Janie's Self-Awareness In Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the protagonist, tells the story of her ascension to adulthood and several of the lessons she learned along the way. Though married three times, her second marriage to Joe Starks had the most formative impact on her transition to maturity. Given that Joe played such a crucial role in this affair, we can classify him as a type of parent to Janie. Later, after her final marriage, Janie reflects on her life and is at peace. By that point, she came to realize how to be truly happy.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed us to better understand the restraints that women in society had to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage with Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines.  Wedding herself to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself.  In her final marriage to Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, she finally learned how to live her life on her own.  In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie suffered through many difficult situations that eventually enabled her to grow into an independent person.

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.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie Crawford has experienced and had interactions with the nature around her. These interactions symbolised Janie’s quest for love, her own independence and personal freedom through each endeavor. Janie’s quest for her womanhood was directly influenced by the natural environment around her. For instance, the novel states that Janie “Saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a blossom” (11).

Throughout the book Janie struggles to find the true definition of love and how to make herself happy with her relationships. She goes through several different ideas of love before finding that it is mutual compassion, understanding, and respect that makes her the most happy.

Often in literature, the author sets the main character on a physical journey to divert attention away from the main character’s spiritual journey. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, goes on a physical journey that not only challenges her sense of self, but also is vital in her life-long spiritual journey to personal liberation and self-empowerment. Janie’s relationships mark Janie’s migration toward fulfilling Hurston’s purpose of the piece: Janie becoming empowered and finds personal liberation. Hurston proves Janie’s physical journey plays a central role as Janie completes her spiritual quest to personal liberation and self-empowerment.

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 the novel,  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there are many recurring images, one of the most important images is Janie’s hair which represents her power strength, identity, her freedom,  and life experience. Her hair also is the cause of some conflicts like with Logan, Jody, and Tea Cake and helps develops who Janie is as character by showing us what she wants throughout this whole story.

Kia, a young teenager who endures the hardships of not only pregnancy but the decision of adoption, is able to keep hold of her good values and reassess others that are tweaked, is a mentally strong person. Being strong means having the ability to cope with pressing and traumatic experiences and having the ability to persevere in the face of conflicts. When Kia finds out that she is with child she decides to keep the baby and finds friends that will stick with her throughout the heavy times-namely Justin from her church youth group and Grace from the old persons home she volunteers at. Although this time in her life is important and also filled with hard decisions her perceived childhood friend Shawna and people at school shun her, for not terminating her child, when what she needs most is support. Kia not only sees the reasons for her old friends’ distance she eventually confronts those who had shut her out and shows them that she has indeed changed for the better and is able to be better than the superficial attitude they had extended towards her for the duration of her pregnancy. Rather than just pretend that nothing is different between them, as many would have done, Kia risks her oldest standing friendship because she knows that that would not be a true friendship ever again because of this large moral gap. This part of the story reveals that Kia is mentally strong because she

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.

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.

Janie, again, finds herself in a loveless marriage. Unlike her first, however, the lack of affection is reciprocal. “Again with Jody [as with Logan], Janie has money and respectability, but Jody's objectification - of her and his demand for her submission stifles any desire

The world of Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of oppression and disappointment. She left the world of her suffocating grandmother to live with a man whom she did not love, and in fact did not even know. She then left him to marry another man who offered her wealth in terms of material possessions but left her in utter spiritual poverty. After her second husband's death, she claims responsibility and control of her own life, and through her shared love with her new husband, Teacake, she is able to overcome her status of oppression. Zora Neale Hurston artfully and effectively shows this victory over oppression throughout the book through her use of

Janie, in Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, was a unique individual; as a half-white, half-black girl growing up in Florida in the early 1930's, a lifetime of trials and search for understanding was set for her from the start. As the main character she sought to finally find herself, true love, and have a meaningful life. Growing up, in itself, provides a perfect opportunity for finding that essential state of self-realization and ideal comfort. Michael G. Cooke reviews Their Eyes Were Watching God in his article "The Beginnings of Self-Realization"; within the article it is falsely criticized that every time Janie is negatively impacted she grows to become more

Janie's quest is for self-discovery and self-definition, but she encounters many obstacles while trying to win this quest.