In the last chapter Jody and Janie got into a huge fight in the store which consisted of many verbal and physical attacks. In chapter 8 after the fight Jody moves into another room into the house. During this time Jody’s health begins to deteriorate along with their relationship, they stop talking altogether and Jody stops eating the food she cooks. Janie then decides that Jody needs to see a real doctor, instead of the ones that he was seeing who offered “miracle cures”, so she sent one from Orlando. After assessing Jody he determines that his kidneys had stopped working and that he was dying. After learning of his fate, Janie decides that she wants to see Jody one last time, when she goes to talk to him they get into one last argument
By the end of the story, Janie has accomplished finding and conquering self-actualization, she has reached her enlightenment through the her marriages to Logan, Jody, and Tea Cake. It is apparant when she tells Pheoby, “You got tuh go there tuh know there..Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves" (Hurtson 183).
What is one’s idea of the perfect marriage? In Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has a total of three marriages and her best marriage was to Tea Cake. Janie’s worst and longest marriage was to Joe Starks where she lost her dream and was never happy. The key to a strong marriage is equality between each other because in Janie’s marriage to Joe she was not treated equally, lost apart of herself and was emotionally abused, but her and Tea Cake's marriage was based on equality and she was able to fully be herself.
But Janie is young and her will has not yet been broken. She has enough strength to say "No" and to leave him by running away with Joe. At this point, Janie has found a part of her voice, which is her not willing to be like a slave in her husband's hands. After Janie marries Joe, I think that she discovers that he is not the person she thought he was.
In chapters seven and nine of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Heale Hurston writes about a fews years later and Janie feels hatred and spirit lost. She does her duties for Jody and stays silent, wanting to leave him but feels unattractive. Janie notices that Jody looks and acts a bit old, his body is changing and he has trouble moving around. Jody also notices this and makes rude remarks about Janie’s age and appearance and to ignore his. As Jody grew older, his verbal attacks become more frequent because of this he lashes out his rage by hitting Janie and kicking her out of the store. Soon Jody dies, leaving Janie- wealthy, owner of the store, and mourning. She wears her hair in a braid again and examines her feelings. Now, men approaches Janie because she is
Until one day, towards the end of their long marriage, when Jody made a very mean comment about Janie's body. She came back with, "When you pull down yo' britches, you look lak de change uh life." After these words came out, Jody hit her. These harsh words could never be forgiven. At the end of their marriage, before Jody died she finally told him her feelings.
The next man that Janie confides in is Joe Starks. Joe in a sense is Janie's savior in her relationship with Logan Killicks. Joe was a well kept man who worked for "white-folks" all his life and had earned enough money to move himself to a town called Eatonville that was run completely by black people. Janie meets Joe while she is still married to Logan and she begins to lean on him ever so slightly. She has wanted to leave Logan, and she wouldn't have if Joe had not come along. Joe convinced Janie that he would be better off for her by telling her, "Janie, if you think Ah aims to tole you off and make a dog outa you, youse wrong.
When Jody comes into Janie's life, idealistic love definitely shows through. The idealistic attributes of the relationship show from the very beginning when they met. The relationship started with them running away together and “falling in love” within two weeks. They didn’t even know anything about each other when Jody swooped Janie away, proving that their relationship lacked in the realistic area. Next in the relationship, when they did know each other, Janie realized she did not always enjoy spending her life with Jody a lot of the time. Jody treats his relationship as he has the control and Janie has no say. With him constantly putting Janie down, many times popped up that Janie did not see life with him as enjoyable. The relationship qualifies for the life Nanny wanted for Janie, with him having money, providing for Janie, and making sure she has security, but the realistic aspects of the relationship lacked. Janie never knew what love truly looked like with her Nanny’s expectations running through her head up to this point in her life. When Janie and Jody's relationship progressed Jody's rude comments and degrading words towards women came about many times. This relationship seems to really progress Janie in the way that she realizes what she wants and doesn't want in next relationships. This relationship has parts of it that have realistic and idealistic characteristics of love. The realistic aspects
In “Who Shot Johnny” by Debra Dickerson, Dickerson recounts the shooting of her 17 year old nephew, Johnny. She traces the outline of her life, while establishing a creditable perception upon herself. In first person point of view, Dickerson describes the events that took place after the shooting, and how those events connected to her way of living. In the essay, she uses the shooting of her nephew to omit the relationship between the African American society, and the stereotypic African American society.
