Critical Essay Their Eyes Were Watching God

Critical Essay: Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay, Research Paper

CRITICAL ESSAY: THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD

It all begins with parents. However, although genetics play a key role in what kind

of person one becomes, environment is the other major factor that influences a person?s

development. The people a person meets and the experiences one has are very important

elements affecting development. With the three marriages Janie has, she develops as a

woman. In each marriage she learns valuable lessons, leading to progressively better

relationships, realizing how a person is to live his/her life. In Their Eyes Were Watching

God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie?s three marriages lead her to self-knowledge and thus

to fulfillment.

Janie?s marriage to Login Killicks provides her with the realization that marriages

do not necessarily guarantee mutual love. Her pre-marital concept of love and marriage is

symbolized in the natural union of bee and flower:

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the

visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting 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 the ecstatic shiver of the

tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So

this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. (p.11)

In this dream, Janie conveys her idea of marriage being the culmination of love, of two

separate entities becoming one and growing together. To the rest of society, as

represented by Login Killicks and her grandmother, marriage is not about love, but is

rather a business deal that only includes protection and procreation. Her grandmother

says, ??Tain?t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it?s protection.?(p.15) These

beliefs run contrary to everything that Janie has wished and hoped a marriage to be: ?Ah

wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.?(p.24),

a marriage that is filled with an equal and physical love. When she questions her

grandmother, Nanny continually indoctrinates her with views of marriage she does not

accept. She finally relents and marries Login Killicks. As her marriage unfolds, Janie

begins to question herself and why she had yielded to views that she never believed in.

?Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel like the sun

the day?? (p.21). Eventually, she comes to the realization that, ?marriage did not make

love. Janie?s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.?(p.25)

In her marriage to Joe Starks, Janie soon learns that her new womanhood serves

only to reflect his position and wealth. From the beginning of their relationship, signs

indicate that Joe is not necessarily the love Janie is looking for. ?On the train the next day,

Joe didn?t make many speeches with rhymes to her, but he bought her the best things the

butcher had…? (p.34) The effect money has on Joe?s life is already apparent. He buys her

only material things because he is ownership-oriented. Janie notices the problem early in

the relationship and confronts Joe about it, saying ?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.? (p.46) His response greatly

depicts his view of her. ?Over, Janie? I god, Ah ain?t even started good. Ah told you in de

very beginnin? dat Ah aimed tuh be a big voice. You oughta be glad, cause dat make uh

big woman outa you.? (p.46) Janie realizes that she cannot be open with Joe; he is no

longer the man she had met by the water pump. Joe has many of his own interests, none of

which 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.? (p.72) He continues to treat Janie as a reflection of himself when he wants her to

appear attractive; love at only a material level. ?Jody told her to dress up and stand in the

store all that evening…and he didn?t mean for nobody else?s wife to rank with her.? (p.41)

Joe also suppresses Janie, both as a woman and a human being, and sets a limit on her

self-fulfillment, treating her more like an object than a woman. He lumps women in with

mere things: ?Somebody got to think for women and chilun and chickens and cows.?

(p.71) All in all, throughout her marriage she learns that wealth does not bring happiness.

Finally realizing that she is only another possession of Joe Starks, she says, ?You done

lived wid me for twenty years and you don?t half know me atall. And you could have but

you was so busy worshippin? de works of yo? own hands, and cuffin? folks around in their

minds till you didn?t see uh whole heap

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