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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 the field working, despite being warned of an oncoming disaster of a hurricane approaching the field. He, however, stays on for the love of money. When the hurricane strikes the inhabitants of Everglade are forced to flee, or they will die. When fleeing from the hurricane, Tea Cake saves Janie from a dog, but he is bitten. Tea Cake becomes diseased of rabies and the jealously he has over Janie turns to Paranoia. Janie then shoots Tea Cake to protect herself and faces trial for murder where she is proven innocent.

She later returns to Eatonville and meets a friend called Pheoby Watson to whom she narrates the whole story, which gives the frame of the novel. Power and control was considered a major issue in that time. A number of characters in the novel have a variety of ideas on how to become powerful in the white dominated land. Nanny’s solution is for her granddaughter to get married to a wealthy man so that she will not have to worry about financial security.

Joe acquires power just in the same manner as the whites did. He gets a leadership position and uses it to dominate. Joe uses his power and pride to mistreat his wife by silencing her and insulting her. He even goes to the extent of telling her to tie her hair. Janie, however, gets tired of this and discovers that she prefers personal power in a man to created power. Unlike her grandmother, Janie believes that a man’s power is obtained by their experiences and interactions with people and not wealth.

In the theme of self-realization, the novel represents the naivety and maturity of Janie from a girl to a woman. She brings this out very clearly when she states “the young girl had gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place”. Looking at “herself” shows that she understands that the self is a product of growth. She views “self” as a thing as observed. When she arrives home after burying her third husband she narrates the events to Pheoby.

Janie also realizes that self-awareness is brought about by the interaction of her learning about herself and the society especially Nanny, Logan, Joe and Tea Cake. Along the path of Janie’s self-construction, she realized she was black upon seeing a picture of herself. This opened her eyes towards self-awareness. She also realized that marriage does not necessarily mean love especially when she focused on her marriage with Joe. Janie has realized that the freedom of black women from sexism is based on voice and self-realization. Inner forces are what will help women deal with the external forces. This is what helped Janie grow from naivety to maturity (Ryan 97).

In the focus of tradition, there are many statements about women and feminism. This is commonly seen where men talk a lot about controlling and possessing of women. In the novel, statements like “somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows” clearly illustrate the notions behind sexism. Men always explained that women could not think intelligently and that they are just possessions.

This kind of ownership is shown through a man’s ability to insult a woman. It is shown by how Janie was treated by her husbands. Janie was insulted a lot by her husbands. An example is whereby Tea Cake after a long time of treating Janie well insulted her and said he was doing it to show who is boss. There is also confusion about the men’s motives. For example, when Janie was wondering whether Tea Cake had taken her money and ran off, Tea Cake returns and their trust grows and he later insults her. This explains of the men’s ownership mindset over the women. The women, however, in spite of going through a lot, they have no option but to accept.

Janie hates this kind of mindset and says that it was this same submission that Nanny convinced her to marry Logan. She holds on to this situation until she could not take it anymore and reacted to her second husband Joe. Janie’s resentment and free spirit represented by the pear tree led her to be more conscious of herself, and she even became stronger than many other women did, and she was able to be aware of her feminist impulse in order to speak up in situations of male dominance (Bray and Rosemary 8).

Symbolism is the use of objects to explain different ideas. There is a couple of examples where symbolism has been used in the novel their eyes were watching God. Some of the symbols used are the pear tree and the horizon. These represent Janie’s view of nature. In the bees’ pollination of the flowers of the pear tree, she had a good moment to witness a passionate interaction and a moment of erotic energy flow. She, therefore, bases her life conquests in search of such blissful moments. The horizon represents a distant mystery she would like to unravel. At the ending of the novel, it is written that she experienced the passion in nature that she was searching for since she was under the pear tree.

