The Eyes Are The Windows Of The Soul

As Zora Neale Hurston once said “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it”. During the 1930’s, it was socially acceptable for men to hit his wife, but not the wife to hit her husband. The husband’s motivation was most likely because a man looks like he is in control of his wife or he is jealous. Janie, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, is beaten by all three of her husband's and suffers for most of her life . She was always in pain. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses imagery to show how much Janie suffered throughout her life.

Janie Crawford is surrounded by outward influences that contradict her independence and personal development. These outward influences from society, her grandma, and even significant others contribute to her curiosity. Tension builds between outward conformity and inward questioning, allowing Zora Neal Hurston to illustrate the challenge of choice and accountability that Janie faces throughout the novel.

I enjoyed Their Eyes Were Watching God's grasp on imagination, imagery and phrasing. Janie's dialogue and vernacular managed to carry me along, slipping pieces of wisdom to me in such a manner that I hardly realize they are ingesting something deep and true. Their Eyes Were Watching God recognizes that there are problems to the human condition, such as the need to possess, the fear of the unknown and resulting stagnation. The book does not leave us with the hopelessness of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, rather, it extends a recognition and understanding of humanity's need to escape emptiness. "Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they's alive (183)" Her solution is simple: "Yuh got tuh go there tuh know there." Janie

There are many critical lenses in the English language such as historical, gender identity, and reader response. The critical lens gender identity is prevalent throughout Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. This critical lens covers a broad range of topics such as the role of female characters, what the absence or minimal appearance of these characters applies, and whether the characters are viewed in a positive or negative manner. Many of Janie's actions throughout the novel are dictated by men, and her idea of her pear tree love, and by the ideals about men that her grandmother has instilled in her.

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.

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

herself. Janie, all her life, had been pushed around and told what to do and how to live her life. She searched and searched high and low to find a peace that makes her whole and makes her feel like a complete person. To make her feel like she is in fact an individual and that she’s not like everyone else around her. During the time of ‘Their Eyes’, the correct way to treat women was to show them who was in charge and who was inferior. Men were looked to as the superior being, the one who women were supposed to look up to and serve. Especially in the fact that Janie was an African American women during these oppressed

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is written with a narrative frame. The story begins and ends with two people, Janie and Pheoby, sitting on the porch of Janie's house. Janie is telling her story to Pheoby during the course of an evening, that evening becoming the entire novel. The point of view changes from a first person narrative to a third person omniscient within the first chapter so the reader can experience the story through Janie's eyes while also understanding the other characters and their perspectives.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford has three different husbands, each with his own unique characteristics. Logan Killicks, her first husband, is very wealthy but neglects her. She then marries Jody Starks, who is less affluent than Killicks, very powerful in his community, and outright abusive towards her. Janie’s final husband Tea Cake is the one she loves the most despite his lack of wealth. In spite of the varying storylines throughout the tenure of her marriages and the novel in general, one recurring thread is the use of the metaphor of the horizon: how men wait for their wishes to come true like ships on the horizon that need to come to shore. Janie’s struggles over whether love or wealth is more important to her happiness is described throughout the novel through the use of the horizon metaphor.

De white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out… 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 as fur as Ah can see (14).

The novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" contains beautiful imagery that conveys the thoughts of the author towards the antagonist of this story, Janie Crawford. Through her four distinct lives as Janie Crawford, Janie Killicks, Janie Starks, and Janie Woods she realizes that each day the sun rises a new change is apparent in her life. The experience of each distinct life makes her realize more about herself than she ever knew before. She comes to a self-revelation about herself. Even though it takes her the entire novel to realize her sexual awakening from the blossoming pear tree to experience unadulterated love, she does so as the sun falls and rises past the years of her maturing life.

In Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the life of Janie is presented as a journey. Janie survives a grandmother, three husbands, and innumerable friends. Throughout this journey, she moves towards her ideals about love and how to live one's life. Hurston chooses to define Janie not by what is wrong in her life, but by what is good in it. Janie undergoes many changes throughout her journey, but the imagery in her life always conjures positive ideas in the mind of the reader.

In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston depicts the journey of a young woman of finding “true love.” The young woman, Janie Crawford, began her journey by marrying a farmer named Logan. After living a depressed and unromantic short-lived marriage, Janie ran off with a youthful and charismatic traveler named Joe Starks. “Jody”, as Janie called him, soon became the mayor of his newly founded town and, with this new position, his attitude and behavior towards Janie extremely changed. At many times Jody would often control Janie by telling her what she has to do around the town. Soon she realizes that with his new power Jody has treated her with less and less respect and values her as nothing but his property.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, emotions such as love and hatred are showcased through the multiple marriages of Janie Crawford and her three husbands, impacting her life with bitterness, torture and ultimately peace due to Janie’s naive ideals of lust and desire. Nanny arranges Janie’s marriage to Logan Killicks, a responsible and financially stable man, after she catches Janie kissing the handsome Johnny Taylor. Although Nanny’s intentions are for the well-being of her only granddaughter, Janie finds herself losing interest in Killicks as the marriage turns bitter. Expecting love to save her lifeless marriage with Killicks is a false ideal leading Janie to leave the relationship and fall into the arms of Jody Starks. As jealousy captures the suave and idyllic Starks, he turns into a demanding monster, dictating the miniscule movements of Janie, torturing her mind and soul. Although Janie’s innocent desire for passion revives during her marriage with Tea Cake, several misunderstandings lead to a devastating end but eventually brings peace to her heart. Hoping her granddaughter will find happiness, Nanny arranges the marriage of Janie to Logan Killicks, a respected and monetarily secure man. After a year, Janie realizes her marriage to Killicks is a loveless union causing bitter disputes.

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the characters' eyes are everything. The word "eye" appears over and over with rich adjectives that describe color, movement, and nuance of expression to signify a character's mood and psychological state. Morrison emphasizes the paradox of eyes: Eyes are at times a window to enlightenment, however, what eyes see is not always objective truth, but instead a distortion of reality into what a person is able to perceive.