Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

Janie's prayer is answered with her next husband, Jody Starks. He is the man who fills the voids of loneliness and love, and continues her development as a woman. When they first met, Janie was convinced that Jody believed she was a very special person because of the compliments he gave her. For two weeks, before they married, they talked and Janie believed that Jody "spoke for change and chance" (28). The problem Janie had with Jody was that he did not treat her as equal. He would not let her speak in front of people, teach her to play checkers, or participate in other events. Janie notices the problem early in the relationship and confronts Jody about it when she says "it jus' looks lak it keeps us in some way we ain't natural wid one 'nother. You'se always off talkin' and fixin' things, and Ah feels lak Ah'm jus' markin time. Hope it soon gits over" (43). Janie realizes that she cannot be open with Jody and that he is not the same man she ran off with to marry. Jody has many of his own interests, and none of them are concerned with Janie. "She found out that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him ... She was saving up feelings for some man that she had never seen" (68). Jody only gave material goods to Janie. She knew she

Near the beginning of the book, Janie develops an idealistic view of love whilst lying underneath a pear tree. She is young and naïve, enthralled with the beauty of spring. She comes to the conclusion that marriage is the ultimate expression of love and finds herself pondering why she does not have a partner. In the rashness of her hormone clouded brain, she is drawn to Johnny Taylor, who is nearly a stranger. This is her first experience formulating ideas about

Even if Janie went through a lot of changes in her life she still did not change herself in some aspects. It sometimes seems as if she did not really learn from the mistakes she made in

She marries him because he starts seeing her secretly at her current home with Logan Killicks. He convinces her to run away with him to Eatonville where they establish a town. Their relationship starts very loving and close, but as time passes their love fades away slowly. Jody is a man who needs power and rule to satisfy him; therefore, he seems to be a bit bossy. He was in charge of the town, the store and more and “They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the own bowed to him.” (Their Eyes Were Watching God 50). At the end of their marriage Jody gets sick and dies. Janie is left a widow for six months until she meets Tea Cake, a store

First, Janie, the main character, starts off living and being taken care of her grandmother, Nanny. She later grows up to become married, but their relationship is not genuine because her grandmother wanted her to marry the man. Janie meets a man called Joe Starks and they run off to a town called Eatonville where Joe becomes Mayor and blinded by his power. He becomes violent and domestically abuses Janie. Joe would be manipulative and isolate her from the rest of the town because she was "high-class." They live on to become older, and he eventually dies due to a sickness he needed to have checked two years earlier, but it was too late.

Their Eyes Were Watching God was written in 1937 by Zora Neale Hurston. This story follows a young girl by the name of Janie Crawford. Janie Crawford lived with her grandmother in Eatonville, Florida. Janie was 16 Years old when her grandmother caught her kissing a boy out in the yard. After seeing this her grandmother told her she was old enough to get married, and tells her she has found her a husband by the name of Logan. Logan was a much, much older man. This book later follows Janie through two more marriages to Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. All three marriages extremely different from one another, along with Janie’s role in each marriage. Janie always had her own individual personality, her true self, but she also had an outer personality, the person she would pretend to be for each of her husbands. The Book took us through a journey of each of these marriages and through the journey of Janie finding herself.

Janie’s outward appearance and her inward thoughts contrast following Joe’s death. She finally frees herself from his control only after he dies as she, “…tore off the kerchief…and let down her plentiful hair” (87). In freeing her hair, Janie begins to free herself from others’ control and social norms. However, she chooses to keep it tied up until after Jody’s funeral in order to keep appearances that she is grieving his passing in front of the townspeople. However, on the inside, Janie doesn’t really feel any sorrow and “sent her face to Joe’s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world” (88). It is only after Joe’s elaborate funeral that Janie shows her first act of freedom by burning “every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist” (89). She chose to let her hair be free from his domination, thus freeing herself from him overall and allowing herself to move onto the next journey in her life.

