Book summary Their Eyes Were Watching God is written by Zora Neal Hurston an African American woman in 1937. This story is about Janie Crawford, whose lifelong quest is to find true love. Janie narrates the story of her three marriages and her search for love to her friend Phoeby. When Janie is young, her grandmother arranges her marriage with a man named Logan Killicks, who becomes Janie's first husband. Janie is not content with her marriage to Logan but optimistically wishes that she would grow to love him. Unfortunately, her hopes are met by abuse by Logan, whom she feels treats her as a child and as an animal to work in his fields. One day Janie meets an ambitious man named Jody Starks, who courts her and ultimately encourages her to run away from Logan. Janie …show more content…
Janie finally feels that she might be happy for the first time in a long time. However, Joe, like Logan, has very unyielding definitions of gender roles and expects Janie to support him and not argue with him. Janie is too outspoken for this, and she and Joe have a rocky relationship. Joe eventually dies, leaving Janie independent. After Joe dies, Janie finally has her freedom back; she is finally able to take her ugly head wrap that she had been wearing for more than 20 years. After a while, she falls in love with a much younger man named Tea Cake. Janie leaves everything behind and moves to the Everglades of Florida. Janie finally has the love that she has longed for, and she and Tea Cake are happy. When a hurricane hits rabid dog attacks Janie, and when Tea Cake tries to save her, he is bitten by the dog and contracts rabies. As a result, he begins to go mad, and he eventually tries to shoot Janie. She kills him in self-defense and is put on trial for murder. At the trial, Tea Cake's black male friends show up to condemn Janie, but a group of white women from the town shows up to defend her. The all-white jury sets her free, Janie throws an extravagant burial for Tea Cake and returns back
Thereafter, she meets and falls in love with Tea Cake. He is significantly younger than her; however, he is the first man to listen to her and treat her as an equal. For example, the day she met Tea Cake, he shocked her when he taught her to play checkers. The fact that someone thought it was natural for her to play pleased Janie. They both enjoyed caring for and helping each other feel relaxed and satisfied. Therefore, Janie, once again, leaves to start a new life despite warning from her friend, Phoebe, and the risk that Tea Cake could be using her for her money. Happily, she adjusts to a new life working alongside Tea Cake in the Everglades. Later, a hurricane tears through the Everglades, forcing them to leave. While they flee, Tea Cake rescues Janie from a wild dog and is only a scratch is left on his cheek. Until he becomes horribly ill, they think nothing of it. The doctor tells Janie she can’t sleep with him and she must stay away when he has ‘fits’. Due to this, Tea Cake believes she has grown tired of caring for him. The disease affects his behavior and in his crazed state he points a gun at Janie. He forces her to shoot him. While she weeps, Janie holds his head and thanks him for the opportunity to love him. Later that day, she is tried for his murder and acquitted. Afterwards, she cannot bear to live in the Everglades without Tea Cake; so, she moves back to
Unlike the other men that Janie has been with, Tea Cake allows her to make her own decision, including joining in on social events and working alongside the men in the bean fields. Janie last the longest with Tea Cake without having any unresolved issues woven into their special bond with each other. The most devastating event in their relationship is when Tea Cake develops rabies from saving Janie from the mad dog. As “this mysterious sickness” (204) takes over Tea Cake’s passionate personality, Janie does not leave Tea Cake, as the doctor suggested, but showed her loving dedication to Tea Cake by staying with him. At the climax of Tea Cake’s illness, Janie shoots Tea Cake to put him out of suffering and to save herself from his uncontrollable actions.
Because Janie’s first marriage to Logan was arranged by her grandmother, her autonomy within the relationship is limited and she is not able to achieve her dreams of adventure and love. For these reasons, Janie leaves Logan. During
Janie went on a long journey to obtain womanhood. Janie grew up living with her grandma, who always wanted her to get married at a young age. Janie eventually did marry Logan Killicks when she was 18 years old. However, she hated living with him. He was described as a shallow, unlovable human being. This was when Janie became a woman because she realized that marriage does not assure love. Janie then married Jody Starks. At first, he seemed like a good person because he offered her a new life, but over time grew worse. Jody would constantly restrict what Janie could do, and would beat her for simple errors. It was not until late in their marriage that Janie finally spoke out to Jody of the way he treated her. Jody would soon die, and Janie
Jason Oliner Mr. Hansen, Mrs. Paterno American Literature 3/8/24 “Livin' fuh theyselves”: Janie’s Journey in Zora Neale’s Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie is the main character in the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, she is a black woman in the 1930’s with some white ancestors. Janie tells her life story, consisting of various relationships and environments. Janie goes through her life wanting to find a relationship where she feels as though she is loved unconditionally. Janie’s life develops with the thought in her mind that she needs a partner to feel as though she is loved unconditionally.
