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Examples Of Identity In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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The Journey of Self-Discovery: Exploring Identity and Relationships in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel written by Zora Neale Hurston, a classic of the Harlem Renaissance and one of Harlem’s many known works. Exploring the Journey of Janie Crawford, a black woman from the 20th century, in rural Florida in Eatonville. Eatonville was one of the first black communities to grow with self-governing. Portraying one of the novel's protagonists, Janie Crawford learns to love herself using her voice, throughout decades of trials In contrast, looking at the many themes including power, inequality, and the importance of having a voice. In the novel Janie discovers that listening to her inner guidance is more …show more content…

One example is when the townspeople speculate about Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake, stating, “De way you tell it, it sounds like some woman in de church or someplace” (page 123). This quote demonstrates the townspeople's narrow-mindedness and tendency to impose their own values on others. Jacksonville is in contrast to the suffocating atmosphere of Eatonville, Jacksonville represents a place of liberation and self-discovery for Janie. It is in Jacksonville that Janie experiences a newfound sense of freedom and independence. One example is when Janie visits the city and reflects, “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (page 79). This quote highlights Janie's realization that her happiness and fulfillment are not contingent on societal expectations of marriage. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother, played a significant role in shaping Janie’s perceptions of love and marriage. Nanny’s own experiences of oppression and trauma lead her to prioritize financial stability and relationships. Nanny's advice to Jenny is reflective of the limited options available to black women at the

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1041 Words | 5 Pages

Janie has been through hard times, even as a young girl. She lived with her grandmother who took care of her because her mother ran off when she was young. It is because of her grandmother, who wants to be in control of Janie’s life and wants the best for her, that Janie ends up marrying a rich man and getting a good education. However, this is not what Janie really wants. Janie is more interested in happiness and love than being rich, high class, and educated.

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167 Words | 1 Pages

”(Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, Pg. 9 Ch.2) This was showing that segregation, even when she was a little girl, stopped her from fitting in her community. “Jody told her to dress up and stand in the store… ”(Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, Pg. 41 Ch.5) Jody told Janie how to live her life basically and even that community she didn't fit in.

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1489 Words | 6 Pages

(Hurston 55). Jody’s determination to keep Janie safe and protect her from other men causes Janie to be upset. Janie feels as if her only purpose “was there in the store for him to look at, not those others'' (55).

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810 Words | 4 Pages

Identifying identity takes a lot of time and energy that most people are not willing to give. Discovering identity might put others off of your track in life because they might be holding you back. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God there is a big life-changing moment for one of the characters, where she finally discovers herself but by doing that she overcame many hard challenges. Zora Neale Hurston examines the idea of identity in Their Eyes Were Watching God through Janie and Joe’s characters to highlight the self-discovery of African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance era. The Idea of Identity reflects the Harlem Renaissance in Their Eyes Were Watching God because Janie represents someone finding themself through challenges

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1354 Words | 6 Pages

Janie takes a progressive, personal approach to growth and self-expression. She moves through her three marriages as they increase in opportunity and

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733 Words | 3 Pages

Joelle Windmiller Their Eyes Were Watching God and Sexuality Their Eyes Were Watching God is in many ways a novel about the protagonist's sexual awakening. As it was written in the conservative early twentieth century, much of this sexuality is masked in metaphor. Zora Neale Hurston takes a naturalist approach to expressing sexuality in her book. The experience in which Janie attempts to make her first expression of love, Nanny resents her actions and proceeds to turn it into something to be ashamed of.

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724 Words | 3 Pages

Finding her identity was a very difficult and powerful process and Janie is deemed as a strong independent woman because of it. Janie shows this when the novel states that “She was looking for the kiss of life. She was searching for something that was inside herself, and always had been” (Hurston 9). This proves Janie’s quest to find herself and who she is because she knows she has a purpose and that her life has meaning. Janie’s determination shows how she’s trying to fight the expectations for her and doesn’t want to die just being a normal woman.

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543 Words | 3 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie suffers from hardship in two relationships before she can find her true love. Janie explains to her best friend, Pheoby, how she searches for love. Therefore Pheoby wants to hear the true story, rather than listening to the porch sitters. Throughout the book Janie experiences different types of love with three different men; Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. At 16 Janie marries Logan Killicks.

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721 Words | 3 Pages

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

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1660 Words | 7 Pages

Janie shows determination as she persists and struggles to define love on her own terms through her marriages. First, her determination shows when Janie runs away with Jody. She becomes aware that her marriage with Logan does not satisfy her goals and dreams for love, so she takes a chance and marries Jody. Hurston states, “Janie hurried out of the front gate and turned south.

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1746 Words | 7 Pages

Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (265). Hurston beautifully depicts this image of Janie’s soul emerging as a statement of her love for Tea Cake and of her vulnerability when she is with him. Likewise, at the end of the story, Janie calls on her soul to come out yet again at the moment in which she reflects upon her life with Tea Cake and in a way thanks him for allowing her to be free.

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725 Words | 3 Pages

A person's upbringing plays a large role in how they live the rest of their lives and can help determine who someone is and what their goals are in life. The conflict between a child and their parental figures can alter how they live their adult lives. This is why the conflict between Janie and her grandmother in Zora Neal Hurtson’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, sticks with Janie into adulthood and is what holds Janie back from becoming the woman she wants to be, and contributes to the theme in the novel that parental figures take their insecurities out in children, hindering the child's growth and success in life. One of the many conflicts between Janie and her grandmother was Janie’s dream of finding true love and her grandmother

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1758 Words | 8 Pages

Nearing the end of her and Joe’s relationship and following Joe’s death, Janie discovers once again that her horizon is still far away. The way that Joe treated Janie as an object and as a puppet drove Janie to resentment. Hurston states that, “Digging around in herself like that she found that . . . she hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these ears under a cloak of pity” (89). Janie’s self-reflection allows her to realize how much Nanny suppressed Janie from being able to reach her horizon.

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978 Words | 4 Pages

In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston develops a contrast between the male and female genders of the time period of the story, and the male and female gender of today. Hurston wrote this novel in or about a time when women were considered simple-minded , women were disempowered by the empowered man in the relationship, and women can only gain power through marriage. But when Janie kisses Johnny Taylor, her view of men changes after seeing “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; 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!

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774 Words | 4 Pages

When first discovering her womanhood under the pear tree, Janie describes how “she wanted to struggle in life but it seemed to elude her” (11). Struggle seemed to be all around Janie, yet she didn’t let it affect her. After a pressured marriage to a man that she wasn’t attracted to, Janie kept looking forward and found a way out. However, that way out was even more difficult than the first. For 20 years, Janie waited for something to change in her abusive relationship to Jody, except it only ended when he died.

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