Recommended: Janie's character development
Zora Neale Hurston's book, Their Eyes are watching God, follows the journey of main character Janie Mae Crawford through three main steps; the departure, the initiation, and the return. These three steps summarize the true elements of Janie Crawford finding her true self. It also offers an understanding of the hardships faced, and how Janie is referred to as a Hero for her ability to not give up. This Chart conducted by Joseph Campbell's teaches us the adventure of life and how our journey is being lived every day. Where does your Journey
In the town of Eatonville, Janie’s Reappearance created chaos and disruption. It all began when Janie returned from her Journey and reconnected with a long lost friend about her love story. At the age of 17, Janie married Logan to please her Nanny, but later left him after nanny died. She than married Jody the mayor; and goes to work with him in the shop, where she met Tea cake. Some time passed on as Jody died, and Janie fell in love with Tea cake, to soon leave Eatonville and travel to Everglades.
In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston traces Janie’s quest for independence and the search of her self-confidence through events that happened before and after her epiphany immediately following Joe’s death. Throughout the novel Janie’s view of life, her independence, and her view of love changed exceedingly depending on who she was married to. This story centers around an important epiphany that Janie has when Joe dies; that personal discoveries and life experiences help people find themselves. Before her revelation, when Janie is 16 years old, she experiences a moment of realization in she discovers new-found feelings about love, marriage, . Under the pear-tree, she has a perfect moment in nature, full of passion
Love is a mystery for many people, everyone has their views on what love should be and it is way more than just a definition in a dictionary. Love takes patience and time and not just forcing to find it. In the story, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurstone, the main character Janie Crawford is raised by her grandmother who forces her to marry an older wealthy man. Janie 's realizes that isn’t what true love is and runs off with another man called Jodie. After many years she realizes that marriage didn’t work out either, after Jodies dies she meets a man called TeaCake who she falls for and runs away with.
The man vs nature conflict in "Their Eyes Were Watching God" plays an essential role within the novel. Throughout the novel, especially in the beginning, Janie is shown to have a connection to nature. This is most noticeable in the way that bees and pollen symbolize Janie's maturity and how the horizon is used to represents Janie's lifelong search for happiness. It is because of this, that when the hurricane comes across Janie and Tea Cake near the end of the novel that it is more than just a mere battle for survival. Throughout the novel, forces similar to that of the hurricane antagonize Janie: the doctrines to which Nanny, Logan, and Jody adhere; Mrs. Turner’s racism; the sexism of Eatonville’s men; and the gossip of the porch culture.
Their Eyes were Watching God features Janie, the main character, narrating her life and her growth through the form of storytelling. The author masterfully crafts the piece so that Phoeby and the audience learn of Janie’s hardships and struggles and, as a result, the reader learns about the complications within the relationship between Janie and Joe that culminate into one single paragraph. In Their Eyes were Watching God, the author Zora Hurston uses a plethora of literary devices, including similes, metaphors, and personification, to help develop the main character Janie and on a larger, more universal scale, express the idea that male dominance over females is detrimental for women, as shown by the negative effects on Janie caused by Joe. First, Hurston uses personification to develop the main character Janie. When Hurston writes “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face.
Misguided Assumptions Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Hurston, is the story of Janie Crawford, a black woman with beautiful Caucasian-like hair and her pursuit for love. Janie meets Joe Starks while she is married to her first husband Logan Killicks. Janie chooses to leave her first husband to marry Joe with the hope of finding the love she had envisioned as a young girl. Unfortunately, Jody’s love of wealth and power is much stronger than his love for Janie.
Over the decades, women have progressively moved towards embracing independence. The role of women has transformed as females everywhere are breaking the social stigma and the stereotypical obligations the world has put on them. From the duty of housewife to the position of CEO, opportunities for women have grown into a plethora of possibilities that is never ending. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston prolifically displays Janie’s metamorphosis as a female in the Post Civil-War era.
Janie even marries Logan Killicks, a man of stability, much to her grandmother’s own arrangement. With Janie newly married to Logan, the reader can even see that Janie values stability and a man that will take care of her. Much of this value Janie places in a steady marriage stems from her grandmother’s belief that it is better to marry a man who will treat a woman with some decency than purely off of what one believes is love. Janie’s marriage to Logan even brings Janie to a realization that she does not truly love Logan. Hurston writes, “She knew now that marriage did not make love.
Nevertheless, while the husbands happen to have some similarities, they still differ greatly. Zora Neale Hurston makes Janie’s first marriage, an arranged one. The arrange marriage signify Janie’s distaste, in being told what to do. Logan Hillocks is chosen to become Janie’s husband. When audiences first meet Logan, he is old.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford has two marriages, one that she is forced into by her grandmother, and the other her own choice. Both marriages end up showing that Janie is unable to have a husband so far that suits her,maven if she chooses them for herself. This would imply to most people that she's a poor judge in character, but being fair, one of the marriages she couldn't get out of, and the other had the groom charm her into going with him. Both husbands end up eventually making her fairly unhappy in different ways. Logan Killicks, Janie's first husband, is a self proclaimed hard working man who despises what he perceives as laziness.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, often focuses her attention on nature and makes many comparisons of situations in her life to things, such as pollen and a pear tree, in nature; the nature comparisons reveal her love-centered nature and her hopeful visions in the future for a love-filled life. During the early years of Janie’s life, she often sees situations in a way related to nature, as a child this reveals her love-centered nature. One day while her grandmother is sleeping, she goes outside to lie “beneath the pear tree[,] soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees”(Hurston 13), and while she was out there, her mind drifted to thoughts of love. Although the pear tree is mentioned
One of the many goals all human beings have is discovering and appreciating who they are as a person. Some people discover and appreciate themselves as a teenager, for some people it’s in their young adult or adult years, and lastly some people figure out who they are in their later years in life. A book that clearly illustrates this concept is Their eyes were watching god written by Zora Neale Hurston. In the beginning of Their eyes were watching god, the main character Janie is a young African American woman who is in the process of trying to discover who she is and what she will accomplish in life. In the book, Janie suffers through three marriages in which she isn’t allowed to do what she wants to do, dress a certain way, or do anything she wants to do unless her husband at the time agrees with it.
One of the universal themes of literature is the idea that children suffer because of the mistakes of an earlier generation. The novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" follows the story of Janie Mae Crawford through her childhood, her turbulent and passionate relationships, and her rejection of the status quo and through correlation of Nanny 's life and Janie 's problems, Hurston develops the theme of children 's tribulations stemming from the teachings and thoughts of an earlier generation. Nanny made a fatal mistake in forcibly pushing her own conclusions about life, based primarily on her own experiences, onto her granddaughter Janie and the cost of the mistake was negatively affecting her relationship with Janie. Nanny lived a hard life and she made a rough conclusion about how to survive in the world for her granddaughter, provoked by fear. " Ah can’t die easy thinkin’ maybe de menfolks white or black is makin’ a spit cup outa you: Have some sympathy fuh me.
Most teenagers struggle with finding themselves. Sometimes, this struggle continues for their entire life. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston emphasizes that life-long battle. She shows her readers that everyone toils with finding themselves and that loving someone won’t always help them find their identity. She uses many symbols to help describe this struggle.
