Compare And Contrast Their Eyes Were Watching God

Janie v Nanny Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God follows the life of a mixed woman named Janie. Janie was raised by her grandmother, Nanny, who is the main source of conflict in her early life. After an argument with Nanny, Janie learned that she cannot live happily if she lets other people choose her future for her. Janie discovered at an early age that she wanted to be in love and get married. She saw a bee land on a flower and described it as “the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage” (Hurston 11). Janie decided that she wanted a relationship like the bee and the pear tree. She began looking for “bees singing of the beginning of the world,” but “Nothing on the place nor in her grandma’s house answered her” (Hurston 11). Janie saw a boy named Johnny Taylor and kissed him, but Nanny heard them talking and yelled for Janie to come inside.

She had a voice that was “lacking in command and reproof,” but had eyes that “diffused and melted Janie” (Hurston 12). Nanny tells Janie that she is a woman now and needs to be married off. Nanny wants her to marry Logan Killicks because he is a black man who owns land which is being successful in Nanny’s eyes. Janie refuses to marry him, and the argument commences. Nanny says that all Janie wants to do is “hug and kiss and feel around with first one man and then another,” (Hurston 13). Janie felt that “the vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but [she] didn’t know how to Nanny that,” (Hurston 14). Janie said nothing and pouted in the floor until Nanny violently slaps her. Nanny realizes what she did and hugs Janie telling her “De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you,” (Hurston