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Their eyes were watching god characters
Their eyes were watching god characters
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The world a person experiences to is limited to the knowledge they are exposed to. Each time a human learns something new, they are able to better understand the things around them and are essentially living in a world much different than the one they lived in before. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie questions the existence of love and emotion in marriage. During the early 1900’s it was uncommon for a women to look for anything other than stability in a relationship. Janie knew there was something more than that and craved a connection and love, but did not know how to get that or what it was like. At that point of her life, she is living in an environment of limited knowledge. After a journey full of trial and error, she learns the answers to her questions about love and, in turn, begins to live in a very different world. Her journey can be analyzed as a hero’s journey, starting at her world of questions to a world of answers. At the beginning of the novel, Janie’s curiosity about the world is extremely evident. “Janie had no …show more content…
This mentoring is often done by someone other than the hero themselves. In Janie’s case, she must be her own mentor, because she does not have enough trust in “the tiny hearted” (Estes, no page number) to help her understand her future. Through this self-mentoring, she experiences many times of trial and error, especially with her first and second husbands. Her first husband, Logan, “ was desecrating the pear tree” (22) that held every hope Janie had of what love was like. Her second husband, Joe, was a similar challenge she had to surpass, as he promised her the world she dreamed of then slowly took it all away. Although both of her husbands contradicted her beliefs that marriage is more than just two people living together, her curiosity kept her motivated to find the answers she wanted; curiosity demands analysis from all angles and perspectives in order to be
The first ideas that Janie was exposed to were those of her. grandmother, a nanny of mine. Nanny saw that Janie was entering womanhood and she didn't want Janie to experience what her mother went through. So Nanny set. out to marry her as soon as possible. When Janie asked about love, she was. told that marriage makes love and she will find love after she marries Logan. Nanny believed that love was second to stability and security.
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, everyone has different ideas of what marriage is. In the end Janie learned marriage is what you make of it. Love can only be found when your beliefs match with an others idea. Even today people find out the hard way that they are not compatible and that one’s view of marriage is different. This can be seen every day between couples who separate and among others whose marriages last the rest of their lives. Life is a learning process and we must take the bad with the good. Instead of searching for a nourishing life, Janie searched for someone to rely on. Although they were different types of reliance, she jumped from person to person so that she would not have to face life alone.
In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author takes you on the journey of a woman, Janie, and her search for love, independence, and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit seems to constantly be disregarded, yet Janie continues to hold on to the potential of grasping all that she desires. In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Hurston illustrates the ambiguity of Janie’s voice; the submissiveness of her silence and the independence she reclaims when regaining her voice. The reclaiming of Janie's independence, in the novel, correlates with the development and maturation Janie undergoes during her self discovery.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, struggles to find herself and her identity. Throughout the course of the novel she has many different people tell her who she should be and how she should behave, but none of these ideas quite fit Janie. The main people telling Janie who she should be is her grandmother and Janie’s 3 husbands. The people in Janie's life influence her search for identity by teaching her about marriage, hard work, class, society, love and happiness. Janie's outlook on life stems from the system of beliefs that her grandmother, Nanny, instils in her during her life.
In today’s world, many people find it difficult to see the difference between idealistic and realistic love. Idealistic love and realistic love can remain challenging to see when two people lose themselves in the moment. In a realistic relationship the two companions become a team, they work together for each other rather than themselves. This comes through as a challenge when you can’t always tell if they other person does it for themself or the relationship. On the other hand, when you look back or watch from the sidelines, it can show through easily in many ways. In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Hurston does a really great job of showing the differences between realistic and idealistic
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
Janie sets out on a quest to make sense of inner questions. She does not sit back and
Zora Neale Hurston was a very prestigious and effective writer who wrote a controversial novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie whom is the dynamic character, faces many hardships throughout her life. Janie’s Nanny always told Janie who she should be with. Janie was never truly contented because she felt she was being constricted from her wants and dreams. Janie’s first two marriages were a failure. Throughout the novel, Janie mentions that her dreams have been killed. Janie is saying that men that have been involved and a part of her life have mistreated and underappreciated her doings. The death of her dreams factor Janie’s perception on men and her feelings of the future. Logan and Jody were the men who gave her such a negative attitude towards marriage. Once Tea Cake came along, Janie realized that there are men out there that will appreciate her for who she is. Janie throughout the novel, comes into contact with many obstacles that alter her perspective on men and life overall.
“She saw 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,” (11). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
In the book Their Eyes Where Watching God By; Zora Neale Hurston Janie the main character always has a man by her side. Throughout this book she was married three times to three different men. Janie all her life always had a man with her treating her poorly, or well she was never able to be happy alone, or achieve anything alone. Janie always has a man powering over her. We might think that Janie is a powerful women, because as described in the beginning of the book her goals are like the goals of men. She doesn't adjust their dreams like women tend to do, but rather she achieves her dreams one by one and stays hungry for the next.
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 to provide for her.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford, the protagonist, constantly faces the inner conflicts she has against herself. Throughout a lot of her life, Janie is controlled, whether it be by her Nanny or by her husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe Starks. Her outspoken attitude is quickly silenced and soon she becomes nothing more than a trophy, only meant to help her second husband, Joe Starks, achieve power. With time, she no longer attempts to stand up to Joe and make her own decisions. Janie changes a lot from the young girl laying underneath a cotton tree at the beginning of her story. Not only is she not herself, she finds herself aging and unhappy with her life. Joe’s death become the turning point it takes to lead to the resolution of her story which illustrates that others cannot determine who you are, it takes finding your own voice and gaining independence to become yourself and find those who accept you.
As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...
Janie’s attempts at achieving her own pear tree and fails, nevertheless this is done so that she can find for herself that adventure and life experiences are more important than love alone. It didn’t take Janie long to learn her first lesson but after she left Logan “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead” (Hurston 25). Janie sought to have her own “pear tree” which meant that she wanted a perfect relationship with a man, defining her as a dependant early on. Once Logan began demanding more of Janie and stretching that thin fabric that is Janie’s loyalty she left him, Janie will experiment with Jody and learn the same lesson. Hurston personifies the extent of Janie’s dream by stating that it is “dead” showing that Janie chases her dreams extensively and she will do this continually until she achieves her own horizon. When Janie lives with Jody she is suppressed and her search for perfect love is shattered once more except this time she learns how to defend herself from this malice, “You ain’t tried tuh pacify nobody but yo’self. Too busy listening to yo’ own big voice.” (Hurston 87). We see once more that Janie is denied of her grand dream and is taught another valuable lesson, how to defend herself. Janie demonstrates her independence as a woman by living without a man for the
The contrast of these two places reinforces the theme of a search for love and fulfillment. To see what an ideal situation for an independent woman like would be, Hurston must first show the reader what Janie cannot deal with. Hurston has her character Janie go on a quest, one that was begun the day she was forced to marry Logan Killucks. The contrast in the setting is similar to one between good and evil.