Themes In Janie's Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes were Watching God, the themes in this novel are plentiful and are very complex. The themes in the novel that are based off of the context are reading are love, innocence, gender, race, and dreams. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel gave off a feminist impression where the common man & woman are equal. The whole idea of a feminist is to not be reliant on the satisfaction and will power of a man. Janie, the main character, throughout the novel she constantly searches for a man who can give her contentment and give her the things she doesn’t have. Janie battles the constant struggles to fulfill her dreams and aspirations through the novel.

One theme that came to mind from reading the context of the novel is love. The ultimate

Janie is very passionate about true love and believes it is directly connected with understanding as well as equality. If love where nonexistent in Janie’s life, her spirit will practically perish. An example of love in the novel is “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted at the floor” (Hurston). Janie is under pressure because she’s constantly thinking about marrying an ugly old man just to please her Nanny. In Janie’s mind, love is supposed to be found rather than arranged and trying to please her Nanny violates Janie’s perception on love. Janie is obsessive on the subject of love but unfortunately she doesn’t put the work into making it happen. She watches her surroundings where love happens and she doesn’t try to ignite her own flame for love. The theme of love is a crucial subject when reading In Their Eyes Were Watching God and the novel takes you on a roller coaster ride of emotions. Another theme that you will come across in the novel is innocence. When you think of innocence what do you think of? Innocence tied with youth, adolescence,

In the novel, men and women play different yet pivotal roles. Women in the novel are the weaker gender and are really mocked from how frail they are compared to men. The novel gives the impression that men are the elite gender in the relationship and will never amount to the aristocratic picture of the male gender. Tea Cake was the one man that gave hope to Janie on the subject of gender. Even though Tea Cake treated Janie as equal, he still has that power over Janie. Until his death, Tea Cake made sure he had a level of power of Janie. During the course of the novel, we witness Janie losing parts of her due to the dictation of male domination. An example of gender superiority as well as race is "So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule ud de world so fur as Ah can see” (Hurston). Nanny is describing how out of every complexion in the country, black women are vanquished by everyone else. White men are exorbitant in the hierarchy and are constantly looking down on black men. Gender is directly related to race from the superiority of white folk. The supremacy of the white folk messes with the mindset of the black folk and has stirred strife among the African-American community. An example of race In Their Eyes Were Watching God is