Zora Neale Hurston's Novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay

“You may shoot me with your words,/ You may cut me with your eyes,/ You may kill me with your hatefulness,/ But still, like air, I’ll rise.” were the words written by Maya Angelou in her famous poem “Still I Rise”(Poets.org). She felt the need to express her life motives to the world and hopefully be able to convince others to follow this ideology. These very same words can be reflected in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, where a round character, named Janie Crawford, yearns to live her dreams, but is trapped by life obstacles that try to bring her down. She had to suffer deeply for most of her lifetime in order to break the chains of expectations from others. Throughout Janie’s life she always fought the expectations put on her by Nanny, her husbands, and

society. Although she was not always successful, she found ways to combat the expectations placed on her, as was stated in the article "Some Other Way to Try": From Defiance to Creative Submission in "Their Eyes Were Watching God." by Shawn E. Miller, “Janie heroically defies the roles imposed upon her, and eventually finds the love she had first envisioned under the pear tree”
Janie’s first sign of defiance occurs in the second chapter of the novel, when Nanny finds Janie kissing Johnny Taylor.

“In the last stages of Nanny’s sleep, she dreamed of voices. Voices far-off but persistent, and gradually coming nearer. Janie’s voice. Janie talking in whispery snatches with a male voice she couldn’t quite place. That brought her wide awake. She bolted upright and peered out of the window and saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss.” (Hurston). Nanny grew angry and distressed to see her Janie kissing a “trashy nigger” which leads her to propose Janie to marry her off to Mr. Logan Killicks. Nanny tells Janie, “youse uh ‘oman, now,so-” and Janie immediately rebukes that idea by saying, “naw, Nanny, naw Ah ain’t no real ‘oman yet.” (Hurston). Janie tries to fight Nanny’s idea, but Nanny insists. Janie was not successful in her fight against marrying Mr. Logan Killicks, but later she decides to marry him and wait for love to come as it is explained by the narrator, “Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so”