Hurston provides some hints about Joe's true nature through the limiting and subjugating names he calls Janie when they first meet. He calls her "'lil girl-chile'" and "'pretty doll-baby'" (48-49), indications of the role that he will want her to play once he becomes mayor of Eatonville. When Jody names her in the socially prescribed role of "wife," he says, "'Ah wants to make a wife outa you'" (50). He clearly places himself in the position of power by his naming Janie. When Janie tries to name him, substituting the more affectionate "Jody" for "Joe," he is pleased, but still controls the naming. He asks her to "'Call me Jody lak you do sometime,'" and after she starts a sentence with his new name, he cuts her off with "'Leave de s'posin' and everything else to me'" (50). Janie is satisfied to stop "'s'posin'" for the tim...
When Janie became the mayor’s wife things have change for her. In the beginning of chapter 7 Hurston describes Janie as being a ‘rut in the road’ ever since she has gotten that title of being the mayor’s wife. “ For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Somethings she stuck out into the future, imaging her life different from what is was, But mostly she lives between her hat and her heels , with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods-come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value” (pg 76). This metaphor shows how the relationship between
In the end, Janie found herself being defined by other people, so to say Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake. During her marriage to Logan, Janie is viewed as a spoiled and non-hard working girl that needs to learn what it means to make a living. In her marriage to Joe, Janie is only needed for her outward appearance for him to define as his possession; never did he consult her about what she wanted. In both of these relationships she was forced to be something that she was not. Once Tea Cake came along everything had changed; going from following another man’s orders to being able to live a fun-loving life. Throughout the time she spends with him, finally free from being defined by someone else, Janie Crawford discovers who she is and what love is.
Logan is one of the first characters to make a comment about Janie’s class. He says “Considerin’ youse born in a carriage ‘thout no top to it, and yo’ mama and you bein’ born and raised in de white folks back-yard.” (Hurston 30). Logan means that he is of a higher social class than Janie because she was a slave for the Whites for a large majority of her life. Once again, Janie holds this idea as true, until she meets Jody. When Jody gets elected as mayor, Janie and his position on the social class stratification gets moved up. However, Jody becomes a changed man and their relationship becomes strained. Janie tells Jody about his position on mayor, “You’se always off talkin’ and fixin’ things, and Ah feels lak Ah’m jus’ markin’ time” (Hurston 46). Janie immediately does not like their new social position. It is taking time away from them being together as Jody is constantly attending to problems of the town. Her ideas on the higher position stay the same even into her relationship with Tea Cake, because he belonged to a lower
Jody’s treatment towards Janie really shows the male dominance that is expected “Jody stifles Janie's development as he silences her and keeps her from participating in the town's talk on the porch of their store” (Diane Telgen and Kevin Hile). Jody barely give Janie any freedom and publicly talks down to her. Even Tea Cake who is so different from Jody tries to prove that he is the dominate in the relationship. This is shown what Tea Cake says”Ah didn’t whup Janie ‘cause she done nothin’. Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss.”
In such cases, when he would usher her off the front porch of the store, when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt Boner’s mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she tie up her hair in head rags while working in the store, “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT shown in the store” (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the community and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over the course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when they got this way.
The next man Janie has to lean on is Joe Starks. He was a kind of salvation for Janie. He was a well-dressed black man who had worked for “white folks” all his life and had earned enough to travel to a place where black people ran the town. Janie met Joe while she was still married to Logan. She wanted to leave Logan, but I do not think she would have if Joe had not come along. Joe convinced her that He would be better for her to depend on by telling her, “Janie, if you think Ah aims to tole you off and make a dog outa you, youse wrong. Ah wants to make a wife outa you.”(p.28) Janie took this invitation as a way to leave Logan without losing the dependency she needed.