...December 2012 Long hair don’t Janie Many say that your hair describe what type of woman you are, A young girl who had long black hair was consider to be the most powerful and beautiful female of them all. Then her jealous sister cut her hair off and threw her hair out for all the townspeople. From then on the young girl was considered hopeless and ugly. In the novel, their eyes were watching god by Zora Neale Hurston. Janie is judge by her appearance, mostly her hair that symbolizes her womanhood. When Janie loses her voice, her hair gets tie up and when her hair is tie up she loses her beauty that reflects her womanhood. The character Janie is portraying as a beautiful woman, because of her light skin complexion, beautiful curves and long beautiful flowing hair. Janie looks can make any men fall in love. Janie’s hair represents her voice, mood, power and womanhood. When Janie comes back to Eatonville in her overalls, the townspeople knows that Tea Cake just took all her money and left her. “She sits high, but she looks low. Dat’s what ah say ‘bout dese ole women runnin’ after young boys” (Hurston, 3), Janie’s appearance as the townspeople critique when Janie arrives back to Eatonville wonders why a woman such as her age wear her hair down. Janie’s hair shows figures sexual attraction. Janie's hair illustrates her relationships with each of her husbands. Joe Starks, who is jealous and possessive, cannot bear the thought of other men enjoying the sight of her long, beautiful...
Words: 591 - Pages: 3
...main character and everyone in the story different. Oprah does a wonderful job at completely destroying the morals of the time period, and the symbols shown in the book. The movie changes relationships making the main character stronger and more independent. The beautiful love story shown by Oprah became a ridiculous rendition of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel missing key elements from the book. Oprah Winfrey completely disregards the moral fiber of the time period. In the movie some scenes got extremely graphic with the kissing and love making. These scenes...
Words: 1309 - Pages: 6
...Janie and Tea Cake first met eachother. Janie had been working at the store while everyone else had gone to a baseball game. Tea Cake had come into the shop to buy cigarettes and casually started up a conversation with Janie. The two clicked with each other and he offered to teach her how to play checkers. Janie had finally begun to feel as if she fit in again and did not feel as if she was being classed off just because she had been the mayor’s wife. I believe that Tea Cake helped Janie to break out of her shell and she finally realized she needed to stop caring about the other people in town and how they felt about her. I feel that Janie was finally beginning to become genuinely happy again after meeting Tea Cake because she felt accepted by him. I also believe that after meeting Tea Cake Janie came to the realization that it was finally time for her to move on and start her life up again. Evaluation/Analysis of Characters: In chapter eleven of the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, some people of the town had taken to notice Tea Cake and Janie hanging around one another quite often. Many people had come to Janie to warn her of Tea Cake and told her that he was only after her money. Janie...
Words: 2027 - Pages: 9
...Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there is an exploration of the paradigm of sexual identity from nature through the pear tree, the bee and the flower, and the hurricane. The film follows the transition from childhood to adulthood of Janie Crawford, a mixed girl of black and white. Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of the development of Janie's ideals of love and independence. As a child, Janie sees a bee pollinating a flower in the pear tree of her backyard and from there becomes determined to find true everlasting love. According to Robert Solomon, “This "traditionalist" definition of sexual identity has sometimes been associated with one or more of the following additional positions: that certain...
Words: 1259 - Pages: 6
...Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, is about a woman named Janie telling the story of her life to her friend, Pheoby. Janie, at sixteen, was on a quest for her ideal love and identity in Florida. Zora Neal Hurston portrays Janie after herself, as Hurston had a similar childhood to that in her story. Hurston had parents who were slaves and had lived in Eatonville when she was very young. She also had a fascination with nature, which added to the idea of Janie's idealized view of nature. Janie's journey to find what she was looking for was rough but she ultimately succeeded. In Their Eyes Were Watching God the author uses many symbols to characterize Janie's search for love and identity. In this story, Janie Crawford...
Words: 1468 - Pages: 6
...in the novel, reveals Janie’s thoughts of Tea Cake. Janie does not believe Tea Cake is dead as long as she can keep him alive with her memories of what they had. The reader can sense the passion coming from Janie when she thinks about her relationship with Tea Cake still alive. This shows how even after death, Janie still wants to keep Tea Cake with her in her heart and mind. He will only stop living when Janie ceases to think and feel for him. Janie is using imagery to show the reader visual images about her feelings of love and passion for Tea Cake. Throughout the relationship, Tea Cake showed Janie what love is about even through the hardships they both were still romantically involved with each other. He showered Janie with all that he could give to...
Words: 486 - Pages: 2
...to find and to keep, and for the main character Janie this was not what she imagined. When Janie is young she paints love to be this hallmark moment, where two people fall madly in love with a sexual desire for each other. “She was stretches on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold sun and the punting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and...
Words: 1035 - Pages: 5
...“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone.” (8) This powerful quote and many others are found in Zora Neale Hurston’s African American Literature Novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston writes of a young, light skinned, African American female named Janie who journeys through life trying to find the “perfect” relationship. As Janie goes through her life, she, along with her search, has taken turns for the worse and for the better. Janie has endured many conflicts through her relationships with Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake. Throughout Janie’s relationships with men, she discovered that she did not want to live a marriage life full of fear, unhappiness, and sorrow. Her ability to dream and to act on her instincts allowed her to truly find her happiness within her last relationship. As stated above, the...
