Janie's Voice In Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neal Hurston

Zora Neal Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God features a young black girl named Janie Crawford and her journey to self-discovery. The novel is actually Janie’s reflection of how she finds her voice. One day, a sixteen year old Janie was watching a bee and pear tree’s blossom, which she equates to marriage and awakening. Janie, filled with the “oldest human longing--self revelation”, runs outside “seeking confirmation of the voice...Waiting for the world to be made” ( Hurston 7,11). Janie is always searching out for love, which she feels like will lead her to finding herself, through the oppressive, silencing, and judgmental society she grows up in. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, to show how Janie learns how to control her own voice,

Because her grandmother’s past experiences including slavery and rape, all she wants for Janie is security. This security takes form through Brother Logan Killicks, the farmer with sixty acres of land . Although Janie does not love him, she wants to respect her grandmother’s wishes and pushes down her own opinions. Janie comes to later regret her decision of entering the loveless marriage that she feels her Grandmother emotionally pushed onto her. Logan is an older man, and he is used to his life on the farm expecting Janie to follow suit. He pampers her, but still Janie, although trying to, does not love him because he is not what she wants. An exhausted Logan stops trying to win her over, and instead gets a mule for her to help farm with. In this marriage of convenience, both members are left discontented in this one-sided affair. Janie is utterly disappointed that her first dream of marriage is dead and “so she became a woman”

She is still in her loveless marriage, when he enters promising a new future rich of experience. Joe is going to what becomes Eatonville, to become a “big voice”(28). Janie, first unsure about disrespecting her grandmother’s wishes, finally accepts deciding she wants a new chance. On the way there, Joe speaks no romantic words to her, but does buy her sweets. This soon becomes the pattern of their relationship, as he fills her with wealth, but robs her of her own intellectual right. As they reach Eatonville, Joe secures the position of mayor, which also helps him achieve his big voice. Joe’s big voice ultimately pushes down Janie’s own quest for voice. Joe treats Janie as a trophy wife. Joe often calls Janie “Mrs. Mayor”, robbing Janie of even her own identity apart from him (46). In his mind, Janie’s place is to represent the authority he holds and that is it. He considers Janie to be daft, and always controls her even to the point of making her tie a rag on her hair. Janie “[goes] through many silent rebellions”, but chooses to keep silent in order to avoid conflict. Janie is not using her voice to empower herself, but instead she is debasing her voice’s value. Eventually, Joe’s degradation causes to Janie to finally retaliate, a pivotal point in Janie’s discovery of voice.Joe is weakened by Janie’s retaliation and his liver failure, and soon succumbs to death, but not before Janie realizes something. She realizes that