(Hurston).
Mr. Logan Killicks’ love for Janie was sincere, but eventually he began to expect things from Janie that she was not willing to do. In her marriage with Mr. Logan Killicks, Janie expected to be protected and treated as a proper lady. She felt that she had her place in the house and had no business working out in the field. As she said, “you don’t need mah help out dere, logan. youse in yo’ place and Ah’m in mine.” Janie defended her right to be in the home as it was natural for many women to stay at home to raise children and keep the house (Hurston). On the other hand, Mr. Killicks expected her to chop would as her last wife did. As Judie Berridge explains in her article In Search of Janie: Tracking Character Development and Literary Elements in Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Logan at first chops wood for Janie, but later they fight over his demands that she chop wood”. The argument can be seen in chapter four when Mr. Killicks begins to attack Janie stating, “If Ah kin haul de wood heah and chop it fuh yuh, look lak you oughta be able tuh tote it inside, Mah fust wife never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow.”, but Janie stood her ground and responded, “Ah’m just as stiff as you is stout. If you can stand not to chop and tote wood Ah reckon you can stand not to git no dinner. ‘Scuse mah freezolity, Mist’ Killicks, but Ah don’t mean to chop de first chip.” (Hurston). Janie clearly defended herself from the injustice that Mr. Killicks wanted to bestow on her. Mr. Killicks’ constant verbal abuse makes Janie unhappy and “his sixty acres, chopped wood, and filled water buckets cannot make [her] happy because she does not value the material assets; instead, she "wants things sweet wid marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think"(Miller). This leads Janie to look for a new love. A bee from her dreams that would pollinate her blossoms, that bee was named Joe Starks.
Janie’s dreamy encounter with Joe Starks lead her to believe that he was the bee that was to sing to her and pollinate. He courted her with beautiful words and promises, stating “a pretty doll-baby lack you is made to sit on the front porch and rock and fan yo’self” (Hurston). After leaving Mr. Killicks, Janie and Mr. Starks contracted matrimony on their way to Florida in search for Mr. Stark’s dreams. Timed passed and Janie began to see what Mr. Starks meant with his “doll-baby” expression. She saw that” [Mr. Starks’] concept of a wife is an object to be possessed. She becomes his "pretty doll baby" and gets to sit on the respectable high stool of Nanny's dream on the front porch, but she has to pay a price.” (Miller). For many years she kept silent and submissive doing what Mr. Starks commanded her, patiently suffering his constant verbal and physical abuse. But During a heated argument Janie backlashes Mr. Starks. She stands up for herself and states, “stop mixin’ up mah doings wid mah looks, Jody. When you git through tellin’ me how to cut uh plug uh tobacco, then you kin tell me whether mah behind is on straight or not… talkin’ ‘bout me lookin’old! When you pull down yo britches, yo’ look lak de changes uh life” (Hurston). Janie strikes Mr. Starks where it most hurts him, his manhood. Mr. Starks is embarrassed in front of the townspeople and will not forget this card played by Janie. But her words were futile as the narrator explains, "Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn't do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it" (Hurston).After Janie’s quarrel with Mr. Starks things were no longer the same, he grew sick and began to isolate himself from her.
Throughout her marriage with Mr. Starks, Janie had been abused physically and verbally. Mr. Starks believes that “Janie's place is in the home. [But] Janie wants open discussion and relationship. Janie has to learn to hush, keep her hair tied up, and act the way a mayor's wife should act.” (Berridge) She was no longer allowed to wear her long hair out in the open, instead she wore head rags that covered her beauty and hair. After Mr. Starks’ death, she found her new freedom. As the narrator explained, “she tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair, the weight, the length, the glory was still there” (Hurston). Janie’s action of tearing off her kerchief symbolize her fight against Mr. Starks, tearing that, which held down her freedom. Later on, after Mr. Starks’ funeral “before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist”(Hurston). Janie completed what she first did and by burning everything that held her down she finally broke the chains of oppression that Mr. Starks had her in.
Although she broke free from Mr. Starks, she was still put down by the peoples of Eatonville’s expectations on her love life. After the death of Mayor Joe Starks, the people of Eatonville expected Janie to grieve for an extended period of time, but she would exclaimed, “Ah ain’t grievin’ so why do ah hafta mourn?” (Hurston). She was happy in her newly found freedom and in her new freedom she found her true singing bee. “At five-thirty a tall man came into the [store]. Janie was leaning on the counter making aimless pencil marks on a piece of wrapping paper. She knew she didn’t know his name, but he looked familiar” (Hurston) although the town’s people were against Janie marrying her new found love, Tea Cake. “Janie experienced more with Tea Cake than she ever did with Joe or Logan.” (Berridge). By marrying tea Cake, Janie defied the town’s expectation. She showed that she was now her own woman. Soon after Janie and tea cake got married they left for the everglades where, they were going to go work picking peas. There Janie met an interesting woman by the name Ms. Turner.
While living in the everglades Janie encounter many people with different ideologies and encountered her last obstacle. Ms. Turner is a mulatto woman who was not very fond of darker African Americans. She described herself as being superior to darker persons, she stated, “Ah got white folk’ features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain’t fair. Even if they don’t take us in wid the whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves” (Hurston). Ms. Turner tried to change Janie’s mind to “class off” and marry her son who was also mulatto, but “Janie is strong enough to recognize Mrs. Turner as an obstacle and to resist the temptation to deny the blackness of her own identity.”
From Internalized racism to controlling husbands, Janie managed to defend herself from the expectations placed on her, although not always successful she grew in maturity and self-awareness and found her place in society. She fought Nanny’s expectation to marry, by running away from Mr. Killicks. She fought Mr. Killicks’ idea for her to work in the fields by standing her ground and asserting her position as a housewife. Janie fought Joe Starks by telling him his truth, and burning his head rags that he forced her to wear. She fought society's expectations on her and married Tea Cake, a much younger man. She fought Social prejudice and stood proud for her black heritage. “The obstacles she overcomes are not solely outside of herself; she must also overcome her own impulse.” (Miller)