Most people will spend years in a torturous relationship, but Janie begins to question “[w]hat was she losing so much time for? A feeling of sudden newness and change come over her” (Hurston 32). Before Janie put that feeling to words, she allowed Logan to walk all over her. Logan treated her like a subhuman, until “Janie had put words into his held-in fears…” After that Logan thought “[s]he might run off for sure enough. The thought put a terrible ache in Logan’s body, but he thought it best to put on scorn” (Hurston 30). After this, Janie begins anew, and with “The Persephone-like image of Janie walking to the horizon…as she leaves Logan and joins Starks… is a presentiment of the “death” Persephone must undergo if the maiden is to become her own queen” (Grewal 108). Janie experiences freedom from a relationship for a few glorious moments and she relishes in that fact, mentioning she does not mind if Joe is not waiting for her. She knows in that moment she can do anything and that she is free. This new power helps Janie survive her marriage with Joe, and brings her closer to complete development at the end of the novel. Even though Janie and Logan’s marriage is not long lived, the death of their relationship forces Janie to truly grow from childhood. Before Janie was a spoiled juvenile, however, after she rises from the ashes of her first failed marriage she begins to walk towards her dream again, even if she was immature about her
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that follows Janie in her quest to find both her voice and herself through different experiences and relationships. Janie, a female protagonist, struggles to assert both her voice and her independence. Joe Starks, her second husband, is a sophisticated and authoritative man who demands the majority of the attention in both their marriage and society. Joe and Janie reside in Eatonville where Joe is mayor and a prominent figure in society. Janie struggles to discover her voice and often uses it irrationally. Tea Cake, Janie’s last husband, is a regular man who treats Janie
Janie wanted fulfilling love out of marriage, and in the case of both Joe and Logan, this is not what she got. In many cases, she was treated as property before she was treated as a person. Janie ran away from Logan because of this-- a powerful move considering that leaving your husband, regardless of how he
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.
Her decision to leave Logan for Joe Starks shows her determination to achieve her dream of love; she does not want to give and take this dream for stability. Logan is extremely ignorant of Janie′s feelings. When she tries to talk with him about them he simply replies: "′Ah′m getting′ sleepy Janie. Let′s don′t talk no mo′.′" (Hurston,30) He does not realize that Janie is serious about leaving him and that she wants him to show his feelings for her. Instead, he tries to hurt her like she hurt him, by pretending not to be worried about her leaving him. Janie gets to know Joe during her marriage with Logan. Right from the beginning he treats her like a lady. This is one reason why Janie is so attracted to him.
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
‘Their Eyes Were Watching Good’ is a 1937 published novel by the Afro-American author Zora Neale Hurston. The story is about Janie Crawford, an attractive, middle-aged black woman, that returns to her hometown after the breakdown of her third marriage. This causes a lot of gossip and Janie decides to explain herself by telling her story. She tells about her three different marriages and how she in person changed during these different stages of her life.
Janie met Jody Sparks when she was still married to Logan. Janie was immediately intrigued by Jody given his nice clothing and ambitions. shortly after meeting Jody, she left Logan and married Jody. Their marriage started out as very nice. Janie admired Jody’s ambition and strength in building the town of Eatonville and also becoming the town’s mayor. And Jody loved pleasing Janie and making her happy. Janie was happy in her marriage and she thought that she found real love with Jody, making this marriage very different from her marriage with Logan. though the two marriages were different, they were also very similar. For example, both men were controlling and kept trying to change Janie and make her become someone who she is not. For example, Logan tried to make Janie work outside and he also tried to change her by trying to make something out of her. Jody tried to turn Janie into something that she is not by trying to control
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 Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, attempts to bring into light problems caused by prejudice. However, as she tries to show examples of inequality through various character relationships, examples of equality are revealed through other relationships. Janie, the novel's main character, encounters both inequality and equality through the treatment she receives during her three marriages.