He expresses anger at Bobby Jorgenson and frustration that he cannot be on the move with the rest of his platoon while he recovers from his injury. Jorgenson’s terrible job of treating O’Brien’s wound leaves a lasting effect on him, because he cannot rest until he gets his revenge on the young medic.
Silence — the sound of quiet, the state of mind, the lack of meaning — all these pertain to its definition. Communication is expanding, noise is increasing, music is becoming more obtainable as people search desperately for a moment of peace or a breeze of silence. As the scarcity of physical silence increases, its value as a rare commodity increases as well. The idiom “Silence is golden” may perhaps only grow closer to reality as time passes, as exemplified by the white noise machines or silent fans entering the market and fictionalized in Kevin Brockmeier’s short story, “The Year of Silence.” In light of this, Brockmeier explores the value of silence and noise in his story without putting one above the other. Through strange clues and hidden
Janie Crawford, the main character of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, strives to find her own voice throughout the novel and, in my opinion, she succeeds even though it takes her over thirty years to do it. Each one of her husband’s has a different effect on her ability to find that voice.
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.
When Nanny catches Janie kissing a "trashy, breath-and-britches" young man whom she says will be "usin' [Janie's] body to wipe his feet on" (Hurston 12), she immediately marries Janie off to Logan Killicks, a wealthy farmer in the town.... ... middle of paper ... ... Works Cited 1.
Nanny was determined that Janie would break the cycle of oppression of black women, who were "mules for the world". (Both of Janie's first two husbands owned mules and the way they treated their mules paralleled to the way they treated Janie. Logan Killicks worked his mule demandingly and Joe Starks bought Matt Bonner's mule and put it out to pasture as a status symbol.) After joyfully discovering an archetype for sensuality, love, and marriage under a pear tree at sixteen, Janie quickly comes to understand the reality of marriage in her first two marriages. Both Logan Killicks and Joe Starks attempt to coerce her into submission by treating her like a possession (Killicks worked her like a mule and Starks used her like a medal around his neck). Also Janie learned that passion and love are tied to violence, as Killicks threaten to kill her and Starks beat her to assert his dominance. She continually struggled to keep her inner self-intact and strong in spite ...
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
Nanny Janie’s grandmother disapprove the kiss between Janie and Johnny Taylor under the pear tree (11). Janie was only sixteen years old and naïve to think that was love. Nanny knew Johnny Taylor did not mean to cause no harm, but she felt Johnny was trying to mislead Janie to hurt and humiliate her by being sexual that can be dangerous (Hurston 12-15). Likewise, Janie was forced into marrying Logan an older man, Nanny approved of because Janie will have a husband that will love her. Same as, Hurston describe Janie emotions of unhappiness within the marriage not having affection and desire for Logan, Hurston implies, “Ah ain’t got nothin’ tuh live for.” (118) Hurston also describes Janie as confident that caught men attention as well as her physique, the women were jealous of Janie implying “Janie will never fit in the upper class of white men because of her appearance.” (Hurston 41) The women try to make Janie feel worthless and unattractive of not having enough sexually appeal. . Hurston writing engage the character from love to lust in a unhappy marriage that lead to a prolonged period of difficulty
In the novel Their Eyes were Watching God, written by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie searches for comfort in the world by exploring herself and others as she becomes a prudent woman. Hurston cleverly uses diction to portray Janie’s attitude towards any given person. Wright denigrates the author’s language for having no theme, message, or thought, he does this with unjust reason, for Hurston’s syntax brilliantly immerses the audience into Janie’s culture and perspective as it directly addresses her affinities with beautiful diction and her dislikes with grotesque and gritty lingo.