Their Eyes Are Watching God Character Analysis

In the novel “Their eyes were watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s love changes throughout the course of her three marriages from security to actual love. Throughout time Janie was seeing changes in her first marriage. “Long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking rhymes to her.” “He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it”( Hurston 26). Since Logan stopped showing interest in her, like not showing the love he once did, Janie knew that she wasn’t in love with logan and he was not the one for her. This shows that Janie has yet to feel in love with someone. In Janie’s second marriage she has a feeling of betray. Why must Joe be so mad with her for making him look small when he did it

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Janie was married three times . To three different men. All the men treated her differently, and showed her different kinds of love. Janie finally found love with her third husband.Throughout the novel, Janie experiences with love and treatment was totally not the same.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed us to better understand the restraints that women in society had to deal with in a male dominated society. Her marriage with Logan Killicks consisted of dull, daily routines.  Wedding herself to Joe Starks brought her closer to others, than to herself.  In her final marriage to Vergible Woods, also known as Tea Cake, she finally learned how to live her life on her own.  In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie suffered through many difficult situations that eventually enabled her to grow into an independent person.

The story often told in relation to character growth is one of adolescence. However, in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist, Janie, has a personal growth that parallels her understanding of romantic relationships and transpires from her young adulthood well into her middle age. As time passes and Janie has different relationships with the men around her, her images of herself and what a meaningful relationship consists of are revised. Janie’s relationship with Joe is transformative in the sense that by evaluating their relationship, Janie is really evaluating her growth and ambitions as a woman. While her transformation within the context of her relationship with Joe creates a sense of closure because she handles his death as an escape to be her own person, her identity as an independent woman is a result of enduring an

“Once you’ve matured, you realize silence is more powerful than proving a point.” Janie accepts her relationship with Jody and Logan and understands the true meaning of what marriage and love is. However, this surprisingly shifts because Janie ends up feeling restrained. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neal Hurston uses metaphors to convey Janie as complex as she accepts her marriage to Jody and the feeling of being restrained due to expressing her true emotions. Hurston uses metaphors to reveal Janie's acceptance of what marriage and love truly is with Logan and Jody.

Love may blind some but for others it opens eyes. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Kneale Hurston, the main character Janie, lives an arduous life of trying to find what love really is. Throughout her three marriages, Janie develops into a strong woman due to her own ignorance, being submissive, and love.

In the novel of “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Hurston, exhibits a various of characteristics throughout the novel. The author reveals each unique character that have personalities distinct from one another. The two dramatic foils that I will showcase are Joe Starks and Logan Killicks to reveal and highlight the traits of Tea Cake. These characters shows how their traits can reveal the other's characteristics throughout their differences. The message that associates and conveys with these characters is how personalities and traits can reveal the perception of how one views gender and status.

Within the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God the main character Janie Crawford came into many relationships throughout her life, but three of those many made a drastic change in her life. With her first marriage to Mr. Logan Killicks which was not a man she wanted to marry at such a young age. Her second marriage being to Mr. Joe Starks, who she loved. Although their love was soon to run short. Her last and most unforgotten marriage was to Mr. Vergible Woods also known as Tea Cake.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, we see Janie Crawford’s quest for spiritual fulfillment parallel numerous aspects of Joseph Campbell’s philosophy on conventional heroes throughout literature. Although Janie may stray from the masculine role of a knight slaying a dragon; through being stripped away from her environment, realizing her insignificance in the world, and overcoming obstacles along the way overtime we see Janie fit the mold of a heroine.

Love is a life-changing event. It is an event that causes you to embrace another person in your life. It can be a positive or a negative experience for a man or woman. It is a cycle of connection then death, however; some people will not last to death due to death of divorce. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie explores the themes of love, beauty, and evolves into the woman that she is at the end of the novel through three different marriages. When Janie gets married to all three men, she loves them progressively as she goes from one marriage to the next;however, in the end she ends up loving Tea Cake more than any of her past husbands.

Some people may have a different opinion on what makes a good husband, but there are some basic traits that everyone can agree on like selflessness, the ability to provide for the other, and most importantly actually loving and caring for each other. Many people look for a spouse with at least some of these qualities. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the main character, Janie, spends her lifetime looking for a man with all of these qualities. Janie marries Logan Killicks first by the arrangement of her grandmother.

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie has allowed the audience to better understand the limitations, and emotional challenges that women had to deal with in a male dominated society. Janie’s relationship with her first husband, Logan Killicks, consisted of tedious, daily routines. Her second husband, Joe Starks, brought her closer to others, than to herself. In her third and final marriage to Tea Cake, she eventually learned how to live her life on her own. Janie suffered through many difficult situations that changed her as a person, and her opinion on love.

Albena Azmanova writes  about what the struggles for the new and old feminist movement were this about the feminist movement:

At first, Janie thought that loving someone meant you were married to them. Janie believed that she would love Logan because they were married as that was what Nanny had told her. In the few days before she would be with Killicks, Janie thought “Yes, she would love Logan after they were married… Husbands and wives always loved each other” (Hurston 21). Since Nanny had always told her that a marriage would make her happy, that’s what Janie thought. She had no feelings towards Logan, yet she held on to the hope that they appear once they were husband and wife.

The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard