The late first lady Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it." Mrs. Roosevelt means that although one person may feel alone through the hardships one faces, one has millions beside oneself who can relate to and understand what one may feel. Zora Neale Hurston shows that even though Janie's family and spouses continue to be abusive and harsh toward Janie, their hate and control left her stronger than before, preparing her for the next challenges thrown at her. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the deaths' of close relatives and family positively affect Janie because she tends to become more educated and wiser with each death she overcomes in the obstacles she calls her life. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is positively affected by Joe Stark's death because she finally feels free of all control. The narrator says, “Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. She did not reach for anything, nor did the things of death reach inside to disturb her calm. She sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself rollicking with the springtime across the world” (Hurston 88). This represents the positive effects of Joe’s death because Jamie finally feels safe and secure; and most importantly, free. All though, she conceals her true feelings and thoughts from the town in fear of becoming socially un-accepted. At the funeral, Janie becomes “a wall of stone and steel”, where she shows no emotions, a gray face covering up the colorful feelings going on inside. In addition, Janie tries to rid herself of the objects that remind her of the things that represent the control people have over her. The narrator says, " Befo... ... middle of paper ... ... Although the forces of the world may be unknowable and at times painful, she is at peace with them. She has found true love, which has enabled her to find her voice. This final image of Janie “pulling in her horizon” contrasts with the opening image of men’s “ships at a distance.” These metaphorical ships suggest that regardless of their ultimate success or failure, men dream of great accomplishments, of working on and changing their external worlds. Even if the ship comes in, it still originates as something external. Janie’s pulling in her horizon shifts the field of action to the interior. Her quest requires experiences of the world, of other people and places, but it is ultimately directed inward. Would you go the distance to find who you are? Works Cited Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches" (8). When Janie was a teenager, she used to sit under the pear tree and dream about being a tree in bloom. She longs for something more. When she is 16, she kisses Johnny Taylor to see if this is what she looks for. Nanny sees her kiss him, and says that Janie is now a woman. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the main character, is involved in three very different relationships. Zora Neale Hurston, the author, explains how Janie learns some valuable lessons about marriage, integrity, and love and happiness from her relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
Hurston invokes the symbol of horizon recurrently throughout the novel, to portray Janie’s dreams, aspirations, and her growth as a strong independent woman while attaining her horizon. The symbol, horizon, is used in both the beginning and ending of the story to represent the desire and fulfillment of Janie’s dreams. In the novel's opening sentence, the narrator introduces Janie's motivation to pursue her dreams, “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time” (Hurst 1). The horizon in this passage represents a dream that is not easily attainable, as
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 had to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage with Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines. Wedding herself to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself. In her final marriage to Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, she finally learned how to live her life on her own. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie suffered through many difficult situations that eventually enabled her to grow into an independent person.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
Like Jay Gatsby, many elements of the paragraph in that opens the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God plays into Janie Crawford and how she fits into the gender roles that Zora Neal Hurston describes and in ways, twists, into the narrative of her novel and in the paragraphs mentioned. With these two different characters in two different stories, the narrator of the paragraph conveys a message and draws the distinctions between men, women and how they attain their dreams and the differences between them in doing so.
Lewis & Clark, Beowulf, and Amelia Earhart all have something in common with the main character of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford. All these people have embarked on a quest that have resulted in the betterment of themselves. In this novel, Janie’s quest has many goals that change throughout the book. Her initial assessment of what she’d like to “accomplish” in her endeavour is to find true love and gain independence. Throughout the book however, Janie’s quest eventually evolves from her initial superficial assessment of her wants, to that of the overarching “true” meaning of her quest, one that causes her to find herself and become a complete person.
Firstly, Janie views the horizon as an opportunity for something great to happen in her life. For example, in the beginning paragraph in the novel, it illustrates how harboring ships give people hope for the ships to be carrying cargo that they need the most: “[s]hips at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation” (Hurston 1). By including this in the story Hurston gives the feeling that any dream is possible. Janie’s dream was to fall in love, which showed just how naive she is at the start of the book. Perusing this further, as Janie sat under the pear tree and sees Johnny Taylor walk by, she pe...
Janie eventually attains what she has spent forty years searching for--her voice, and her identity. The only voice Janie had in her marriage to Killicks was to throw down her apron and walk out the door (Racine 9). While with Joe Starks, she allows herself to live a dual life--one in which her body contributes and another in which her thoughts wonders boundlessly. In Janie's marriage to Tea Cake, she gains the freedom and the self-identity she has been searching for. By killing Tea Cake, Janie selects herself over the dominant society of men (Holloway 43). In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston suggests to her readers that Black men and women have been controlled by white society.
Appiah and Gates, 204-17. Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1990. Wright, Richard.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Lora Neale Hurston, the main character engages in three marriages that lead her towards a development of self. Through each endeavor, Janie learns the truths of life, love, and the path to finding her identity. Though suppressed because of her race and gender, Janie has a strong will to live her life the way she wills. But throughout her life, she encounters many people who attempt to change the way that she is and her beliefs. Each marriage that she undertakes, she finds a new realization and is on a never-ending quest to find her identity and true love. Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each help Janie progress to womanhood and find her identity.
Their Eyes Are Watching God, Janie constantly struggles to find her voice. Her marriage to Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake helped her discover and utilize her voice in different ways. During Janie’s first marriage to Logan she has no voice, Joe silences Janie’s tiniest whisper and controls her similar to a slave; in contrast to Logan and Joe, Tea Cake encourages Janie to use her voice and make her own decisions. Janie cannot express her voice until she discovers happiness and independence through her final marriage. While Janie’s Nanny forces her into marrying Logan Killicks for security, Logan also lacks love and compassion for Janie and silences her.
The author also vividly expresses that Janie has been through hard times and still managed to make it through because she is strong of mind and heart. Hurston’s sympathy seems to be coming out of admiration as well as affirmation.
Goals and dreams of the future are represented by the horizon and Zora Neale Hurston states that not everybody reaches their goals, but all men try for them. Janie’s dream remains out of reach and on the horizon for the most of her life, until she meets Tea Cake. All she wants is affection and love, this was apparent when she was married to Joe Stark and did as he said, such as tying her hair in a kerchief. When Janie thinks about Joe Stark she knows that if she marries him then it won‘t be the kind of marriage that will last, but a different way of life from what she has with Logan. “Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon” (29). Janie realizes that Joe Starks goals are very far away and are hard ...
...her life. When he was gone she had nothing else to look after in life except herself. She was like a little seed, able to blow in the wind and go wherever she chose to go. Janie's mind, spirit, and body were free. "She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net... [and] she called in her soul to come and see" (Hurston p. ?).
In Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, symbols, themes, and motifs can be found everywhere from the entirety of the book. through the main protagonist, Janie, who is not sure in what she what she wants within a man, she begins embrace her love life to help her find her own self. Through the use of Janie’s hair, Hurston helps express the motif of restriction, opposition, and freedom to convey the symbolism of power and identity.