Critical Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God

People grow and develop at different rates. The factors that heavily influence a person's growth are heredity and environment. The people you meet and the experiences you have are very important in what makes a person who he/she is. Janie develops as a woman with the three marriages she has. In each marriage she learns precious lessons, has increasingly better relationships, and realizes how a person is to live his/her life. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie's marriages to Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake are the most vital elements in her growth as a woman.

However, Janie felt confined under her grandma's beliefs. 'Where were the singing bees for her? Nothing on the place nor in her grandma's house answered her,'; she feels (11). Janie could not find answers of sexuality in her grandma's house as her grandma had very different views.

Near the beginning of the book, Janie develops an idealistic view of love whilst lying underneath a pear tree. She is young and naïve, enthralled with the beauty of spring. She comes to the conclusion that marriage is the ultimate expression of love and finds herself pondering why she does not have a partner. In the rashness of her hormone clouded brain, she is drawn to Johnny Taylor, who is nearly a stranger. This is her first experience formulating ideas about

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

Janie struggles with her marriages with Logan Killicks and Joe Starks throughout the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, but finds a good man and husband in Tea Cake. Logan goes to marry Janie because Janie’s grandmother forces her to marry him because Nanny wants her to have a good marriage and thinks Logan can give it to her. While Joe comes in and shows Janie he has authority and is loving, but later tries to control her and what she does. Tea Cake on the other hand show Janie love and is willing to let Janie be herself and do the things she likes to do. Janie doesn’t love Logan or Joe because they try to change and control her, while Tea Cake loves her for who she really is.

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.

As a young woman, Janie wanted love, true love. In the beginning of the novel and Janie 's journey, she is under a blossoming pear tree where she spends most of her days. She is watching the bees fly to the blossoms, when she has an epiphany. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then

All through the novel Janie travels through valuable life experiences allowing her to grow as a woman. Janie at first has a difficult time understanding her needs rather than wants, but as she continues to experience new situations she realizes she values respect. Janie’s first two marriages turned out to be tragic mistakes, but with each marriage Janie gained something valuable. When Janie is disrespected in her second marriage with Joe Starks, he publicly humiliates her, disrespecting her as a wife and woman. This experience forced Janie to come out of her comfort zone and stand up for herself.

Following her Nanny’s death Janie began to pursue her own romantic desires more freely. Before long, she meets her soon to be second husband Joe "Jody" Starks. Initially Jody is a gentleman. He showers Janie with compliments and promises in order to flatter her out of her first husband’s arms. Still new to the world, Janie mistakes flattery for love and succumbs to her need to absorb more about life and love, leaving behind her substandard life with Logan in lieu of personal development. She anticipated that “from now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom" (31).After Jody has convinced Janie to run away with him, however, his affection begins to waver. This leads Janie to understand that "[Jody] did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees.” However, “he spoke for far horizon” (50). “Janie knows that Joe does not fulfill the promise of the pear tree; but she intuits that she must travel in order to grow, and Joe is going places, first literally and then figuratively” (Chinn).

In 1791 Thomas Paine wrote the book Rights of Man, in which Paine illustrates his thoughts on the unity of the American people. Walter Russell, however, says America "has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered - the master and slave - the ruler and the ruled - the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity". While in the United States there are people similar to Thomas, who believe and strive for freedom and diversity, there are also those who Walter Russell illustrates that promote racism, violence, and disunity. I mostly disagree with Thomas Paine because, while there are times of peace; justice; and concord, there are far greater instances of oppression, privilege, and riots.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

Janie’s relationship with her first husband Logan Killicks consists of no true feelings. Her grandmother suggests that she marries this man because of his ability to provide for her and give her the protection she needs. Her grandmother believes that in time, Janie will develop undying love for her husband however she fails to see that. She fulfilled her household duties but after a year of marriage Janie “noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He ceased to wonder at her long black hair” (26). From this relationship she learned that “marriage did not make love” so her “first dream was dead” (25). Logan’s last name Killicks means a heavy stone or anchor which illustrates how her desired to have a women who would anchor herself to him and listen to him regaurdless since he is the more dominant. When Janie challenges him, he breaks down as he abruptly states that he would “come in dere and kill [her]” (31) which reflects his las name “kill”icks. The passion they once had dissipated which left Janie unsatisfied causing her to remarry to another man named Jody Starks. Initially, Janie enjoys being with Starks as he treats her with value and importance. However, soon she recognizes how he is just like Killicks as he treats her like a possession and object of beauty and does not allow her to voice her opinion as she is “getting’ too moufy” (75). He

This is one of the key points in Janie's young life because the reader begins to notice how this is taking a toll on

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Hurston, is following the life of Janie Crawford. Janie is an independent woman who is telling her life story to her kissing friend, Pheobe. Janies conception was an result of Leafy, Janies mother, being raped by her school teacher as a child. So Janie wasn’t destined to have a wonderful life. Being as though her mother abandoned her, she was raised by her grandmother, Nanny, and her boss Mrs.washburn. Since she was raised by them she never had to work because everything was handed to her. Throughout the book she goes through two marriages, each teaching her something new along the way, before finding true love in the third and fulfilling her romantic dream. Although the journey was overshadowed

“Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just some thing she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of