preview

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Decent Essays

As George Bernard Shaw once said, “[l]ife isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Existence is a series of experience that define societies. From childhood to adulthood, people are expressed by moments. However, no occurrence is more significant than death. In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie Crawford is plagued by the deaths of loved ones. Janie moves from caregiver to caregiver searching for true love and happiness, only to have it stripped away from her once she finds it in her third husband Tea Cake. At the end of the novel, having realized true love and loss, Janie is a whole woman. Their Eyes Were Watching God portrays the growth of the human spirit …show more content…

To Nanny, a woman who was dominated by slavery, there is no companionship for women to experience, only hardship. Janie is reminded of Nanny’s ideals after the death of her second husband Joe when a man from Eatonville voices, “Uh woman by herself is a pitiful thing… Dey needs aid and assistance. God never meant ‘em tuh try tuh stand by theirselves” (Hurston 90). Despite Janie’s constant questioning about Logan Killicks, Nanny realizes love does not beget marriage. Tracy Bealer states, “Nanny 's experiences with institutionalized racism and pervasive misogyny teach her that for black women, erotic love is infused with shame, physical pain, and unsatisfying labor” (315). Inevitably, Nanny begins to teach Janie what her place in the world is, under man. Janie is a young girl, and after kissing Johnnie Taylor she can only think about love. So Nanny tells her love does not exist in marriage and to forget about searching for her dreams. Janie would carry this belief into her first marriage, allowing Nanny’s fear of death and her own fear of loneliness to guide her into adulthood. Janie holds onto these fears long after her grandmother’s death. Fearing her own death, when Nanny begins to see Janie maturing naturally into a young woman she forcefully shoves her into adulthood by giving her rights as a guardian to Logan Killicks. When Nanny caught Janie

Get Access