The Ropes that Used to Tie Her Down

Poet Edgar Allen Poe once said, “I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.” Poe means that one must not buckle to the pressures of the world that beat down on each person. The bearing of the harshness that people inflict upon others, the people who cannot seem to find an anchor in life. Janie fights the constant tugging and pulling of everyday life, and the people trying to make her something that she is not. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston shows that Janie is positively affected by her loved ones’ deaths because each death teaches Janie something new that helps her get back up on her feet, and throw something back at the world.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is positively affected by Nanny’s death, Janie's late grandmother; and Joe and Tea Cake, Janie's late husbands, because as the road goes on, Janie learns something new that makes her stronger with each task she faces, and each death she comes across. The narrator says, "She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her" (89). This shows that Nanny does not care if Janie finds love or not, because Nanny just wants Janie to have someone to look after her when she dies. When Nanny dies, Janie sees that Nanny is not there to watch her carefully, so Janie does what she dreams of her whole life, to find love. In this story, Zora Neale Hurston shows that Janie is positively affected by Nanny’s death because Janie now has the ability to live her love life like she wanted to...

... middle of paper ...

...opped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. .... Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine" (90). Every time Janie tries to show who she really is, someone new comes into her life and takes that glimmer of freedom and sovereignty away from her.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is positively affected by her loved ones’ deaths because each death teaches Janie something new that helps her get back up on her feet. I believe the lesson to be learned here is that one must be proud of what they are and who they are. Also, one must always stand up for what they believe in.

Works Cited

Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.