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Janie's growth in their eyes watching god
Janie's growth in their eyes watching god
Janie's growth in their eyes watching god
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In the nineteen thirties, women were raised with a strict criteria for the way they were required to live their lives. Regardless of love, women only strived to marry men who owned great deals of land. In their eyes, the more land their husbands owned, the more stability they were offered. They lived at their husband’s beck and call, and did not openly oppose to their thoughts. Women rarely strayed away from what was socially acceptable, and ignored what the main character, Janie, from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, could not. Although Janie is raised with this requirement as well, certain events throughout her life triggers a change in the way she views the way she lives her life. Merriam Webster defines awaken as to become conscious or aware of something. Throughout the oscillating process of her awakening, Janie gains self-realization as she seeks her horizons.
A pear tree awakens Janie’s self-fulfillment, sexual awakening, symbolizes her emerging womanhood, and gives her knowledge on love. Janie’s sexual awakening begins under a pear tree when she is sixteen years old in her grandmother’s back yard. Carla Kaplan describes Janie’s self-fulfillment as, “Nonetheless, Hurston's description of Janie's "revelation" is one of the sexiest passages in American literature: But Janie's chances of fulfillment seem very attenuated” (Kaplan 115). Hurston shows Janie’s sexual awakening with the use of bees, “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. So this was a marriage!” (11). The pear tree is Janie’s horizon and expe...
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...ng in love, she no longer yearns for the pear tree, but she now wants to live for herself.
Works Cited
Campbell, Josie P. Student Companion to Zora Neale Hurston. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. 63-68. Print.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Print.
Kaplan, Carla. "The Erotics Of Talk: `That Oldest Human Longing' In Their Eyes Were Watching God." American Literature 67.1 (1995): 115. Literary Reference Center. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Plant, Deborah G. "The inside Light": New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. 66-85. Print.
Singer, Michael A. "The Untethered Soul 12-Step Guide to Spiritual Awakening." Weblog post. Oprah.com. OWN, 01 Aug. 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Harper Perennial Modern Classics: Reissue Edition 2013
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Sweat." Norton Anthology of Southern Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: Norton, 1998.
Hurston, Lora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.
Their Eyes Were Watching God. By Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Bantam-Dell, 1937. xv.
Works Cited Their Eyes Are Watching God
---. "Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston - Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993
...re Watching God’.” The Southern Literacy Journal 17.2 (Spring 1985): 54-66. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Feb. 2011.
"SparkNotes:Their Eyes Were Watching God: Study Questions & Essay Topics." SparkNotes. Barnes and Nobles , Web. 7 May 2014. .
Wright, Richard. "Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston - Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K. A. Appiah. New York: Amistad, 1993
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.
Zora Hurston was an African American proto-feminist author who lived during a time when both African Americans and women were not treated equally. Hurston channeled her thirst for women’s dependence from men into her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of the many underlying themes in her book is feminism. Zora Hurston, the author of the book, uses Janie to represent aspects of feminism in her book as well as each relationship Janie had to represent her moving closer towards her independence.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Sweat.” The Custom Library of American Literature. John Bryant. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2008. 440-445.
Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a nave sixteen-year-old, finds the possibilities of love, sexuality, and identity that are available to her. This image, forever reverberating in her mind through two unsuccessful marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, is what keeps Janie's spirit alive and encourages her quest for love and life. " It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep" (10). Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. The first tiny bloom had opened.
Zora Neale Hurston’s writing embodies the modernism themes of alienation and the reaffirmation of racial and social identity. She has a subjective style of writing in which comes from the inside of the character’s mind and heart, rather than from an external point of view. Hurston addresses the themes of race relations, discrimination, and racial and social identity. At a time when it is not considered beneficial to be “colored,” Hurston steps out of the norm and embraces her racial identity.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper and Row. 1937. Revised Ed. Perennial Library. 1990.