A voyage and return story is one of the seven basic plots in literature where the protagonist encounters new experiences throughout their long journey and eventually returns home with greater knowledge than they had before, as they have learned new life lessons along the way. Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an example of this type of basic plot. Throughout her life, Janie Crawford lives in three different towns with three different husbands, who all provide her with unique epiphanies on the subject of being a woman in the early 1900s. During these three various points of time in Janie’s life, the horizon in the distance is metaphorically used in the text to represent the hope that she always holds on to. Quite literally, her trio of husbands widen her horizons over time, as she learns the deeper truth about marriage, independence, and happiness. During her teenage years, Janie learns that love is not everything that she expected it to be. When she is sixteen, she grows out of her childhood with the act of kissing a boy, Johnny Taylor, underneath a pear tree. After witnessing the loss of Janie’s innocence, her Nanny decides that it is time for the granddaughter to become a woman. Shortly afterwards, Janie is made to become the wife of Logan Killicks. This is also where she meets Joe “Jody” Starks, who is described in Chapter 4 how “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon.” On one hand, Logan is a
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays the religion of black people as a form of identity. Each individual in the black society Hurston has created worships a different God. But all members of her society find their identities by being able to believe in a God, spiritual or other. Grandma’s worship of Jesus and the “Good Lawd,” Joe Starks’ worship of himself, Mrs. Turner’s worship of white characteristics, and Janie’s worship of love, all stem from a lack of jurisdiction in the society they inhabit. All these Gods represent a need for something to believe in and work for: an ideal, which they wish to achieve, to aspire to. Each individual character is thus
It is strange that two of the most prominent artists of the Harlem Renaissance could ever disagree as much as or be as different as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Despite the fact that they are the same color and lived during the same time period, they do not have much else in common. On the one hand is Hurston, a female writer who indulges in black art and culture and creates subtle messages throughout her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. On the other hand is Wright, who is a male writer who demonstrates that whites do not like black people, nor will they ever except for when they are in the condition “…America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.” Hurston was also a less political writer than
It’s amazing that one state can have within it places that differ greatly in all aspects—people, surrounding, weather, and feeling. Zora Neale Hurston exemplifies this phenomenon in Their Eyes Were Watching God. There are a multitude of differences between Eatonville, FL and the Everglades; each place represents a certain theme or feeling to Janie (the main character) and their differences each contribute to the meaning of the novel as a whole.
Janie 's visionary scene under the blossoming pear tree aroused her sexual awakening where she seeks to find the utopia where she evolves around love.Her insularity feeling of love sets her adventurous mislead of marriages.The pear tree in the beginning of the novel provides Janie the imaginative feeling of love and path to follow, but that love decays after being forced to marry Logan Killicks, a wealthy old man, whom Janie has no love for. But Janie is assured by Nanny that her love for Logan will unfold, so Janie spontaneously marries Logan.Nanny having gone through the rough life of a slave black woman and experience the mistress of women, acknowledge the role of
During the 1930s there was a time period known as the Harlem Renaissance, during this time African Americans sought a newfound cultural freedom and advancements in social classes. In the novel, Their Eyes Are Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston portrays both similarities and departures from the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston uses the main character Janie to illustrate these ideals such as the struggle to find oneself and fight against the opinions of others. In addition Hurston also depicts issues and similarities like African Americans who achieved high social classes and discriminated those below them, racial segregation, but also a new found African American confidence. She also demonstrates departures from the Harlem Renaissance
Janie’s marriage to Logan was not anything special. In the beginning Logan was acted like a good husband and would do all the work on his land, and Janie would stay in the home, cooking and cleaning. Eventually, after a couple of months of being married, this so-called honeymoon stage was over. Logan now acted as if he owned Janie and she was his slave, commanding her to do whatever he wanted, not listening to what she wanted. Janie felt constraint; she felt like she was losing her freedom to Logan, she felt like she was not Janie anymore, she was now Mrs. Logan Killicks and she was now obligated to do whatever he commanded of her. Janie was tired of being in an unhappy marriage; she did not love Logan like Nanny said she eventually would: “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman”, and she did not like the way she was being treated. One day while she was outside she saw a man walk by, she thought he was very attractive so she drew attention to herself and the man came over. After having a conversation
The struggle for women to have their own voice has been an ongoing battle. However, the struggle for African American women to have their own voice and independence has been an ongoing conflict. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie struggles a majority of her life discovering her own voice by challenging many traditional roles that are set by society during this time. Hongzhi Wu, the author of “Mules and Women: Identify and Rebel—Janie’s Identity Quest in ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’” recognizes the trend of African American women being suppressed by making a comparison between animals throughout the novel and Janie. Wu argues that there are ultimately two depictions of the mule that the reader remembers and compares both of these interpretations to Janie’s transformation throughout the novel. While Wu’s argument is sound in the fact that it recognizes certain stereotypes African American women faced during this time, Wu fails to recognize Janie’s sexuality in depth as her major push away from the animalistic pressures she has faced.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their eyes were watching God the main character Janie is on a quest for self-fulfillment. Of Janie’s three marriages, Logan and Joe provide her with a sense of security and status. However, only her union with Teacake flourishes into true love.
Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, a young woman travels through difficult life experiences in order to find herself. Hurston portrays the protagonist as an adventurous soul trapped in the binds of suppressing marriages. Janie experiences three different types of marriage learning from each one what she values most. From these marriages she learned she values love and respect, finally achieving them in her last marriage. Each new marriage brought something new to the table for Janie and no matter the situation or the outcome of the relationship Janie grew into her own independent individual because of it.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.
“’…but she don’t seem to mind at all. Reckon dey understand one ‘nother.’” A woman’s search for her own free will to escape the chains of other people in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Having to go through many different types of pains and experiencing different types relationships. So that one day, after all, that you have been through you find true love. The love that everyone desires, needs and wants in there life. That explains most of Janie's life as a whole, she was always searching on till she found her true love. This book, Their eyes were watching god love by Zora Neale Hurston, shows how Janie sees love through the bee and the blossom.
Janie and Logan Killicks just got married. Janie hates his house because it is lonely, dull, and boring. Immediately Janie is finding things that she does not like in his life but she waits in hope that she will learn to love him. After three months of their marriage Janie goes to visit Nanny to talk about Logan. She does not communicate at first so Nanny starts to think of the worst.
Zora Neale Hurston, an African American novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, was born in Alabama in 1891. Hurston grew up in Eatonville, Florida, the setting of her famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This novel, published in 1937, despite receiving harsh criticism for oversimplifying and distorting African American characters, became a success. The novel follows the main character, Janie Crawford, in her search of fulfilling love. Janie learns to gain independence by seizing opportunities that are hidden from women.