Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Companionship is a fundamental necessity for human beings to function. People thrive off of social interactions and without companionship, loneliness and alienation would prevail. Everyone wants the same things in life which are love, social acceptance and companionship, in the hope that once these things are obtained one will feel complete. In the novels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, readers witness the characters struggle to find their identity while also trying to meet the need for partnership. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, readers see the main character Janie, grow as a women while showing that marriage does not always mean love and that until

Throughout life, everybody makes sacrifices that may become more beneficial to him or in ways they could not foresee. A sacrifice may be simply giving up an object or giving up something deeper in meaning. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a prime example of a book that reflects this theme. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, struggles to figure out her identity and what she desires in life. As she matures in her relationships and in life, she learns to make sacrifices in order to seek what she really needs. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston illuminates Janie’s values and the text’s emphasis on self-actualization is demonstrated through Janie leaving stability with Logan to marry Joe,

Feminism and gender equality is one of the most important issues of society today, and the debate dates back much farther than Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. To analyze Janie’s existence as a feminist or anti-feminist character requires a potential critic to look at her relationships and her reactions to those relationships throughout the novel. Trudier Harris claims that Janie is “questing after a kind of worship.” This statement is accurate only up until a certain point in her life, until Janie’s “quest” becomes her seeking equality with her partner. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s main goal pertaining to her romantic relationships undergoes multiple changes from her original goal of a type of worship to a goal to maintain an equal relationship with her husband.

In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).

Throughout Wu’s article, Wu address Janie’s marriages and the representation with the imagery regarding the mule. One of Wu’s stronger arguments is the first marriage Janie has with Logan Killicks. Wu argues that the marriage between Logan and Janie is an “obvious surrender to Nanny’s concept of black women, which defines them as the mule of the world” (Wu 1054). In the beginning of their marriage, Logan treated

In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston spent seven weeks in Haiti writing what would become her most well-known and acknowledged piece of work. Their Eyes Were Watching God was born on September 18th, 1937, in New York. The novel told a hopeful tale of a woman finding a secure sense of independence and identity in the 1920s. Janie Mae Crawford is the protagonist of the novel. She knows family only in the form of her grandmother, who she refers to as Nanny. Each relationship that Janie is involved in blooms and withers away like the pear tree that symbolizes Janie's life.

     In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader is given a particular glimpse into Janie's life with reference to the men she has known.  Janie's three men are all very different, yet they were all Janie's husband at one point in her life.  Although they all behaved differently, in lifestyle as well as their relationship with Janie, they all shared certain similarities.

Janie was raised by her grandmother, Nanny, who loved and protected Janie fervently. As Nanny grew older, and the prospect of death became more and more of a reality, she became dedicated to finding a husband for Janie who could offer her continued security and stability. Logan Killicks was an older gentleman, who had shown interest in Janie and was well established, with 60 acres of farmland. Janie had no desire to marry Logan, but Nanny did not give her an option. In an effort to explain her reason for coercing Janie into the marriage, Nanny tells Janie, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. Ah ain’t gittin’ ole, honey. Ah’m done ole … Mah daily prayer now is tuh let dese golden moments rolls on a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life” (15). Despite the circumstances, Janie was determined to love Logan Killicks.

Persistence is a firm continuance of action in spite of past obstacles and opposition. This is what women like Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel had to have, to get through traumatic events such as domestic violence and oppression from other men. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character Janie Crawford faced oppression and domestic violence, but instead of this holding her back it made a stronger woman by the end of the novel.

The novel is structured as a long flashback leading up to the present. When Janie begins telling her story to Pheoby, she starts with presenting her Grandmother’s ideals of love and marriage. Her Grandmother believes deeply in the idea that marriage is important and that love comes with marriage. Hesitant at first, Janie concedes to her Grandmother and started her first marriage to a man she had no love for, Logan Killicks. Patient, Janie waited for the love to form in her relationship to him, but soon realized “that marriage did not make love” (25). Before her first year of marriage was up, her honeymoon faze ended. Her husband hoped for her to start working more in the field with him. Jani’s Grandmother said “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (14), and Janie was becoming the mule. She knew that she wanted more and needed more than the life she was

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Mae Crawford deals with her loss of self and rediscovering herself through symbols that describe each of her relationships. After Janie discovers what she thinks love is, she undergoes three marriages that define her idea of love through the way her husbands treat her and the recurring symbols that appear in each one. These relationships range from passionless to abusive to positive and inseparable. The symbols act as either a help or a hindrance to her journey of realizing what love is. As Janie journeys to find herself, the pear tree, the gate, her hair, and her voice symbolize each of her relationships and the things she learns about herself as she discovers what authentic love and autonomy truly means.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston a young girl named Janie begins her life unknown to herself. She searches for the horizon as it illustrates the distance one must travel in order to distinguish between illusion and reality, dream and truth, role and self? (Hemenway 75). She is unaware of life?s two most precious gifts: love and the truth. Janie is raised by her suppressive grandmother who diminishes her view of life. Janie?s quest for true identity emerges from her paths in life and ultimatly ends when her mind is freed from mistaken reality.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the protagonist Janie had always dreamed of finding true love ever since she was a little girl. Therefore, it’s natural for Janie to jump at the first sign of her being able to love with Logan Kellick, which was an arranged marriage for Janie from her Nanny. However, Janie comes to notice that Logan just wants her to do everything and threatens to kill her if she didn’t obey him. Then Janie leaves Logan for Joe Starks but also leaves him because he points her out for acting too young for her age when she didn’t. He did that to draw attention away from his failing body so no one would notice that he is dying.

Love plays a very important role in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston. Janie thought of love just as she thought of the elements of springtime: Sunny days, bright skies, and a bee pollinating pear tree blossoms. She searched far and wide for this kind of perfect love. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” mainly referred to how Janie discovered her identity and the true meaning of love from her past three marital experiences. However throughout all of her marriages, she became independent and lost the desire to be attached to a man. Hurston used this to show Janie 's progression as a woman.

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Research Paper In Their Eyes Were Watching God, African Americans weren’t treated equally, and were looked at as slaves even though slavery had already been abolished. Women were looking for wealthy men to take care of them. Janie, is seeking to find out what true love is and through her experiences in her three different types of marriages, she eventually attains her goal. She ends up discovering who she is as a person, and what the most important components are that define her and make up her life.