Their Eyes Were Watching God Character Analysis

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. Eventually reaching this non lasting desired horizon with one of them, she becomes satisfied even if her happiness was comprised of a shortage.

In the novel, Their eyes were watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston, the character who I believe sacrificed the most would be, Janie. At the age of sixteen, She was forced into marriage, which had caused her to give up her innocence. Throughout the novel, she is viewed as a strong, powerful, and a hopeful woman, who is degraded and belittled by men. In the end, Janie married Tea Cake who showed her the way life should of been and learned what it was like being loved by a man who had not taken her for granted.

The story Cancer by Janice Deal is told from third person limited point of view. The author focuses primarily on the one character Janine, to the exclusion of the other characters. We know very little of the other characters, Janine’s coworkers and her male friend, but we are armed with a plethora of information about Janine. We get to know her intimately.

During Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie had three husbands. Two of which died, and the other she left for the second. It is not a hard question to answer when asked which husband was best for Janie. The first husband, Logan, was an older man that worked as a farmer. The wedding was set up by Janie’s grandmother in order for her to ensure Janie had a stable life as she grew up. Even though Logan was not a bad man, Janie did not love him, and ended up leaving him for her second husband, Jody. Now, Jody was a great man who had ambitions and treated everyone the way they should have been treated in the beginning, but that didn’t last very long. A few years into the marriage, Jody started beating Janie because of his own insecurities that were too much for him to control. The main two of these insecurities would be jealousy and his own aging body. These two things do not go very well when mixed with having a beautiful and young wife. Even though Jody had started beating Janie, she stuck with him for twenty years until

Grannie forces her to marry Logan, but Janie stands up for herself when she decides to leave him after Grannie dies. Throughout the novel Janie is looking for love, and she

Foster develops the concept that an illness is never just an illness in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. This is evident in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God through the symbolism of the illnesses that impact Janie’s life. Foster explains that a prime literary disease “should have strong symbolic or metaphorical possibilities” (Foster 224). Hurston utilizes this concept in her novel, the characters developing illnesses that represent Janie’s freedom and independence. Janie, bound to her husband, Jody, and obliged to do as he asked, looked for a way to freedom, but only felt more trapped. Her path to freedom finally appeared when Jody began to have kidney failure. On his deathbed, Janie was finally able to stand up to him, commenting that “ all dis bowin’ down, all dis obedience under yo’ voice- dat ain’t whut Ah rushed off

The stories Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin all center around three different women and their different life experiences. Each story also tells how the lives of these three women are affected by their husbands. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” along with Janie and Mrs. Mallard each have different relationships with their husbands, but they each feel they are being controlled or oppressed by them.

In “Their Eyes were Watching God”, Zora Neale Hurston takes the reader through Janie’s journey from her childhood to her marriages to Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake. During her marriages, Janie learns more about herself in each setting to reach self-realization.

The question of love is a complicated one. One that Janie thought she had the answer too. She thought the answer to her troubles of finding love was to just marry someone. She later found out that this wasn’t the case from her first two marriages. In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” a pivotal point in the novel is when Janie marries Tea Cake. This makes Janie learn that you should marry someone that you actually like to be with and that marriage doesn’t always mean love.

Janie 's first marriage with Logan Killicks was arranged, and forced upon by Nanny. Throughout the marriage Janie 's quest to find love was dismissed. Logan was just an obstacle to Janie 's long quest for true love. Hurston writes, “The morning air was like a new dress... that made her feel the apron tied around her waist” meaning that Hurston uses a metaphor of a dress to describe

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.

Tea Cake and Janie headed to the Everglades in hopes of Tea Cake finding a job. The money he earned would be used to get them whatever they pleased. When they arrived, “To Janie's strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new. Big Lake Okechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything” (Hurston 129). Most people would probably consider the Everglades rundown and ugly but Janie saw it positively. Janie, coming from a small, dirt road town, saw the Everglades as beautiful and flourishing; probably the reason she was described as having strange eyes. Higher class people of that time, not that there were many, would most likely consider it dirty and worthless. Considering the conditions of it being full of crops and rich soils it is a place of work to pick crops and plant new ones.

Nanny, Logan, and Joe all tried to control Janie in some way. Nanny forced Janie to get married to a man she didn’t love or want. Logan Killicks does almost everything for Janie, and as Nanny points out, “He’s kissin’ yo’ foot and ‘tain’t in uh man tuh kiss foot long. Mouf kissin’ is on uh equal and dat’s natural but when dey got to bow down tuh love, dey soon straighten up.” (p. 23) Joe was constantly controlling Janie, whether it was by making her cover her hair, or by not letting her spend time with the rest of the town. All the while, Janie struggles to gain her independence, so that she can find the one thing that she really wants in life, which is love. One scene from the book that shows Janie becoming more independent is when she stands up to Joe in front of the porch sitters. By doing this, Janie shows everyone that she doesn’t need Joe, and that she has a limit to how many times she will bow before him.

In the novel “ Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Hurston their are a few key points in the main character’s life, Janie were after that moment her life either takes a turn for the best or for the worst. This is something people can all relate to because it happens to all of us whether we realize it or not. There are some decisions people make without thinking that change our whole lives forever. All of her key decisions seem to correlate with her being happy or trying to be a better version of herself.

During the late 19th century to the early 20th century women, especially black women, barely had a say in anything done within the family. Janie was different, she was able to control her own destiny simply by leaving Logan for Joe, and marrying Tea Cake after Joe’s death. Janie was raised by her grandmother due to the fact that her mother was not around during this time. Her grandmother was raised in a time where there was no hope for a chance at a better life. Her grandmother told Janie that black women were the mules of the world (Hurston 14) , representing that they are the lowest of society and are used by people. Although the main ideas are clear, the symbolization in each of Janie’s marriages with Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake all symbolize different ideas.