Analysis of Relationships in Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.

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.

This departure from her horizon creates a series of relationships with selfish men who treat Janie like an object and suppress her voice; the more fed up Janie becomes with her situation, the more she begins to recover her speech. Her first months of marriage to Logan are unsatisfactory for one reason: she does not love him. Nanny forces her to wait for these feelings to come, but Janie only realizes that marriage does not

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

In conclusion, In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, the audience watches Janie enter a period of self-discovery. When Janie gains this power of freedom, she realizes she craves something different from what society had told her she would want; What we feel inwardly to be true, society seeks to take that truth away. With this experience an internal and external

Janie is not afraid to defy the expectations that her grandmother has for her life, because she realizes that her grandmother's antiquated views of women as weaklings in need of male protection even at the expense of a loving relationship, constitute limitations to her personal potential. "She hated her grandmother . . . .Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon " (Their Eyes 85-86).

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God symbolism, diction, and narration, guide through 1900’s America’s rustic south and helps to understand Janie’s journey from being a sheltered, naive, hopeful but unhappy bride to an independent, grown, experienced, and mature woman by facing a life of poverty, trials and cruelty as she searches for the one thing that gives her life meaning, love. She experienced different kinds of love throughout her life with the men in her life, but it was not the unconditional, true, and fulfilling love she kept searching for. Janie gains her own independence and personal freedom as a result of her quest for this love, which she finally finds in Tea Cake. Janie strives for her own independence and daring

Love   Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows main character Janie Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate search for self-discovery. Having to sudden transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story shows Janie’s constant struggle to discover her own voice and fulfill her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of suffering that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston gives strong metaphors helping to unify the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are a couple significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the pear tree metaphor, the figure of the mule, metaphors representing nature personified and finally the use of visual imagery.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the hopeful heroine, is on a journey to find true love. Growing up, Janie starts with a foundation of love, as her grandmother takes on the role of raising her. She provides protective care for Janie, assuring her that no “menfolk white or black is makin’ a spit cup outa [Janie]” (37), the way that Janie’s mother had experienced. After her grandmother “saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss” (29), she shows her protective quality by arranging her marriage with Logan Killicks and sending her on the start of her journey to find true love.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, authored by Zora Neal Hurston, tells the story of an African American woman named Janie living in the 1900s who spends her life trying to find self-fulfillment through love. She marries two men before she finds her one true love. Hurston uses symbols such as the pear tree and the horizon, Janie’s hair, and the hurricane to define Janie. Judgment is also a reoccurring element used by Hurston to show Janie's quest for love and the independence that she gains in her journey. Throughout her life, Janie also has to fight the stereotypical role that is expected of her by other people.

Everyone that an individual encounters throughout his or her life time. In the novel, Janie has many relationships with men, but also with Nanny. Janies relationship with Nanny shaped who she was at the start of the novel. Nanny wanted nothing but the best for Janie and for her to be very successful. The relationship between Janie and Nanny was a healthy one that benefitted, and help form Janie grow into the person that she was.

   In one way or another, every person has felt repressed at some stage during their lives. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story about one woman's quest to free herself from repression and explore her own identity; this is the story of Janie Crawford and her journey for self-knowledge and fulfillment.  Janie transforms many times as she undergoes the process of self-discovery as she changes through her experiences with three completely different men. Her marriages serve as stepping-stones in her search for her true self, and she becomes independent and powerful by overcoming her fears and learning to speak in her own, unique voice. Zora Neale Hurston effectively shows Janie's

Their Eyes Were Watching God’s Close Analysis Zora Neal Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God discusses important aspects of the nature of identity in the form of the main character’s life. Janie, the protagonist, is a young woman who struggles on her path to find herself. From the time she was sixteen, her life had been defined by men and marriage. Each person she knew asserted themselves into her life as an asperous force that Janie defines herself by.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, emotions such as love and hatred are showcased through the multiple marriages of Janie Crawford and her three husbands, impacting her life with bitterness, torture and ultimately peace due to Janie’s naive ideals of lust and desire. Nanny arranges Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks, a responsible and financially stable man, after she catches Janie kissing the handsome Johnny Taylor. Although Nanny’s intentions are for the well-being of her only granddaughter, Janie finds herself losing interest in Killicks as the marriage turns bitter. Expecting love to save her lifeless marriage with Killicks is a false ideal leading Janie to leave the relationship and fall into the arms of Jody Starks. As jealousy captures the suave and idyllic Starks, he turns into a demanding monster, dictating the miniscule movements of Janie, torturing her mind and soul. Although Janie’s innocent desire for passion revives during her marriage with Tea Cake, several misunderstandings lead to a devastating end but eventually brings peace to her heart. Hoping her granddaughter will find happiness, Nanny arranges the marriage of Janie to Logan Killicks, a respected and monetarily secure man. After a year, Janie realizes her marriage to Killicks is a loveless union causing bitter disputes.