Their Eyes Were Watching God Coming Of Age Quotes

Unlike her previous husbands, Tea Cake does not stifle Janie’s potential, but instead allows Janie to comfortably express herself due to the “possibilities opened up by [their] relationship,” as evidenced by Professor Tejumola Olaniyan’s criticism of the novel. (Olaniyan 34). Not only is Janie free to behave in whichever way she desires, she is also confronted by a man who genuinely loves her. Moreover, Janie feels a “self-crushing love” with Tea Cake, that makes her feel content enough that “her soul [crawls] out from its hiding place” (Hurston 128). By finally allowing her soul out into the open, Janie unlocks her inner strength,

The film Their Eyes Were Watching God, based off of the novel by author Zora Neale Hurston, is a story of a young woman named Janie who spends the film narrating her life story to a friend. Janie’s story is one of self-exploration, empowerment, and the ability to express her freedoms both as a maturing woman and African American, throughout her life experiences. As she navigates through sexism and racism to find herself it becomes more evident that it will be more difficult than she initially thought to reach a point of happiness.

Similarly, Janie makes another great sacrifice when she decides to leave her life of ease and luxury in Eatonville, so she can start a new life with Tea Cake. In Eatonville, she had authority as the store owner and as the former mayor’s wife, but she decides to follow her heart which ultimately leads to her fulfillment of self-actualization with the help of Tea Cake. Without Tea Cake, Janie could not have found herself, and his impact on her remains even after his death. Janie recounts her life lesson to Phoeby saying, “Love is lak da sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore...Two things everybody’s got tuh do for theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves” (191-92). Through Janie’s words, the effect of Tea Cake on her is eminent through how Janie learn about life and herself and leads her to becoming independent. Because Janie sacrifices her luxurious life in Eatonville, through Tea Cake, she fulfills her need of self-actualization, a recurring idea in the book. Janie’s values concerning her life and of Tea Cake are also illuminated in her conversation with Phoeby before she leaves Eatonville. She and Tea Cake “‘...[had] done made up [their] minds tuh

After Tea Cake ignores all the preemptive warnings of the approaching Hurricane Okeechobee, Janie gets trapped in a flood in the Everglades with a rabid dog. Witnessing this event, Tea Cake risks his life and jumps into the water to save Janie from this beast. Afterwards, Janie tells Tea Cake, “Once upon uh time, Ah never 'spected nothin', Tea Cake, but bein' dead from standin' still and tryin' tuh laugh. But you come 'long and made somethin' outa me. So Ah'm thankful fuh anything we come through together.” (Hurston 167). Janie’s quote demonstrates her gratitude to Tea Cake, who was the only person to truly treat Janie as an equal. By following Nanny’s ideals, Janie lived most of her life neglected in various ways by both Logan and Joe. However, when she finally abandoned Nanny’s dream and met her own needs by marrying Tea Cake, she experienced happiness for the first time. The life of security with little emotional fulfillment deeply contrasts with Janie’s new life with Tea Cake. Finally, she is able to experience true love instead of living as a mule under Joe and Logan, both of whom tried to shape Janie to fit their own personal needs instead of treating her as an equal . Although Nanny wanted to secure Janie’s life by marrying her off to a respected, landowning man, this resulted in unintended consequences that restricted her freedom and harmed her well being. Unlike

After the death of her second husband, she meets a man named Tea Cake. Janie sets out find love between them but is very skeptical. “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life. Look how she had been able to talk with him right off “(Hurston 99). His presence makes Janie feel warm and comfortable inside. She feels like they a connection but she does not want to move to fast. “So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth and quenching the thirst of the day” (Hurston 99). After Janie meets Tea Cake, the sunset foreshadows a negative theme later in the novel. Janie and Tea Cake become close friends and eventually

