“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?” ― Anaïs Nin. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there are many lessons on a person's search for identity. The search of Janie’s identity throughout this book is very visible. The search has to do with her name and freedom for herself. As she goes through life, her search to find her identity took many turns. Some for the worse and some for the better. In the end she finally finds her true identity. Throughout her marriages with Logan, Joe, then Tea Cake, she figures out what she wants and how she wants to live her life. So in the end, she is happy and where she wants to be. In the early life of Janie, she grew up and lived with her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny and Janie got through life pretty well and were lucky enough to have the privilege to live in the yard of white folks. As Janie was growing up, she would play with the white children.¬ While she was at this age, she was faced a lot of criticism and was called many names. The name calling kept coming so much that soon everyone started calling her alphabet, "'cause so many people had done named me different names." Soon, she started piecing together what she knew of her odd identity. One day she saw herself in a photograph and noticed that she looked different from the other kids, that she had darker skin than the others, and she said, "before Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz just like de rest." From this point, Janie fell into somewhat of a downward spiral. This set her off of the path toward finding her own identity in society. Finally, when she was older Nanny saw her kissing some boy u... ... middle of paper ... ...r happiness and knowledge of her identity. In this novel, Zora Neale Hurston shows many points on her view of a woman's place in America in the twentieth century. One of the points that she makes is that women need to search for their independent identity. That women should not settle for a simple life of being put down and controlled by men. If women are dissatisfied in a marriage they need to move on toward the things that do satisfy them. She is also stating that women in the twentieth century can hold their own in life. They should become equals of men in work, because they are not the stupid weaklings that should be forced to fill a roll of subservience to men. Finally her last comment about women's place in America in the twentieth century is that women can be independent and don't have to lose their identity when they get married.
and she wants to protect her from harm and danger. Janie's life as a young
meantime she goes through a series of maturing experiences. She learns how to see her
Identity is something every human quests for. Individuals tend to manipulate views, ideas, and prerogative. Janie's identity became clay in her family and friends hands. Most noteworthy was Janie's grandmother, Nanny. Janie blossomed into a young woman with an open mind and embryonic perspective on life. Being a young, willing, and full of life, Janie made the "fatal mistake" of becoming involved in the follies of an infatuation with the opposite sex. With this phase in Janie's life Nanny's first strong hold on Janie's neck flexed its grip. Preoccupation with romantic love took the backseat to Nanny's stern view on settling down with someone with financial stability. Hence, Janie's identity went through its first of many transformations. She fought within her self, torn between her adolescent sanction and Nanny's harsh limitations, but final gave way and became a cast of Nanny's reformation.
Through her three marriages, the death of her one true love, and proving her innocence in Tea Cake’s death, Janie learns to look within herself to find her hidden voice. Growing as a person from the many obstacles she has overcome during her forty years of life, Janie finally speaks her thoughts, feelings and opinions. From this, she finds what she has been searching for her whole life, happiness.
The affect of Nanny is the marriage to her first of three husbands, Logan. He is a man that sees no wife in his relationship with Janie he sees a worker. The intelligence of Janie to realize this is a prime example of the capabilities that Janie possesses as an independent woman. Logan is the pollution to Janie's tree of life. He is good for one thing and that is delaying the inevitable; delaying Janie from realizing that she can be a woman with an inelegant thought not just a good house worker. He prevents the self-sufficient woman in Janie from reaching its potential.
others. In the beginning of the story she was always doubting herself and thinking she
Nanny is Janie’s grandmother who took care of her since her mother abandoned her as a baby. Nanny uses her power as an authority over Janie to make her marry Logan Killicks. Logan Killicks is Janie’s first husband and he is a man she does not want to marry. But Nanny forces her and tells Janie that a marriage for a black woman is about being stable (money and land) and marriage is not about falling in love. She says that love will come later in the marriage and so Janie listens and does as she is told. Instead Logan uses his power (him having money and land) over Janie by telling her she should be working in the field but she is too spoiled. Although he says this he still forces her to do labor around the house when he leaves to buy a new
In the beginning years of Janie’s life, there were two people who she is dependent on. Her grandmother is Nanny, and her first husband is named Logan Killicks. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, “Janie, an attractive woman with long hair, born without benefit of clergy, is her heroine” (Forrest). Janie’s grandmother felt that Janie needs someone to depend on before she dies and Janie could no longer depend on her. In the beginning, Janie is very against the marriage. Nanny replied with, “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, its protection. ...He done spared me...a few days longer till Ah see you safe in life” (Hurston 18). Nanny is sure to remind Janie that she needs a man in her life for safety, thus making Janie go through life with that thought process.
herself, and how she was brought up, as I think this has had a big
... that no matter what she does, she can never get her old life back, and in the end accept this fact and moves on with her new life in Elsewhere.
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.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” she expresses Janie’s home in many different ways. The saying, “You can leave home all you want, but home will never leave you,” simply suggests that home is a certain feeling or state of being. When it comes to Janie, home for her would be anytime she felt free, loved, or accepted which ties into the novel as a whole; anything the characters worried about or hoped for they looked unto God.
Not only are women expected to lead lives in which they depend on men to be happy and wealthy, but they are expected to do so with total obedience to the expectations of men. It is important to see how women react to the requests of men and how much freedom for thought and action they are allowed to have and what consequences occur when a woman disobeys what is asked of her.
Growing up, young Janie struggled with her own identity and a clear understanding of what love was. There is no way Janie could know who she was if she did not know where she came from. At the beginning of the second chapter Janie said “Ah ain’t never seen mah papa…mah mama neither,” (21) as we find out later on in the book, Janie’s father is a white man who raped her poor mother leaving her to live with her grandmother, Nanny. This only added to Janie’s confusion about who she was in the long run. In fact, she had spent so much time around the white children that she did not know she was black. Also during Janie’s early years, she became curious about what love was. Nanny provided her with love and protection, but that is not the love she wanted. One day in her early teen years Janie thought she finally had found out what love was with Johnny Taylor, a young boy, but her grandmother told her love was about “stability and money, “and had nothing to do with caring about the other person.
"Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of