In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the hopeful heroine, is on a journey to find true love. Growing up, Janie starts with a foundation of love, as her grandmother takes on the role of raising her. She provides protective care for Janie, assuring her that no “menfolk white or black is makin’ a spit cup outa [Janie]” (37), the way that Janie’s mother had experienced. After her grandmother “saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss” (29), she shows her protective quality by arranging her marriage with Logan Killicks and sending her on the start of her journey to find true love. Janie transitions through multiple relationships, hoping to end her quest as a satisfied, loved woman. Janie enters her first …show more content…
As Tea Cake begins to ease Janie into a relationship she believes that “he was hanging around to get in with her and strip her of all that she had” (121); noticing that she was beautiful and rich, but a significant amount older than Tea Cake. In contrast, Joe proves his love to Janie by slowly building a connection with Janie in which “de thought...makes de difference in ages”(137). The people of Eatonville judge their relationship by claiming that Janie is too old for Tea Cake to be loved the correct way. Disregarding their judgements, Janie develops “a self-crushing love” (151) for Tea Cake’s open-minded character. Despite Janie’s older age, Tea Cake claims that “[Janie is] young enough tuh suit most any man”(205) proving his commitment to their relationship. 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. She “thanked him wordlessly...for loving service” (210) proving to the reader that she truly loves Tea Cake. Again, she proves her true love to the reader, as she stands in court worrying not of death, but of misunderstanding that she “wanted him dead” (214). Janie does not show signs of mourning after the death of Tea Cake
Many people often dream of finding “the one” in their lives, but it is usually not easy and often results unhappiness and internal conflict. Hurston uses the main character Janie, in order to display how Janie solves internal conflict. Janie was raised by her grandmother and had always dream of true love especially after she experiences a moment of self awakening while sitting under the pear tree. This self-awakening had caused her grandmother to quickly wed Janie to her first husband, Logan. Janie reluctantly agrees, and begins her life long journey to find love. In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses Janie’s three marriages and her internal conflicts to show how Janie discovers both herself and the meaning of
In Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is taken on an expedition through the life and love of Janie, which provides the reader different levels of imagery and symbolism. “Hurston… use the journey motif to structure and enhance their heroines‘quests as well as lyrical image patterns to evoke and communicate the processes of growth, regeneration and intimations of the Divine within each character.” (Sullivan 1364) Through this expedition Janie strives to achieve her principles about what love was and how she should be living her life. Hurston chose to introduce the reader to the return of Janie as the opening of the book. “Janie’s existence will become a continuous struggle to bring her own experience into harmony with her initial vision of the pear tree” (Maroto 72) Janie was not focusing on what is wrong in her single life, but what was good in it. “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and
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
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.
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.
In the novel “Their eyes were watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s love changes throughout the course of her three marriages from security to actual love. Throughout time Janie was seeing changes in her first marriage. “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking rhymes to her.” “He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it”( Hurston 26). Since Logan stopped showing interest in her, like not showing the love he once did, Janie knew that she wasn’t in love with logan and he was not the one for her. This shows that Janie has yet to feel in love with someone. In Janie’s second marriage she has a feeling of betray. Why must Joe be so mad with her for making him look small when he did it
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she sets the protagonist, Janie Mae Crawford as a woman who wants to find true love and who is struggling to find her identity. To find her identity and true love it takes her three marriages to go through. While being married to three different men who each have different philosophies, Janie comes to understand that she is developed into a strong woman. Hurston makes each idea through each man’s view of Janie, and their relationship with the society. The lifestyle with little hope of or reason to hope for improvement. He holds a sizeable amount of land, but the couple's life involves little interaction with anyone else.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston, the author starts chapter three with Janie Mae questioning whether or not marriage brings love; she questions because she does not love Logan Killicks, her husband. After three months of marriage, Janie results to going to Nanny for advice. Janie confesses that she does not like Logan’s unromantic personality and his ugly appearance. When she starts to cry, Nanny sends her away, telling her to wait a while longer for love to come. Within a month, Nanny passes away, and after a year, Janie has learned that marriage does not bring love. At the end of the chapter, Janie’s dream of love has died, causing her to become a woman.
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie’s journey towards spiritual enlightenment and her development of individuality, largely through Janie’s relationships with others. Hurston uses the themes of power, control, abuse, and respect, in Janie’s relationships with Nanny, Killicks, Starks, and Tea Cake, to effectively illustrate how relationships impact identity and self-growth.
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
In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is innocent and does not know what she is searching for. Life experience, however, teaches her to gain control of her destiny and leads her to a love that provides equality, understanding, and self discovery. Through the novel Janie is on a quest for love, though she does not really know what she is searching for over here journey she goes through many trials of love, whether romantic or not each leading her to a new step of self discovery. As she continues to jump into new relationships, she gains understanding of herself and her identity, while growing as a person and taking control of her life and relationships. Through Janie's journey to no known destination she gains equality in her relationships specifically as a women and understanding of who she is
In the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie, the main character, struggles to find what the true meaning the word “love” is until her last marriage. Janie marries three times throughout the novel. With three different men at three different ages, she encounters three new perspectives. Janie suffered two unhappy marriages before she could find her true love.
Tea Cake was everything she wanted from a man. Tea Cake and Janie eventually get married and move to the muck to find a simple life. As Tea Cake and Janie settle into the Muck, Janie discovers different emotions that she had never before when she was in Eatonville. Janie discovers the feeling of jealousy, when a different woman was flirting with Tea Cake. Even though the Muck wasn’t as comfortable as Eatonville, she found it to be more enjoyable. The community loved her and Tea Cake, the Muck was a place that Janie enjoyed with Tea Cake. Janie thought everything was going to go well until the great storm hit. Many people didn’t believe in the great storm that was coming. When the storm hit Janie and Tea Cake weren't prepared for the flood, Tea Cake eventually getting bitten by a rabid dog. As 3 weeks pass the symptom starts to show as Tea Cake started to hallucinate and becomes dehydrated. Janie trying to get all the help she can eventually has to shoot Tea Cake out of self defense. Janie perfected marriage that she had hoped for ended in a tragedy, Tea Cake fulfilled Janie wishes of the “horizon” that she was looking
The ideas of love and marriage provoke excitement within the minds of many teenage girls. Yet as one grows older, they discover their previous expectations of love demolishes through experiences of heartache which correspond with the inevitable reality of love and relationships in the real world. Through her novel, “Their Eyes were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston displays a theme of love and marriage by describing Janie Crawford’s quest of finding unconditional love. While endeavoring challenges and hardship throughout her three marriages, Janie accumulates unique qualities which defines her truest self. Although beginning as a young and naive girl, Janie later blossoms into a strong and independent women. Janie eliminates all previous expectations of love as she experiences the reality of relationships. She discovers that love cannot be acquired through being married, yet is achieved through an equality within a marriage. After many troublesome relationships, Janie is able to acquire a meaningful relationship with her latest husband, which at last fulfills her horizon.