Janie starts off the novel as a adolescent and experiences her first relationship. It is an arranged marriage because the man has a high status in the colored community. He is known as Logan and is much older

These chapters show Janie's initial happiness with Joe, followed by her dissatisfaction with Joe as he starts to treat her like his property, because of her gender. Janie feels defeated by her search for love as she is trapped in a loveless relationship. Joe's control over Janie actually makes her a stronger and more independent woman.

All through the novel Janie travels through valuable life experiences allowing her to grow as a woman. Janie at first has a difficult time understanding her needs rather than wants, but as she continues to experience new situations she realizes she values respect. Janie’s first two marriages turned out to be tragic mistakes, but with each marriage Janie gained something valuable. When Janie is disrespected in her second marriage with Joe Starks, he publicly humiliates her, disrespecting her as a wife and woman. This experience forced Janie to come out of her comfort zone and stand up for herself.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, written in 1937, is about a African american girl named Janie Crawford who grew up in a white household. Through her transition to womanhood she wanted to experience true love, which set her on a quest to do so. Her grandmother arranged a marriage for her, which Janie wasn't so happy about. The story follows her growing as a person and her many experiences with her marriages. Each impacting her emotionally and making her the woman she becomes at the end of the book. Towards the ending of her book, after being harmed emotionally, and sometimes physically by her past husbands she meets a man named Tea Cake, much younger than her. She fell in love with him and

Janie deals with death, disappointment, and life's unpredictability. Not only did Janie manage to survive these life experiences, but she thrived in them. Her life experiences taught her that she was was worth something, and that there was something worth living for. More importantly, she learns that she has a voice and that she can use it.

Janie starts with how her Nanny raised her all by herself. When she was a baby, her grandmother cares for the young one due to the fact that her mother runs away and her father is killed, leaving Janie as an orphan. Her granny cared for her up until Janie was in her mid-teens. Her nanny didn’t want to die and leave Janie to suffer, so she arranged a marriage for her with an older farmer that could hopefully take good care of her. Janie doesn’t agree with the arranged marriage but still goes for it. Janie and her new husband, Logan Kellicks, don’t have a good start in their marriage. He isn’t even into her and treats her horribly. While Janie is stuck with her selfish new husband, she meets Joe Starks, a man who is good with words. They both have an instant connection and run off with each other and marry, returning to Janie’s home town. Joe, who Janie calls Jody, owns a store in the small town. Just like her other marriage, Janie and Jody start having conflicts and are constantly fighting. She wants to leave him but isn’t able to because Jody doesn’t accept her suggestion, and is basically stuck with him. After some time, Jody gets ill. When his in his death bed, Janie gets the opportunity to tell Jody all the anger she was holding inside, and moments after that he died. Janie is left with Jody’s store, which she decides to sell and leave her town again. The town had seen it wrong for

Throughout history, the aspiration to accomplish one’s dreams and gain self-fulfillment has been and continues to be prevalent. Consequently, one’s reactions to the obstacles propelled at them may define how they will move forward in search of achieving their goals. Reaching one’s full potential is certainly not an easy conquest. Zora Neale Hurston, an especially noteworthy African American author, uses her astounding piece of literature, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to illuminate the path to discovering what is truly valuable in life. She uses the character, Janie Woods, who endures some of the greatest hardship imagined to elucidate the ways in which hindrance, although discouraging, only makes one stronger. Accordingly, Hurston argues

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, she tells the story of a young woman named Janie Crawford and her journey in discovering love and her own self through multiple marriages and trials. Janie grew up mixed race and did not realize that she was black until she saw a photo of herself. Janie’s grandmother was the one who raised her after her mother abandoned her. Nanny, which is what Janie called her, would do anything for Janie but being brought up as a slave, Nanny’s view of the world was dark and scary. But her one desire for Janie was to marry a man who could provide security and social status for her. Due to Nanny’s desire Janie marries an older farmer named Logan Killicks. Janie thought by marrying him that she could learn how to love and eventually love Logan, but she was miserable in the marriage and did not love him. Then one day a man named Joe Starks comes into town and flirts with Janie.