Their Eyes Were Watching God - Adjust, Adapt, Overcome: a Theme Analys

When Janie is about sixteen her grandmother finds her in the act of kissing a boy, and afraid for Janie, she arranges for Janie to be married to Logan Killicks, who is an older man with vast property to his name. Nanny, as Janie calls her, is unable to wrap her mind around the idea of marrying for love and mocks Janie saying, "So you don't want to marry off decent like, do yuh? You just wants to hug and kiss and feel around with first one man and then another, huh?" (Their Eyes Are Watching God, 13). Her grandmothers’ gift of life is different from the life that Janie wants to live. She tells Janie, “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.'” (Their Eyes Are Watching God, 11). Nanny doesn’t believe that trying to find love and make a better life for you will succeed, she tells Janie that marrying and older man with land to his name will bring security, and she shouldn’t want more than that. Because of this Janie agrees and goes along with the plan. She is depicted as very compliant and rarely speaks her mind, even saying “But Ah hates disagreement and confusion, so Ah better not talk. It makes it hard tuh git along” (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 90).

In the beginning of the novel, Nanny forces a romantically curious Janie to marry Logan Killicks, a mature land owning man, in hopes of ensuring her a stable life. Although Janie is apprehensive of her grandmother’s decision, she submits to Nanny’s will after she lectures her of life’s harsh truths and the lessons that she had learned, stating, “So de white man throw down de load and tell de n----- 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 n----- woman is de mule uh de world..." (Hurston 14). Nanny’s words illustrate her twisted view of black women, which influenced her ideals of life and in turn, tarnishes Janie’s dream of finding true love. Through experience, Nanny learned that black women were mules; people who were brutally discriminated against by everyone other than themselves for being both the less dominant gender and a minority. In order to prevent Janie from experiencing the same abuse in life, she arranges a marriage for Janie with Logan. While doing so, Nanny disregards Janie’s personal needs, which soon took her down a turbulent path in life. Years into the future and long past her neglected youth, Janie comes to the realization that, “She hated her grandmother…She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love.” (Hurston

Janie’s first husband, Logan Killicks, is a wealthy old man. In the beginning of their marriage, he treated her alright, but then he called her spoiled and expected her to work like a slave in the fields. Janie’s second husband, Joe Starks, started out poor and treated Janie with

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, like Esperanza of House on Mango Street, matures through her journey through the novel. However, unlike Esperanza, matured more mentally and emotionally than she did physically. Janie’s most important lessons that she learned was the ones involved with love. When she was on the brink of feeling sexual desires, she started kissing a young man at the end of her gate, but her Grandmother (who raised her) resented the idea of her granddaughter would marry a statusless man with no wealth. Consequently, she demanded that Janie would marry a wealthy farm/land owner named Logan Killucks. Janie was repulsed when confronted with this idea because Logan was an older man and was simply unattractive, but she eventually bought the myth that marriage would lead to love between the two of them. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, and she ended up resenting him even more once they were married due to his unhygienic nature, his desire of her working on his land with him, and lack of affection. Her experience taught the first lesson on her life journey and “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston Ch. 3). In addition, her marriage to Mr. Killucks influenced her to run of with a charming man named

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows the life of a beautiful female named Janie Crawford. Throughout the story, Janie demonstrates the struggle to escape being shaped into becoming a submissive woman. She encounters three men who each attempt to make her a submissive wife. In each of her relationships with these men, she is either obliged or pressured to follow their orders. Although Janie struggles to hold on to her independence, she manages to persevere every time. Janie is a strong independent woman who does not allow herself to be suppressed.

Janie’s relationship with Nanny provides Janie with her first views on her role in society and the assertion of men’s power over women. After Janie’s sexual awakening with the pear tree and her kiss with Johnny Taylor, Nanny warns Janie that “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world” (Hurston 14). In Nanny’s prospective, the Negro woman is especially subservient to others, and when Janie goes to Nanny to ask how to love Logan, Nanny dissolves Janie’s notion of love and affirms that love only complicates things. Nanny is seen as Janie’s mother figure and she “dismisses Janie’s romantic ideal of love, feeling that marriage serves a strictly pragmatic purpose, on in which the woman is passive and taken

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

Janie’s first husband is Logan Killicks, an old, unattractive man whom Janie marries while trying to appease her grandmother. Logan is a farmer with 60 acres of land and a comfortable house. Nanny believes in marrying for financial stability, not for love: “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection” (Hurston 15). Instead of following her heart and insisting on not marrying someone she doesn’t love, Janie consents due to the pressure and marries Logan. He wants to keep her firmly under his control so he forces her to work in the field with him and clean the house. In addition to physically oppressing Janie, Logan also mentally oppresses her by showing Janie no affection during their marriage. Due to

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.

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

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.

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).

    In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford is the heroine. She helps women to deal with their own problems by dealing with hers. She deals with personal relationships as well as searches for self-awareness. Janie Crawford is more than a heroine, however, she is a woman who has overcome the restrictions placed on her by the oppressive forces and people in her life.

Dyshere Logan Tammy Geidel AP English Languish and Composition 23 July 2014 A Summary of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a novel written in flashback telling the story of a woman named Janie. It starts off by the main character Janie returning to the town that she watched grow from the ground up.