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Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Hurston

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Hurston ultimately provides powerful personal closure for herself. Through Janie’s story, Hurston highlights that worldly success does not define personal fulfillment. Perhaps Janie’s marriage to Jody placed her in the lap of wealth and power, but it also thrust her into the hands of misery and voicelessness, and even in relationships that are supposedly blissful, such Janie’s marriage to Tea Cake, there lies a darker side that cannot be ignored. It is true that Tea Cake allows Janie to have fun, but he also takes pains to prove his dominance, going so far as to beat Janie because “being able to whip her reassured him in possession” (147). Whichever way the story is examined, one cannot claim that Janie reaches true freedom, if at all, until the very end of her story. Unlike, Hurston, who spent her entire life talking and writing and researching the power of the spoken word, Janie fails to use her voice until after Tea Cake dies, finally able to return to Eatonville on her own accord and place herself, not her grandmother or Joe or Tea Cake, as the main protagonist of the story.

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