Theme Of Their Eyes Were Watching God

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, the various settings often reflect and affect Janie’s progress on her journey to self-discovery. From Eatonville and its toxic social values, to the Everglades in a destructive hurricane, the setting is not just a descriptor but also an actor in the plot. The author’s portrayal of the settings highlights the theme of the novel that surrounding, environmental forces such as social values, jealousy, and even nature frequently conflict with the struggle to find one’s own self and voice.
Janie’s quest is ultimately one of self-discovery. Even as a child, she is unsure of her identity. The first setting is Nanny’s house with the Washburns, described as the place of Janie’s relatively happy childhood playing with

white children. Janie is ignorant of the fact that she is black until she sees a picture of herself, asking, “Where is me?

Ah don’t see me” (9). While Janie’s race has no immediate impact on her mentality, external forces like the prejudice of Mayrella hold Janie’s color against her. Janie realizes that she is not like the other children and must uncover whoever she truly is. This aptly describes the theme of the novel that the path to true love, fulfillment, and self-discovery is often incongruent with the surrounding environment.
Throughout the novel, Janie constantly seeks a higher ideal of true love and self fulfillment. She rarely describes her spiritual journey vocally, but the setting of the peach tree illustrates her inner, unspoken thoughts. “It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard…ever since the first tiny bloom had opened” (10). Here, the poetic setting under the tree presents Janie’s idyll and the description of springtime suggests fertility and renewal. The author personifies the tree as alive and vigorously buzzing with a holy ritual of bees and blossoms in unison. “It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery…It stirred her tremendously.

How? Why?” (10) Janie asks these paradoxically simple questions of where this spiritual ideal exists for her, searching for an answer throughout the novel. When she realizes that “Nothing on the place nor in her grandma’s house answered her,” she waits in expectation for the next chapter to come to her. The setting of the tree is repeated throughout the novel, particularly to underscore a moment of significance in Janie’s journey. She and Joe Starks first “sat under the tree and talked,” (27) before she ran off with him, but “Janie pulled back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but spoke for the far horizon” (29). This evaluation of Joe under the criterion of the peach tree foreshadows the inevitable deterioration of their relationship. Unlike the bee to the blossom, Joe does not treat Janie as a cherished equal, dominates the marriage, and is solely interested in his political reputation. In stark contrast, Tea Cake is entirely congruent with the peach tree. “He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring...He was a glance from God” (106). Ultimately, the setting of the tree illustrates Janie’s search for divine ideals and its repeated imagery foreshadows the success of her relationships throughout the plot.
After marrying Logan, Janie is hopeful that the ideal of the peach blossoms will manifest itself in marital love. Representative of the theme of environmental forces conflicting with the desire for true love, Nanny forcefully persuades Janie that love is of secondary importance to socioeconomic welfare. These uncompromising social values thrust Janie into a loveless marriage which leaves her unfulfilled. The setting of Logan’s house helps to represent Janie’s loneliness due to Nanny’s external influence overruling Janie’s volition. Logan’s house is described as “a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been. The house was absent of flavor, too” (22). This unflattering description is preceded by a contrasting setting of Nanny’s house, where they “married in Nanny’s parlor… with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken. Nanny and Mrs. Washburn had seen to that. Everything to eat in abundance.” The divergent descriptions of the two settings, juxtaposing bounties of food with the absence of flavor, illustrate how Janie’s environment plunges her into loneliness and overpowers her journey for fulfillment. Janie is surrounded by the likes of Nanny and Logan, whose shared social values of material prosperity over love explain their perplexity at Janie’s unhappiness in a comfortable house. Since the unromantic Logan dominates the relationship, Janie’s dreams of true love and finding her own voice are deferred while she is seemingly trapped in Logan’s house.
When she runs away with Joe, Janie has high hopes for a new beginning and a “feeling of sudden newness and change came over her” (32). Indeed, she anticipates that Eatonville will be the foundation of her peach blossom ideal where “she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (32). Unfortunately, upon arriving in Eatonville, “Joe noted the scant dozen of shame-faced houses scattered in the sand” (34). The dreary reality of the setting contrasts Janie’s lofty expectations and also foreshadows her unhappy future in Eatonville. As the months pass, Jody is successful in developing the town but largely neglects Janie as a wife. As in her first marriage, Janie’s desire for her own voice and the bliss of marital love is superseded by Jody’s social values of power and his male-dominant paradigm of marriage. Jody’s values lead him to restrict Janie while believing that he is helping her to elevate her social status, saying “Ah told you in de very first beginning’ dat Ah aimed tuh be uh big voice. You oughta be glad, ‘cause dat makes uh big woman outa you” (46). However, Janie is far more interested in being a cherished partner than being a “big woman.”
As the mayor’s wife, Janie soon finds that her social environment in the community restricts her freedom and hinders her desire for human companionship to an even greater extent. “The wife of the Mayor was not just another woman as she had supposed. She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind. She couldn’t get but so close to most of them in spirit.” (46) In the store, Janie wishes nothing more than to be out on the porch, immersed in friendly laughter and experience human closeness. The setting of the porch represents the warmth and companionship which Janie craves, but the inside of the store represents her prison. “Janie loved the conversation…but Joe had forbidden her to indulge” (53). Jody’s authoritarian jealously spurs him to keep her in the store and even force her to cover her hair, a symbol of her vitality. “So Janie had another day. And every day had a store in it...She had come to hate the inside of that store anyways” (51,54) The setting of the store is an effective device to emphasize Janie’s stagnation in her journey, trapped and watching her life languish thanks to Eatonville’s restrictive social rules and Jody’s jealousy. Though she can see and hear the laughter on the porch just a few steps away, Janie is a prisoner in her own store.
However, a new setting sweeps Janie into a new chapter of her journey with Tea Cake in the Everglades. “To Janie’s strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new…Ground so rich that everything went wild…People wild too” (129) The setting of the Everglades represents an unadulterated wilderness, natural purity from society’s restricting values, and where God feels nearer in the vastness of the natural environment. The rich ground symbolizes a setting full of potential for new life, including for Janie’s first taste of marital happiness. Indeed, in the Everglades Janie finds Tea Cake to be unlike any of her previous husbands. Unlike Logan, Tea Cake appreciates her and showers her with tender affection. Unlike Jody, Tea Cake treats Janie as his equal, sharing her kitchen labors and giving her a chance to find her voice. In this setting of the wild Everglades, seemingly detached from restrictive societal environments like Eatonville, Janie feels liberated to find herself as her love for Tea Cake matures.
However, the setting and Janie are dramatically altered when the hurricane rips through the landscape and culminates in Tea Cake’s tragic death.