Words: 1169 - Pages: 5
...Their Eyes Were Watching God: Womanist or Feminist? Throughout time, people have only analyzed literature through a feminist lens and neglected the womanist aspect of literature, often claiming that the text is feminist when it is truly a womanist novel. The fictional novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, has this effect on the general public. This novel is about a woman named Janie, who goes through life trying to find herself and love in 1930’s Florida. At a young age, Janie is forced to marry an older man named Logan Killicks, whom she does not love. Not soon after they are married, Janie decides to leave Mr. Killicks and run away with a man named Joe Starks. For years after, Janie lives in an abusive...
Words: 1792 - Pages: 8
...Their Eyes Were Watching God The novel their eyes were watching God is a story of an African-American girl called Janie Crawford. At the stage of adolescence, Janie comes across a bee pollinating a pear tree in her backyard and she becomes obsessed with finding true love. She then matures and grows emotionally through three of her marriages (Cheryl 5). Her first marriage is to, a farmer, Logan Killicks and it is arranged and carried on by Janie’s grandmother called Nanny. Logan proves to be a reliable but uninspired husband. He later gives Janie threats to kill her for being disobedient. Janie later leaves Logan for an ambitious man called Joe Starks. Upon their marriage, Janie is taken to Eatonville in Florida, which is among the first all-black city in America, by her husband Joe who is a mayor. Janie later realizes that her husband is very demeaning to women. He silences her when she speaks. He then accuses Janie of acting too younger than her age. Janie finds the situation she goes through unbearable, and she insults Joe’s manhood. When Joe was in his deathbed, Janie enters his room and speaks to him. After Joe dies, Janie stays widowed for some time, and she later meets another man, a fun-loving man whom she is twelve years older than and is called Tea Cake. Janie finds the true love she has been dreaming. They experience jealousy in their relationship but despite this, they are happy interacting with other workers while working in the fields. Tea Cake stays in...
Words: 2036 - Pages: 9
...Joe ever could. By comparison, he genuinely considers Janie’s as his equal. A consideration that leads to them spending more time together and growing in love. Tea Cake possesses the fundamental pieces that were lacking in both Janie’s prior relationships. Firstly, he sees no difference between Janie and himself. Intellectually, he considers themselves equals. As well as in the relationship, they share equal power. The initial sighting of this came from his simply teaching her to play checkers. A game that till this point had been reserved for other men yet enjoyed by Janie, from a distance. An enjoyment that she was prohibited to realise as a result of Joe’s banning her from the game. On the...
Words: 505 - Pages: 3
...ways: through the relationships of the main character's, her place in society, and her reflection of the self. Relationships are the basic units of society. The first relationships in life are familial; in this novel, Janie was raised by her grandmother. Like any parent, Janie's grandmother was always worried about her, not wanting Janie to grow up and have what she considered a bad life. "Ah don't want yo' feathers always crumpled by folks throwin' up things in yo' face. And Ah can't die easy thinkin' maybe the menfolks white or...
Words: 638 - Pages: 3
...(Chapter 1) One evening, Janie Crawford comes back from Eatonville, Florida. As she walks through the town, her old neighbors were sitting on their porches talking about how she had left town in nice clothing with a younger man and came back muddy and in overalls. When she walks by the neighbors, she doesn’t stop to chat with them which only causes them to talk about her more. The chapter then tells the Janie was in love with a man named Tea Cake which the women tell that she was way too old for him. Even though the ladies were jealous of Janie being with a younger man, they tried to label her as whorish, in which Janie’s best friend defended her saying she’s never done anything to her anyone and then later took her to dinner. As Janie and her friend talk, we find out that they have been friends for a long while and they trust each other. Pheoby was afraid that Tea Cake has taken all of Janie’s money and ran off with a younger woman but Janie makes it clear that he was very good to her and tell Pheoby that he was ‘gone’ but we aren’t sure exactly what that means. Characterization- Protagonist: Janie Mae Crawford- An attractive, independent, middle-aged black woman who is curious and has lots of confidence. Direct: “Youse just as crazy as you ever was (5).” -This sentence tells that Janie is still the same person she was before she left which is a good thing. Imagery- “But nobody moved,...
Words: 5854 - Pages: 24
...their intelligence, especially black women’s intelligence was equated to that of “chillun and chickens and cows”(Hurston 71). Janie, the main protagonist, grows up in this oppressive patriarchal society, but still believes that she deserves a life defined by self-actualization and emotional fulfillment. Hurston powerfully portrays a black woman’s unconventional journey of self-love through effective use of literary techniques such as metaphor and personification. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses natural imagery to metaphorically depict Janie’s growing awareness about marriage, men and desire. The reoccurring symbol of the pear tree reflects Janie’s feelings throughout the novel. For example, in Janie’s youth she observes and experiences the bees’ interaction with the pear “tree in bloom” (Hurston 11). Her soliloquy about the interaction she witnesses represents a sexual connection full of erotic energy, passionate interaction, and blissful harmony. In response to what she has seen, and because she was raised to believe that a physical connection equated to a mental one, Janie even blurts out, “So this was marriage!”(Hurston 11). Thus, she begins to confuse inner peace and happiness with romance and sex, concluding that marriage will bring about sensual fulfillment. According to Kendall, “The experience becomes a symbol to Janie of the ideal relationship, one in which passion does not result in possession or domination,...
Words: 1705 - Pages: 7
...Krakauer reveals the good in McCandless that is hidden from all his other previous mistakes. Although McCandless struggles with the concept of intimacy, he is gifted in the act of perseverance. Another thing McCandless has learned is survival, as presented with how long he stayed alive with limited resources. McCandless is a hard working individual as Krakauer as stated through the theme of perseverance. McCandless has many travel...
Words: 2006 - Pages: 9
