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Character analysis of spunk zora neale hurston opportunity
Zora neale hurston short story analysis
Character analysis of spunk zora neale hurston opportunity
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The departure is when the protagonist is separated from the known and steps into the unknown. Janie Crawford is a 16- year- old girl living with her grandmother that is forced to transition her lifestyle to another. Her grandmother is very firm and distinctive on pressuring Janie to marry at a young age. Janie feels she is not ready, but she knows she wants to experience the love so the feeling of curiosity motivates her to agree with her grandmother's choice.
Tea Cake is introduced as a clever, younger man that Janie takes interest in. Janie clearly pays attention to this man because he is handsome and actually wants her to play checkers with him, which Jodie Starks always forbid her to do. She realizes this and explains, “Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play. That was even nice”
“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” Jane Austen. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston depicted the travels of Janie Crawford and her understanding of womanhood and freedom through her several marriages. Throughout the book, Hurston portrays the growth of Janie and her ideals, her hair being a major recurring symbol.
She sets Janie up to marry a man named Logan, who Janie does not love. Nanny tells Janie that marriage will keep her safe and secure, and that feelings can follow. She does this by saying things like: “Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all yo’ bawn days, and big protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat tuh you and call you Mis’ Killicks, and you come worryin’ me ‘bout love" (Hurston 27). Janie does not agree, and feels that her marriage to Logan lacks the most important component, love. Janie’s experiences with men are rough, and she does not find someone she truly connects with until she meets Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods, her third husband.
Janie not only defends her own body but she uses her voice to publicly insult Joe’s manhood as well. This humiliates him in front of his friends and causes him to lose respect from others, demonstrating the power and significance of her voice through the use of authentic dialect writing. Hurston also uses this line to signify Janie’s growth in self-assurance, as she speaks up despite the fact that she is perceived as inferior because women were discouraged from speaking up due to societal norms. Later in her relationship with Joe, she uses her voice to speak out against him again, this time shaming his emotionally abusive actions. Janie visits him on his deathbed and refuses to leave until she has spoken her mind.
She then returns to Eatonville, which brings the novel back to the beginning where she tells the story to Pheoby. Janie explains to Pheoby that she has come to the realization that she now knows who she truly is and that she can make her own happiness without a man. Tea Cake was the final reminder of her newfound
Set in Eatonville Florida, the story of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, is told from a third person narrator who recounts Janie Mae Crawford’s life to her best friend Phoebe Watson. Although the narrator isn’t Janie, it seems as if the narrator is framed around her character. Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama to a teacher and a Baptist preacher. Hurston moved to Eatonville Florida where the story takes place at a young age. Eatonville was known as the first all black incorporated town.
From a young age, many people are told that they have free will to do what they want and that their actions are what define them as a person; however, what people are told isn’t always the complete truth. In the realms of reality, individuals are always influenced by the people they spend the most time around to such an extent that it can change who they are as a person. Zora Neale Hurston 's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, epitomizes such truth through the development of Janie, a women who grows from not knowing her own race or what love even means to someone that has gained and lost countless relationships with people. Initially, she marries a wealthy man named Logan Killicks for financial security, but then runs away with a man named
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston contains many elements of racism, sexism, and elitism. Janie spends a lifetime of going from one relationship to the next in an effort to find out who she is. Along the way, there are elements of feminism, or the advocacy for gender equality, that touch her journey as she learns to make her own decisions and speak her mind. While Janie would not necessarily be the most typical conception of a strong feminist character, the context of the southern African American society of the 1920´s, Janie has made some decisive actions that would constitute her as a feminist character.
As Janie grows tired of the business end of the store she finds joy in the people that come. One day, Janie and Jody were sitting on the porch witnessing a humorous conversation between two men. Before she knew it, Janie was order back into the shop when she heard Jody tell her, “‘I god, Janie,’ Starks said impatiently, ‘why don’t you go on and see whut Mrs. Bogle want? Whut you waitin’ on?’ Janie wanted to hear the rest of the play-acting and how it ended, but she got up sullenly and went inside” (Hurston 70).
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neal Hurston, is a novel set in the early 1900s. The story follows the life of a young African American woman named Janie. Throughout the story, Janie goes through three-marriages. Within her marriages she faces years of loneliness, aggravating work, abuse, both verbal and physical, and betrayal. Along the way, Janie stayed on a consistent path of self discovery.
When Joe is on his deathbed, Janie reclaims her voice by rebelling against her forced identity, berating Joe for treating her as an object and for being “[t]oo busy listening tuh [his] own big voice” to be “satisfied wid [her] de way [she] was”
Janie’s relation with Joes till his death is another step to realize the real meaning of domination and liberation. The moment that Janie kills her third husband Tea Cake is a must in the novel. Although Tea Cake liberated Janie from two different kinds of domination for a period of time but he turns to practice another kind of domination through his physical abuse and his jealousy; so his murder is a momentary freedom for Janie. Janie in her development and growth contends to replace the old culture concept that places women’s wishes on material and economic demands by love and affection.
After doing this her grandma is at peace and can die knowing that she left Janie in the best possible situation. But in reality, Janie was lied to for her grandmother's benefit and she doesn't realize her grandma's true selfishness until the end of her second marriage when she realizes she still has never known what love feels like. This causes her to live the rest of her life being the woman she always wanted to be, free and in control of her own life, and after discovering this is when she finally finds her true love, Tea
The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston presents Janie Crawford: a woman who learns through her marriage that her mind has no importance to a man as she enters her second marriage. She leaps into the arms of a man named Joe Starks hoping for change and a new love to blossom. However, Janie was constantly trapped in a cage of submission by Joe constantly never being able to do what she liked; only being able to remain perched on a high chair looking over the world she longed to be a part of. This continued until Death took hold of his life 20 years later. “‘Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me’” says Janie to Joe as he lies on his deathbed.