Janie In The Milk Carton

Janie is beginning to realize who she truly is and has been awakened through the scenic vision of the nature around her, presenting her womanhood in front of her eyes.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel by Zora Neale Hurston about Janie, who relates her life story of three marriages to her friend Phoeby. Throughout the novel, Janie embarks on a journey to find the limits of her personal horizons and expand them. Janie’s clothing varies from wealthy to poor, and from traditionally masculine to feminine, enriching the narrative with symbolism and supplementary information. Her femininity, actualized in her hair and clothing, is an integral part of her identity. The changing images of clothing throughout the novel exemplify Janie’s developing maturity and gradually show Janie creating a personal identity.

Janie’s discovery of the person she is through each of her separate life experiences, has brought her to the comprehension of the different levels of herself. Although it takes her the complete book to comprehend her sexual awakening from the beginning where the blossoming pear tree starts her on this journey to go through untainted love, she goes through this experience as the sun sets and rises past the many moments in her budding life;

The novel starts as Janie retells her past events to her best friend Pheoby. As a child, Janie grew up happily with only her Grandmother, who worked for and lived with the Washburns, a white family. Young Jamie’s hair is emphasized as long, dark and straight. She recalls her luscious hair and tells Pheoby “I had a hair ribbon on mah head fuh me tuh wear” (9). Her long, freely moving hair with ribbons symbolizes Jamie as a young girl: she was a joyful child with a vibrant but easygoing personality. She is very excited to experience the world and yearning to find love. Her eagerness to experience love is shown as the young teen “searched as much of the world as she could… and leaned over to gaze up and down the road” (11). However, as her grandmother grows old and worries about Janie’s future, She

While the heart-shaped world in the drawing represents Janie’s world with both goodness and conflict in the form of light and darkness, it is surrounded by other important features such as religion and personal values that act as major influences to how her world works. Therefore, our drawing is a complete representation of not only Janie Mae Crawford’s views on the world from her perspective, but also her life itself as seen throughout the

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.

Janie shows the issues African Americans faced during this period and the their newfound confidence but also shows differences from the beliefs of this era. Hurston uses these departures and similarities to allow the reader to further understand the novel and the time period in which it takes

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

Summary: Janie Crawford is a southern African-American woman who grows up under the care of her grandmother. Janie’s mother has her at seventeen and soon after Janie’s birth, she becomes a drinker and stays out late until she leaves for good. Janie’s Nanny’s background of slavery makes her push Janie to be someone she could not be during her days. Nanny urges Janie to marry Logan Killicks. Janie is not in love with Logan, but Nanny and others push Janie to marry him. Janie assumes “she would love Logan after they were married. She would see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, it must be so”’ (20). Because of this mindset, Janie’s marriage to Logan diminishes her idea of a loving and romantic relationship. Janie spends a little over a year with Logan under miserable conditions, until she marries Joe Starks not long after. Mr. and Mrs. Starks move to a new town where they meet friendly townspeople. Not long after, Joe becomes mayor of the town

Initially Janie was raised in a impecunious African American household by her grandmother. She was taught from a young age that marriage equals love and that women depend on men for financial security. Janie wanted a love “sweet…lak when you sit under a pear tree” (29) but instead receives Logan, a man who wants her to “chop and tote wood” and calls her “spoilt rotten.” (31) Janie was stuck to succumb to these expectations when she was with Logan. However, Janie’s second marriage begins with a personal choice that Janie makes to leave Logan and follow Jody, a man whose plan was to build “a town all outa colored folks” and become a leader in the new city. Just the fact that she left her first husband was a very bold move, but the profound point is that Janie chooses to get together with another man. Janie expresses her true feelings and voice by leaving Logan and telling him that he “ain’t done [her] no favor by marryin’ [her.]” This displays that Janie’s views on marital expectations have took a turn and she will no longer be put under this illusion of a perfect woman during this time period. However this newly acquired confidence that Janie had gained

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.

It’s quite common for an individual to undergo an internal and external battle within ones self. Outwardly, many people plaster on a facade to conceal an unpleasant or discreditable reality, while inevitably suppressing those feelings inwardly. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses symbolism and metaphors to convey the complexity of Janie’s experience.

Janie is a black woman who asserts herself beyond expectation.  She has a persistence that characterizes her search for the love that she dreamed of since she was a girl.  Janie understands the societal status that her life has handed her, yet she is determined to overcome this, and she is resentful toward anyone or anything that interferes with her quest for happiness. "So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see, "(Page 14)  laments Janie's grandmother as she tried to justify the marriage that she has arranged for her granddaughter with Logan Killicks. This paragraph establishes the existence of the inferior status of women in Janie's society, a status which Janie must somehow overcome in order to emerge a heroine in the end of the novel.

Hurston’s main way of inspiring a sense of feminism in her novel, is through the relationships of Janie including her Nanny, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake. She addresses Janie’s role differently in each of these relationships using motifs and stereotypes. Janie begins her journey of self-discovery following the dreams of her Nanny to becoming a strong, independent woman who makes her own decisions. All of the roles that Janie obtains stem from the distinct