Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay

On page 12, When Janie is sixteen years old, she is caught kissing a local boy named Johnny Taylor. Her Nanny sees Janie doing this and is angered by it. She then threatens to marry off to a older rich farmer, Logan Kilicks. Janie does not like the idea of marrying Logan Kilicks. She feels that she is too young and does not know a thing about being a wife. Nanny then explains that she wants to see janie married and financially secure before she dies.

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.

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

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 realized that it was time for a change and to take a chance in attempt to attain love by her own means. Nanny would've disapproved of the big talk behind a black man like Jody Starks; however, he would create an even more financially stable setting for Janie to live in than in the marriage she set up Janie with the farmer, Logan Killicks.

However, she quickly learns that Logan, finds her useless, “spoilt rotten” and compares her to his old wife, who did manual labor for him without many complaints (26). Not only does Janie find Logan unattractive, but she does not even find him intellectually or emotionally stimulating, as he never shows her affection (24). Attempting to gain some perspective on how to liven up her marriage, Janie seeks out the advice of her Nanny, an unmarried former slave. Janie claims that she “wants to want him sometimes” (23), but her efforts are in vain. Due to the conditions Nanny was raised in, Nanny told her granddaughter that love was bound to happen eventually because Logan was financially stable. Nanny did not understand Janie’s wishes of love; she was on a basic level of understanding. While Janie obeyed Nanny’s wish of her to stay with Logan for almost a year, when Janie knew the marriage was headed nowhere except disaster, she runs off with a man named Joe Sparks who she had correspondence with for almost a year. Janie concluded from her time with Logan “that marriage did not make love” (25). Janie’s view on love did not change with her relationship with Logan. In fact, it was because of the horrendous outcomes of the marriage that Janie decided to chase after her ideal relationship with

In the novel, Janie is faced with many obstacles and trials, the greatest of which are her marriages to Logan and Jody. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, is on her own journey to make sure that she sees her granddaughter married.

She likewise realizes some, extremely important lessons about marriage, uprightness, adoration, and bliss from her connections particularly with Logan Killicks and Tea Cake. Janie was compelled to wed Logan Killicks by Babysitter, her grandma. She needed her to get Married soon in light of the fact that

Janie does not find the love she longs for in her arranged marriage to the farmer, Logan Killicks, and is treated poorly as the relationship progresses. Initially, she clings to the hope that she will eventually love Logan, and confronts her Nanny when she realizes she does not have the feelings she longed for. Although her relationship with Logan does not fit Janie’s idea of romance, her initial complaints about the marriage are a bit shallow—mostly concerned with Logan’s age and appearance. Eventually, Logan’s weak attempts at romance and validation of Janie wear off: “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it. Six months back he had told her, ‘[...]You done been spoilt rotten’” (26). At this point in her marriage with Logan, Janie is expected to work alongside him. Logan expresses his frustration at Janie’s inability to pull her own weight in their marriage. Moreover, Logan no longer compliments Janie, and her physical beauty ceases to captivate him in the same way it did before. From

In Janie's early life, her grandmother, an ex slave, sets her up to marry a man named Logan Killicks in order to make sure is safe. This ends up causing Janie to feel trapped emotionally because she has no feelings for him. Before the two are married, Nanny tells Janie, "Mah daily prayer now is tuh let dese golden moments roll on a few days longer till I see you safe in life."(15) Janie sees that Nanny had good intentions and agrees to marry Logan, as she expects to fall in love with him after they are married because, "Husbands and wives always loved each other."(21) However, after a few months of marriage, Janie still has no feelings for Logan and when she speaks to Nanny about it, she tells Janie, "If you don't want him you sho oughta."(23) This makes Janie feel guilty for feeling trapped in an unwanted marriage so she

Janie is raised by a suppressive grandmother who diminishes her view of life. Nanny came from a rough past during the time of war and slavery but she worked hard to give Janie a good life. Janie was raised to be attracted to financial security and physical protection instead of seeking love. Janie was in a stage of pure innocence abiding by any rules Nanny set for her. As a teenager, Janie used to sit under the pear tree and dream about being a tree in bloom. She longed for something more. The initial loss of innocence was conveyed when sixteen year old Janie kissed Johnny Taylor. The kiss gave her a glimpse of what freedom and self-expression felt like. Even then, she was restricted by Nanny who forced her into a marriage for the purpose of Janie’s physical well-being rather than mental well-being. This instance is expressed when Nanny says, “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection.” Janie learns that marriage does not come with love, and Logan ruins her image of a blooming pear tree that she always dreamt of. Janie’s realization about love causes her to mature into a woman and run off with Joe

He arrives in Eatonville with the intention to make a name for himself. Although Janie and him start off as secret admirers, their marriage eventually ends because of the way he treats Janie. He treats her more like an object rather than a person which is why their marriage fails in the end. • Nanny Crawford – Janie’s grandmother. Janie’s grandmother has given up a lot to try to give Janie the best life possible.

Zora Neale Hurston conveys the theme that gender can confine one's true potential and freedom in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie, as a young woman, is controlled by her male counterparts and is unable to act freely for herself. Her grandmother raised her to strive for stability and security in her relationships, rather than an emotional connection. Janie is discouraged from speaking in front of the community and participating in discussions on the porch by her second husband, the mayor of Eatonville. However, she meets Tea Cake who enables her to freely express herself. Through her various experiences, she is able to find her true self by breaking down typical gender stereotypes of the time. Hurston tells the story both through Janie’s voice and a third person omniscient narrator. Hurston's use of multiple points of view allows Janie's thoughts and ideas to be vividly expressed through the narrator

The couple has children of their own, which are play mates for Janie, leading to the unrealization of Janie’s real skin color, until she sees a photograph of her colored family. Her grandmother then decides to buy her own land and house, so it can be better for Janie, according to her. After Janie turns sixteen, she is experiencing many sensations of a teenage girl, meaning the want of love, hormones, couriosity and sexuallity. Although, she only thinks about the sorts of things while being under a tree with a bee pollinating a blossom, she describes it as love. She meets a boy, and begins to have the “love feelings” and kisses the boy, however she gets caught by her grandmother and decides that she wants to marry her to a older man named Logan Killicks, and so she did. After, she realizes that she does not love Logan, she confronts her grandmother and tells her how she is feels about him, however Nanny advices her to be patient and that love will appear as flies by. Her grandmother dies and Janie leaves Logan after he threatened her to kill her with an axe, then runs away with another man named Joe Starks and got married. After their marriage, at first it’s all wonderful until Joe becomes a mayor and becomes more strict and demanding, therefore their marriage falls apart as well throughout the years and Joe dies because of kidney failure. After Joe’s death, she enjoys her

The kids make fun of Janie continuously, using the story of Janie’s parentage to embarrass her. Everyone already knows about the part about the police bringing dogs to hunt after her father because he apparently slept with her mother. But they didn’t say about her father trying to marry her mother. Anyways, Nanny goes out in her way to give Janie all the possibilities she can give. She also buys her own land and house to live in. The story flashes forward in time and Janie is lying out under a blossoming pear tree on a sunny tree and Janie sees a bee pollinating a pear blossom and says to herself it as a sexual experience apparently. The whole experience she just saw is so beautiful, she’s sure that this is what love and marriage must be like. She