Essay on Imagery in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie’s Grandma plays an important outward influence from the very beginning. Her perspective on life was based off of her experience as a slave. “Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn’t for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do.” (16) She felt that financial security,

In Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is taken on an expedition through the life and love of Janie, which provides the reader different levels of imagery and symbolism. “Hurston… use the journey motif to structure and enhance their heroines‘quests as well as lyrical image patterns to evoke and communicate the processes of growth, regeneration and intimations of the Divine within each character.” (Sullivan 1364) Through this expedition Janie strives to achieve her principles about what love was and how she should be living her life. Hurston chose to introduce the reader to the return of Janie as the opening of the book. “Janie’s existence will become a continuous struggle to bring her own experience into harmony with her initial vision of the pear tree” (Maroto 72) Janie was not focusing on what is wrong in her single life, but what was good in it. “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and

In Zora Neale Hurston’s romantic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the heroine Janie, a beautiful mixed white and black woman, is on a journey to find someone who will make her feel love to find her own identity and freedom, away from her spouses. Janie’s marriages and quest for love impede her individual search for freedom, but in doing this she has discovered what exactly she wants for herself. Janie’s search for her identity and freedom is very much evident. Being abused and controlled during her marriages has made it clear how she wants to be treated and how she wants to live her life; as an individual who does not have to listen to anyone. The story opens with Janie’s return to town. Janie tells Phoebe Watson the story of her

First, Janie, the main character, starts off living and being taken care of her grandmother, Nanny. She later grows up to become married, but their relationship is not genuine because her grandmother wanted her to marry the man. Janie meets a man called Joe Starks and they run off to a town called Eatonville where Joe becomes Mayor and blinded by his power. He becomes violent and domestically abuses Janie. Joe would be manipulative and isolate her from the rest of the town because she was "high-class." They live on to become older, and he eventually dies due to a sickness he needed to have checked two years earlier, but it was too late.

However, during these such obstacles she also finds herself and creates a voice of her own. Growing up Janie had a different lifestyle than most african Americans, she grew up believing that she was indeed white. Although she was raised by her grandmother, which she knew as nanny she lived with a family of whites and was treated as one of them.Janie was given a hard time at school because of this her nanny decided it was time to move out. The turning point in Janie 's life occurred when Nanny caught her kissing a boy; Nanny was disappointed because she wanted Janie to be better than what her mother and herself had become. Nanny knowing that she was going to die soon set up an arranged marriage with an older man who was interested in Janie. Janie only being 14 and in desperate search for love hated the thought of her soon to be husband, but she thought that when two people got married they automatically fell in love with each other. She soon discovers that is not what happens. Janie runs away to discover herself, in spite of her self awareness she also finds herself running off with a younger man abandoning her safe home and husband for something in which she does not know how it will play out.

Janie was raised by her grandmother who she calls Nanny that had previously lived the life as a slave. The young sixteen year old girl was brought to us as a product of

In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she focuses on the life of the main character, Janie Crawford. The novel takes place in a small town down south called Eatonville in the 1930’s. Janie is on a quest to find her true identity or in other words, her horizon. Along Janie’s quest for true happiness, she faces numerous obstacles that continue to hinder her from finding her true identity and a man she can truly love. As the expectations of others control her life, Janie keeps pushing and is determined to find a true inner happiness. Janie has to fight the expectations of others all throughout the novel until she reaches a point

Janie’s outward appearance and her inward thoughts contrast following Joe’s death. She finally frees herself from his control only after he dies as she, “…tore off the kerchief…and let down her plentiful hair” (87). In freeing her hair, Janie begins to free herself from others’ control and social norms. However, she chooses to keep it tied up until after Jody’s funeral in order to keep appearances that she is grieving his passing in front of the townspeople. However, on the inside, Janie doesn’t really feel any sorrow and “sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world” (88). It is only after Joe’s elaborate funeral that Janie shows her first act of freedom by burning “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” (89). She chose to let her hair be free from his domination, thus freeing herself from him overall and allowing herself to move onto the next journey in her life.

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.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie’s journey towards spiritual enlightenment and her development of individuality, largely through Janie’s relationships with others. Hurston uses the themes of power, control, abuse, and respect, in Janie’s relationships with Nanny, Killicks, Starks, and Tea Cake, to effectively illustrate how relationships impact identity and self-growth.

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).

The plan for Janie's future begins with her lack of having real parents. Hurston builds up a foundation for Janie that is bound to fall like a Roman Empire. Janie's grandmother, whom she refers to as "Nanny" takes the position as Janie's guardian. The problem begins here for Janie because her Nanny not only spoils her, but also makes life choices for her. Nanny is old, and she only wants the best for her grandchild, for she knows that the world is a cruel place. Nanny makes the mistake of not allowing Janie to learn anything on her own. When Janie was sixteen years old, Nanny wanted to see her get married. Although Janie argued at first, Nanny insisted that Janie get married. "'Yeah, Janie, youse got yo' womanhood on yuh… Ah wants to see you married right away.'" (Page 12). Janie was not given a choice in this decision. Her Nanny even had a suitor picked out for her. Janie

In the novel, Janie is faced with many obstacles and trials, the greatest of which are her marriages to Logan and Jody. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, is on her own journey to make sure that she sees her granddaughter married.

Janie Johnson has a great life, has both parents, has good grades, has a home. But nobody thought that it could be easily taken away. After Janie found the milk carton with her face on it, her world starts to fall apart. She grows suspicious of her parents and everything around her. Nothing is the way it was before.