Their Eyes Werw Watching God Essay Research

Their Eyes Werw Watching God Essay, Research Paper

Theme Analysis

Alice Walker depicts Zora Neale Hurston’s work as providing the

African-American literary community with its prime symbol of “racial

health – a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished

human beings” (190). Appropriately, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were

Watching God, published in 1937, provides an enlightening look at

the journey of one of these undiminished human beings, Janie

Crawford. Janie’s story – based on principles of self-exploration,

self-empowerment, and self-liberation – details her loss and

subsequent attainment of her innocence, as she constantly learns

and grows from her difficult experiences with gender issues

and racism in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

After joyfully discovering an archetype for sensuality and love under

the pear tree at age sixteen, Janie quickly comes to understand the

reality of marriage when she marries Logan Killicks, then Joe Starks.

Both men attempt to coerce Janie into submission to them by

treating her like a possession: where Killicks works Janie like a

mule, Joe objectifies her like a medal around his neck. In addition,

Janie learns that passion and love are tied to violence, as Killicks

threatens to kill her, and both Joe and Tea Cake beat her to assert

their dominance. Yet Janie continually struggles to keep her inner

Self intact and strong, remaining resilient in spite of her husbands’

physical, verbal, and mental abuse. Janie’s resilience is rewarded

when she finally meets and marries Tea Cake, who represents the

closest semblance to her youthful idealism regarding love and

marriage.

Another male figure playing prominently in Janie’s life is the white

man who raped her grandmother; her lineage determines, therefore,

that Janie will look whiter than other black women. This fair

complexion eventually attracts the ambitious Joe Starks, yet also

contributes to Joe’s objectification of Janie. Yet, outward

appearances aside, Janie’s identity takes shape in response to the

white male tyranny that made her own birth possible.

For example, Janie’s husband Jody paints his house “a gloaty,

sparkly white,” (44) humiliates the citizens of Eatonville in similar

ways as the white man would, and forces Janie into the slavish

servitude reflected by the identity-confining head rag he makes her

wear (51). Yet, Janie fights Joe’s tyranny by telling him off just before

he dies in Chapter Eight, then reclaims her own identity by burning

up “every one of her head rags” (85). Similarly, Janie encounters Mrs.

Turner, Hurston’s symbol of internalized racism, who doesn’t “blame

de white folks from hating [African-Americans] ’cause Ah can’t stand

‘em mahself” (135). Again, however, Janie remains true

to herself as she continues to form her own identity by refusing to

leave Tea Cake and class off as Mrs. Turner suggests.

Rather than self-destruct under the constant realities of racism and

misogyny she receives throughout her life, Janie Crawford does the

opposite at the close of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel’s

final image states what Janie does throughout the story – taking her

difficult past in and growing stronger and wiser as a result of it.

Author Zora Neale Hurston believed that freedom “was something

internal..The man himself must make his own emancipation” (189).

Likewise, in her defining moment of identity formation, Janie “pulled

in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of

the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its

meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (184). At the end of

a novel focusing on self-revelation and self-formation, Janie survives

with her soul – made resilient by continual struggle – intact.

Metaphor Analysis

Pear tree: In her Nanny’s back yard, Janie lies beneath the pear tree

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” (11). Janie’s youthful idealism

leads her to believe that this intense sensuality must be similar to

the intimacy between lovers, and she wishes “to be a pear tree – any

tree in bloom!” (11). The image suggests a wholeness – as bees

pollinate blossoms paralleling human sexual intercourse – which

Janie finds missing in her marriages to both Logan Killicks and Joe

Starks, but finally discovers in her relationship with Tea Cake.

Mules: Janie’s grandmother initiates comparison between black

women and mules, declaring “De[African-American] woman is de

mule

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