Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Topic 2: Compare/contrast Janie in Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God & Edna in Chopin 's The Awakening in terms of conformity within a male-dominated society. (four page minimum)

Love can be perceived as the feeling one feels under the sweetness of a blossoming pear tree, but through an unexpected path, such loving feelings are demolished.When an individual wants the perfect relationship such desires are forsaken by their way of life.Many individuals want to reach the "Horizon" where is not completely seen by the human eye but exists.In the novel "Their eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston", protagonist Janie Crawford seeks for that "horizon" through her relationship with logan, Joe and tea cake.Just like the "horizon" love wasn 't attained during her relationship with logan and joe but that love existed in her relationship with Tea cake.

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

Folklorist, anthropologist, playwright, and novelist, Zora Neale Hurston 's career took off after publishing, what is, today, her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Unlike any other work at the time, the dialect in her novels portrayed how African-Americans speak in the deep south. Set in Southern Florida, the heroine Janie, is thought to have been modeled after Hurston, herself, if she had chose to stay in her hometown of Eatonville instead of going to college. In the novel, Janie is unable to develop a life as a New Woman through much of her adulthood due to the geographical area she lived in, basic education, financial state, grandmother 's values, history of slavery, and her marriage to Joe Sparks. Hurston, on the other hand, was able to develop her life as a New Woman due to her access to higher education, financial state, and support from her mother.

Many people believe in marrying for love and they spend most of their life searching for it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Nora Zeal Hurston, Janie Crawford goes through three marriages, and as a result, she learns who she wants to be and how to become that woman. Janie has her idealized view of marriage that depicts that you marry for love, and everything is like a fairytale. Through Janie’s three marriages, she learns what she truly desires in life and finds herself along the way. As each marriage comes to a close, Janie becomes stronger and surer of herself.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the life of a southern black woman, Janie Crawford, whose three marriages of domineering control of men make her acknowledge her independence and self-satisfaction as an African-American woman. Set in the early 1900s, Hurston reveals the dominant role of men in southern society and one woman’s journey toward finding herself and God.

In Catholic doctrine, the seven cardinal sins are the basis from which all the “sins” of humanity stem. In this system, any moral infraction a person may commit would be categorized under one of these seven sins (also known colloquially as the “seven deadly sins”). This system has been widely adapted throughout culture over the centuries, and is a common tool utilized to examine the actions of humans. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, enters into three marriages, two of which fail based on the failings of her husbands, and the third of which succeeds in spite of the failings of her husband. Each of these husbands, in fact, displays traits which fall under the cardinal sins, and the sin of pride in particular; even the third husband, Tea Cake, displays the very same sin, leading to the downfall of their marriage.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, love plays a pivotal role in the life of the protagonist, Janie. Janie is exposed early in life to all the facets of love. From an early point in the novel until the very end, Janie searches for a man to fulfill her childhood concept of love. It is through this search for love that Janie finds the confidence and security in herself to become independent. Therefore, Janie’s quest to find love is not only a fulfillment of a childhood dream, but also a journey to find who she really is.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist, Janie, endures two marriages before finding true love. In each of Janie’s marriages, a particular article of clothing is used to symbolically reflect, not only her attitude at different phases in her life, but how she is treated in each relationship.

In both Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the focus is on women who want better lives but face difficult struggles before gaining them. The difficulties involving men which Janie and Delia incur result from or are exacerbated by the intersection of their class, race, and gender, which restrict each woman for a large part of her life from gaining her independence.

It is a commonly held belief that our childhoods have at least some effect on our adult life. For Zora Neale Hurston, she presents that view in her novel, Their Eyes were Watching God. While Hurston does not give too much insight into Janie’s childhood, one can perceive how her adult life has been affected by what Hurston gives. Janie was raised by her Nanny, used to enduring things that were out of her control in her childhood (specifically started when she was young and married off.) It seems as if Janie is never in full control, despite making decisions that should alter her life. Janie also possesses a sort of innocence, especially when it comes to love, as she grows older. Comparing that to Ernest Hemingway’s The Nick Adams Stories, Nick shows a different aspect of how a childhood can impact adulthood. He is a character that grows up learning to be independent and having an ability to take care of himself. And that stems from the experiences he has a child.

In chapter three of the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie was married to Logan Killicks and began to live with him on his isolated area of land. Janie was under the impression that her love for Logan would begin almost immediately after the two were married. Janie believed this due to the fact that her Nanny had told her so beforehand. When Janie arrive at Logan’s house she went inside and began to wait for her love for him to begun. After three months had passed and she still felt nothing for Logan she began to worry and went to visit her Nanny for advice. When she arrived at her Nanny’s house she began to tell her of her issues and as usual Nanny became irritated. She told her to do what she was told by Logan and that eventually her love for him would begin to show. I feel that Janie would never truly be able to feel any type

Plot: Within the first 6 chapters of the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we are introduced to the main character Janie Crawford, who is returning to her hometown after many years of being absent. As she is talking with Pheoby Watson, she begins to talk about her life while she was away and is very descriptive about it. She talks about her struggles in life and her marriage with Logan Killicks and how she didn’t love him at all. She then speaks of her marriage with Joe Starks and how they find a town where they can happily live together. She speaks of how Joe made her a lot happier than Logan and she was more content where she was living.

Every woman is looking for a good husband to make her feel special and loved in the marriage, but for many it may take a few tries. Zora Neale Hurston proves this point in her novel when Janie marries three different men before finding out what true love was. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Janie is forced into marriage, by her grandmother, at sixteen to an man she doesn't even love and who wants her to work. Meeting a man new to town, he promises to love her and keep her high on a pedestal so she won’t have to work, Janie thinks she would find true love with Joe runs away with him in search of true love. However Joe never let Janie do the things she wanted and never treated her as an equal. Then along came Tea Cake who

In my book, Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character Janie dreams of finding love. In the beginning of Janie’s story Nanny caught Janie kissing Johnny Taylor. When Nanny caught Janie kissing Johnny Taylor she became afraid Janie would run off like Janie mother had. In conclusion, Nanny made the decision that Janie was to get married right away. In Janie’s first marriage was to Logan Killicks, Janie’s firs marriage was a loveless marriage.