The hurricane epitomizes the theme of environmental forces, even nature, conflicting with Janie’s journey. Like the social values and sexism which restrict Janie, the hurricane is pervasive, overwhelming, and destructive. The stormy sea is personified as an active, sentient, “montropolous beast” who “seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors” (162). The turbulent setting is thus an actor in the plot, ultimately killing Tea Cake and leaving Janie on her own, the final stage in her journey of self-discovery. Nevertheless, the events resulting from the hurricane demonstrate Janie’s profound transformation with Tea Cake in the Everglades. Janie grieves Tea Cake’s death but, having loved him like she had never loved before, she also discovers the mystery of peach blossoms. In nursing Tea Cake on his deathbed, she finds her voice, calming him with peaceful, soothing, and lofty language. Life in the Everglades incredibly altered Janie on her path for fulfillment, reflected in the wild purity of the setting. However, the Everglades no longer hold the same magic for Janie since “the muck meant Tea Cake and Tea Cake wasn’t there. So it was just a great expanse of black mud” (191). The change in the description of the setting from “rich

ground” to “black mud” reflects the completion of Janie’s journey.
Returning to Eatonville, Janie reflects a new confidence brought upon by self-revelation which gives her the voice she longs for. She is not broken with brief but rather elevated by her the experiences of her fulfilled life. The environment of Eatonville remains the same, with the porch dwellers gossiping and judging, but Janie is no longer affected by the social environment, confidently “…walking straight on to her gate” (2). The setting of her house in Eatonville, which originally bore many painful episodes with Jody, is also changed for Janie and reflects her newfound discoveries. Janie remarks to Phoeby, “Dis house ain’t so absent of thinks lak it used tuh be befo’ Tea Cake come along. It’s full uh thoughts, ‘specially dat bedroom.” Before meeting Tea Cake, the house was the home of an empty woman; now, it is brimming with vibrant memories of her life. At the end of the novel, Janie reflects, “Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set head in mah house and live by comparisons” (192) Her journey complete, Janie’s life is tremendously altered. While the novel closes with many opportunities for her to continue to live vividly, the setting of the house represents Janie’s temple to the memories of her extraordinary life and to Tea Cake, the eternal bee to her blossom.
In Janie’s life, the various settings reflect her progression towards self-discovery. However, the different environments also affect and foreshadow her life, often thwarting her dreams of living like the bees and peach blossoms. The skillfully subtle use of setting and its transformative powers on the plot underscores the theme that Janie’s environment is frequently pitted against her journey for self discovery. Though Janie’s life has been scarred by loss and sorrows, Janie has also experienced love and triumph. Though many forces struggle to drown her out, Janie is ultimately the victor and discovers her true voice.