Janie struggles to find love in two of her three marriages with her husbands in the novel by Zora Neal Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God, 2006 generated through the culture of her grandmother’s generation. Grandmother spent her life trapped into a society cultivated by years of unhappiness due to her disposition of being an unmarried woman with a child, with hidden resentment of living alone and dying lonesome. The Grandmother who was the sole caregiver for Janie believes that marriage is what Janie needs. She thinks marriage has the answers to Janie’s wellbeing but Janie has her own thoughts and questions her grandmother’s wisdom and wonders, if so, “ Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the …show more content…
Ah hah uh lavish uh dat. Ah just didn’t never git no chance tuh use none of it. You wouldn’t let me.” “Dat’s right, blame every thing on me. Ah wouldn’t let you show no feelin’! When, Janie dat’s all Ah ever wanted or desired. Now you come blamin’ me (p.85).” Janie did not know how love is supposed to feel… it is the one thing she was in search of. Janie finds that she “ had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen (p.72).” Furthermore, she hunting and searching for a relationship, possibly a marriage where love can …show more content…
He fascinates her love for affection and plays with her emotions and connects her childhood and stories and dreams that makes her soul desires to share love, but he is not wealthy. He is a common man that works to earn his daily living. He shows Janie the beauty and simple pleasures of life with fishing, playing cards, and traveling away from her community; her culture. Janie likes what she feels when she is with Tea Cake and accepts marriage for the beauty that Tea Cakes promises to show her. In spite of the challenge, Janie is in love and wants to be with him forever, even at the beginning of her conversations with his doctor and she finds out that Tea Cake is going to die, “You mean he’s liable tuh die, doctah?” “Sho is. But de worst thing is he’s liable tuh suffer somethin’ awful befo’ he goes.” “Doctor, Ah loves him fit tuh kill.” Tell me anything tuh do and Ah’ll do it (p.177).” She is not willing to let him (love) go because he (it) feels right on
Janie wonders what the people in Eatonville would think of her being with a younger man, but laughs it off and doesn’t care because she is so happy with
Sanchez Pg.1 Perfection does not exist within the finding of a husband. Woman may unintentionally encounter several marriages and in the end it may seem like everything happens for a reason. Experiencing a horizon would be a blessing to protagonist Janie Mae Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. She is an African American woman who deals with hardships while being married to her three husbands Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake, each having their own effect on Janie.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford experiences many hardships that lead to her eventual satisfaction and fulfillment. As a young girl, Janie always felt she was missing a part of herself which could not be found through self advocated discovery alone, but by the presence of a companion that provided her with affection. As she sheds the majority of her innocence through various abusive marriages at an extremely young age, Janie’s dream may have been altered, but never ceased to exist. There was always hope in Janie’s mind that she would find a man that helped her complete herself, and allow her to become liberated from the tiring desire of discovering love for herself. As stated by Farah Mahmood Abbas,
In the early 1900s, Janie struggles to find her self worth. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, expands on the story of a girl who goes through many different relationships before finding herself. Janie faces emotional abuse, insecurities, and a variety of men. Her grandmother taught her many life lessons and engraved in her head that she needed to find a man to take care of her for the rest of her life. Janie grows through each relationship and soon comes to the conclusion that she is able to care for herself.
Throughout Janie’s life, she searched for real love, which she first envisioned under a pear tree at sixteen. Her kiss with Johnny Taylor started her journey of finding that love. It was then followed by her marriage with Logan Killicks, then Jody Starks, and finally Tea Cake Woods. Through her journey, she makes many sacrifices which are all worth it when she achieves her dream with Tea Cake. Although Tea Cake dies, Janie is at peace because she accomplished what she had dreamed of finding her entire life with him.
Janie could see Jody watching her out of the corner of his eye. ”(72) Janie was going into the store, but Joe wanted to make sure that she was doing what he wanted her to do. The judging of others and the jury behind them, make it hard for the people of Eatonville. One day you are on the porch the next you are
One of the biggest themes in, "Their eyes were watching God" is Janie’s quest for love and independence. Janie has a goal throughout the novel to find enlightenment within herself and reach the "horizon". She went through several relationships and absurd thoughts to do this, through her grandmother nanny and her three husbands. However, her third husband, Tea Cake plays a less substantial role in the progression of the novel but a significant role in Janie’s quest to reach her dream of love and security within herself.
Janie met Tea Cake while she was working at the grocery store. He was immediately attracted to her and her presence, she started talking to her while she worked. He fell for her and she did too, they enjoyed each other's presence and they ended up running away from the town they met to go to Lake Okeechobee where they live until the end. Janie was warned by the people in Eastville that she would end out like Ms. Tyler, she had also run away with a younger man, she was a widow left with money, and the younger man took all her money and she had to return to the town with no money. Janie was sure she wouldn’t end out like Ms.Tyler but she has that idea and fear in the back of her head.
”She felt very sad. She wanted to go to that party more than anything else in the world.” She says this to show the feelings of wanting. Liliana Heker uses feelings and emotions to show that people always want stuff.
It is evident that marriage is full of ups and downs, but the way couples manage these fluctuations in their relationship determines the strength of their connection. Both partners in a committed relationship must feel the same way and work equally as hard to push through potential obstacles. Being devoted to the relationship can ensure that the marriage will be able to survive the hardships and maintain a healthy, successful marriage. The emotional hardships and positives that a married couple endures on a daily basis are presented throughout the entirety of the poem, “Marriage”, by Gregory Corso. Corso’s poem explores the pressures and factors that influence marriage and sheds light on Updike’s short story about a couple facing divorce.
In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, we follow our protagonist, Janie, through a journey of self-discovery. We watch Janie from when she was a child to her adulthood, slowly watching her ideals change while other dreams of hers unfortunately die. This is shown when Jane first formulates her idea of love, marriage, and intimacy by comparing it to a pear tree; erotic, beautiful, and full of life. After Janie gets married to her first spouse, Logan Killicks, she doesn’t see her love fantasy happening, but she waits because her Nanny tells her that love comes after marriage. Janie, thinking that Nanny is wise beyond her years, decides to wait.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist Janie, is influenced by others to change her ideals. Hurston vividly portrays Janie’s outward struggle while emphasising her inward struggle by expressing Janie’s thoughts and emotions. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening the protagonist is concisely characterized as having “that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions,” as Janie does. Janie conforms outwardly to her life but questions inwardly to her marriages with Logan Killicks, her first husband, and Joe Starks, her second husband; Janie also questions her grandmother's influence on what love and marriage is.
The answers to her prayers came in the form of Tea Cake, a young man twelve years her junior who was a little infamous amongst the townspeople for his mischievous antics. Tea Cake loves Janie genuinely, and doesn’t try to keep her from being who she wants to be. Although he dies before he and Janie are able to spend many years together, marrying him has an effect on Janie that causes her to forget her past grievances, and consider herself as an independent person like she always hoped to be. After Tea Cake, Janie is a free woman in that she is no longer under the oppressive restraints that she once allowed to hold her back from a life she considers worth living.
Liberation and self-fulfillment within Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes were Watching God By Wael Fadhil Hasobi PhD Scholar English Dept Acharya Nagarjuna University Waelfadhil38@gmail.com 4-16-25E,Bahertpetha,Guntur,Andrah Pradesh Mobile:9676703836
In the current era, this would be seen as frivolous or naïve. During the setting of the book, marriage was common for wealth purposes, which caused quick unions to grow more frequent, as well. Over time, the idea that marriage should be about love was brought to light, causing the relationship between spouses