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

Tea Cake performs the old courtship rituals, indulges in shooting and razor fighting, and plays the dozens and the blues. Compared with Killicks and Starks, former husbands of Janie, Tea Cake prefers interaction and people to ‘things’: “So us goin’ off somewhere and start all in Tea Cake’s way. Dis ain’t no business proposition, and no race after property and titles. Dis is uh love game” (134). In this pastoral setting, Janie regains her voice to tell narratives. Janie feels free to join the notorious ‘lying’ and tale-telling sessions whenever she wants to: “She got so, she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest” (158). Yet, even with Tea Cake, she has to face intermittent crises and physical aggression. S. Jay Walker has

A new hindrance called society skeptically watches Janie as she quickly changes from being a widow of a powerful man to the wife of a young, poor man named Tea Cake, since her quest for love was not nearly over. She had the option of either being submissive to society by staying as Joe’s widow or show tremendous self-reliance and confidence by marrying Tea Cake. Pheoby, Janie’s close friend, declares, “Dat’s de way it looks. Still and all, she’s [Janie’s] her own woman...she should know by now what she wants tuh do” (Hurston 111). This shows how Pheoby trusts in Janie’s self-reliance and genuinely believes that she can make her own decisions. Also, Janie explains that “Tea Cake ain’t no Jody [Joe] Starks… but de minute Ah marries ‘im everybody is gointuh be makin’ comparisons...dis is a love game. Ah done lived Grandma’s way, Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 114). She wants to live her own independent life, and not have to rely or depend on anyone. This is rather ironic because Janie does end up depending on Tea Cake, but perhaps not for material goods or money, like with Logan and Joe, but for something called love. Because Janie loves Tea Cake so much, she is willing to become submissive to his will. He ends up finding pleasure by letting out his anger by beating her. For example, Sop-de-bottom, one of Tea Cake’s friends, states “Ah love tuh whip uh tender women lak Janie! Ah bet

From the beginning, Janie’s happiness is abundantly clear in her relationship with Tea Cake. Although she is now a woman in her forties, Janie acts very youthful and unrestricted with him. She wears “new dresses and...comb[s] her hair a different way nearly every day (111)”. Tea Cake allows for Janie to be herself, in stark contrast to misogynistic Joe who constrained her individuality daily. Janie reports that “Tea Cake love[s] me in blue, so Ah wears it (113)”.

Janie’s marriage to Logan was not anything special. In the beginning Logan was acted like a good husband and would do all the work on his land, and Janie would stay in the home, cooking and cleaning. Eventually, after a couple of months of being married, this so-called honeymoon stage was over. Logan now acted as if he owned Janie and she was his slave, commanding her to do whatever he wanted, not listening to what she wanted. Janie felt constraint; she felt like she was losing her freedom to Logan, she felt like she was not Janie anymore, she was now Mrs. Logan Killicks and she was now obligated to do whatever he commanded of her. Janie was tired of being in an unhappy marriage; she did not love Logan like Nanny said she eventually would: “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman”, and she did not like the way she was being treated. One day while she was outside she saw a man walk by, she thought he was very attractive so she drew attention to herself and the man came over. After having a conversation

Tea Cake loved Janie so much that he would rather himself get hurt than her, which is something Janie had never experienced: true love. Without Tea Cake’s role in Janie’s life she would have never experienced true love and actual happiness. Tea Cake is a mysterious man from the

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.

Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows protagonist Janie Mae Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate quest for self-discovery. Having to abruptly transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story demonstrates Janie’s eternal struggle to find her own voice and realize her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of hardships that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses powerful metaphors helping to “unify” (as Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it) the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are three significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the

Throughout a fair part of Zora Neal Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s low class create problems when it comes to men. She lives with men she does not love because they give her the financial stability she cannot have yet on her own. Janie marries Logan Killicks at a young age even though she does not want to

For Janie love is an essential part of life, and a key portion of her journey towards individuality. Finding true love with Tea Cake finally helped her feel satisfied and therefore she was content with being alone and independent because he will always be a part of