Another area where symbolism has been used is hair. Janie’s hair is a sign of control and unique identity. In the book, it represents her individualistic nature and power. It also shows her independence and her defiance to the standards of the community. At the time of the writing of the book, it was considered unruly for a woman to let her hair down an issue that her second husband Joe was totally against and went to the extent of even showing her how to tie her hair. This nature indeed reflects her free spirit. Another symbolic aspect of her hair was her braid, which represented masculinity and potency, and was a threat to Joe. The straight nature of her hair serves as a symbol for whiteness. In the book, Mrs. Turner praises Janie for her straight hair. Her straight hair emphasizes the male power that Janie exhibits. In addition, this helps hinder traditional power abnormalities, for example, whites having power over blacks (Alain 29).

Another aspect of symbolism is the hurricane. It reflects the destruction that can be caused by nature. It is the total opposite of the pear tree and the horizon symbols. The pear tree and horizon stood for beauty, and the hurricane shows how chaotic the world is. The hurricane makes the characters question about their selves and their life purpose. Being a force of destruction, it makes the characters wonder how they can live in a world full of chaos and strain.

In the novel their eyes were on God, Hurston tries to explain that marriage does not necessarily mean a loving relationship as evident from the novels protagonist‘s story (King 22). Janie had different experiences in the marriages. In her early life, she was a naïve girl in the pursuit of the mysterious passion of love. It turned out to be a different experience for her upon entering into marriage.

Her first two marriages to Logan and Joe respectively, were unbearable for her. Her voice was suppressed, and she was sometimes abused. However, after these marriages she had matured and she learns to speak up until she met Tea Cake who gave her room and helped her revive her voice. It can, therefore, be said that love was not observed in the first two marriages, but in her third marriage love was evident and it opened her up in a way that even after Tea Cake’s death, though she was left alone, she did not feel alone.

The theme of voice is brought out very clearly in the novel. Janie’s voice and freedom of speech reflects on her rights, empowerments and freedom as a woman. Her voice was suppressed when she was married to Logan. It was also suppressed when she is with Joe, but she is able to speak when with Tea Cake.

Janie had good stories and sometimes brought up conversations, but Joe was completely against this. He denied her talking to people. By this, he denied her a natural act of interaction with people whom she would have helped since she was the mayor’s wife.

It reached a point where Janie was fed up, and she raised her voice and fought back, but it was not any good. This made Joe forbid her more. Janie fought for her voice, but Joe fought to gain her submission. Nevertheless, even though she was against it, she learned to stay quiet.

It reached a point where Janie was fed up and left, but she later returned to speak it all out to Joe on his deathbed. When Joe died, Janie learns to speak again she reached within to revive her voice, and when she met Tea Cake, he gave the chance and helped her revive her voice and develop it in a way she had never before.

The story is about how Janie comes to realize about herself and how she gets to acknowledge her independence. This journey for Janie, however, has not been travelled alone. Differences in gender require each gender to meet the needs of opposite genders for the thing they need but do not have. Janie views this idea as fulfilling and reciprocates on respect. This is the kind of relationship, which she enjoyed when with Tea Cake. A relationship where there is equality with both partners. This, however, was not the case with her relationships with Logan and Joe.

Relationships are said to be fulfilling in life. Janie begins a self-centered quest for spiritual fulfillment. She seems to be alone yet very content. She frees herself from unrewarding and unfulfilling relationships with Logan and Joe who disrupt her forward movement in life. Nevertheless, she finds satisfaction and fulfillment in her relationship with Tea Cake, rediscovers herself, and her self-value in life. She feels she connected with the world in a special way and even though Tea Cake left her, she did not feel alone.

Works Cited

Alain, Locke. "The New Negro." The Cambridge Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston (1925): 29.

Bray and Rosemary. "Renaissance for a Pioneer of Black Pride." The New York Times (1990): 2-9.

Cheryl, Wall. "Their Eyes Were Watching God - A Casebook." New York: Oxford University Press (2000): 4-6.

King. "The Cambridge Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston." (n.d.): 20-25.

Ryan, Simmons. "The Hierarchy Itself: Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and the Sacrifice of Narrative Authority." African American Review (2002): 93-181.