JHartman+TEWWG+Essay

 JHartmanTEWWG Jordan Hartman Mrs. Laurençot TEWWG Essay  I have read the book, __Their Eyes Were Watching God__ written by Zora Neale Hurston. I have many thoughts about how Hurston uses a lot of imagery and figurative language. For instance, "She was stretched on her back…so this was marriage!" (pg. 11). This paragraph goes into detail about how Janie wants to feel love and know what it feels like to be in a relationship where she can always have somebody who will always have her back and will support her in everything she does. I believe that this description is very powerful in explaining everything that goes on in our lives and the problems that we must go through every day as human beings. The scenery, the way that Hurston used the description of the creaming of the blossoms and the frothing with delight, shows how she can explain her thoughts completely by using words.  I didn't enjoy how the book was kind of hard to understand. Hurston uses a lot of Southern accents when there's dialogue. Parts of the story were hard for me to understand, which lead to my confusion of what was actually going on in the book. I do feel, however, that Hurston had a great idea when she used the dialect. Without the accents, it would have been ten times harder for me to get into a Southern feel and to completely understand how the characters were feeling throughout the book. When Janie first meets Tea Cake, he says, "Ah sho didn’t. Wuzn't expectin' fuh it to be needed. De name mah mama gimme is Vergible Woods. Dey calls me Tea Cake for short" (pg. 97). I had to reread some of the words in the quote so I could comprehend what was happening. When I first started reading this book, I automatically knew that it was going to be very hard for me to keep up with due to the dialect. However, as I kept reading on, I found out that if I said the words out loud and try to pronounce the words like I would normally speak, it became easier for me to understand. As I was close to finishing the book, it was so much easier for me to read because I had gotten so used to it.  After finishing the story, I really wanted to understand why Janie's real first love, the man who made her so happy, had to die and leave her all alone. It made me feel as if she could never be happy for a long period of time. The first man she actually loves, Tea Cake, is attacked by a rabid dog which kills him. If I were Janie, I would feel as if love never existed and that I'd be alone forever. Janie is forced to marry Logan Killicks, who she never loved and was disgusted to be around. She finally leaves him and goes off with Joe Starks. Janie thinks she likes Jody, until he becomes controlling and tries to make her his actual property. As Jody lays on his death bed, he tells her, "Shut up! Ah wish thunder and lightnin' would kill yuh!" (pg. 86). To me, this proves that he never actually loves Janie, and just used her as bait to become rich and powerful. When she meets Tea Cake, I felt as if Janie hadn’t been any happier than she was at that moment. The first true relationship she gets into ends before it actually begins. It is an untimely ending, and if I were Janie, I would think that love didn't exist. She finally became happy, and then it’s over before she can actually grasp the concept of being in love.  In the beginning of the story, Janie is very young and naïve. She wants to have love come and save her from the life she is living at home. "Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches" (pg. 8). I think this signifies how Janie feels about her life. She dreams of the perfect marriage, to have love like no other, and to be so happy that she can feel as if she is walking on air. Her grandmother feels differently. She doesn’t want Janie to get raped like her and her mother did. She wants Janie to be with a man who she fully trusts and knows he will keep her safe. In the beginning of the story, Janie doesn’t know what she wants, who she wants, or what love even is. All she can think of is an idea that she makes up in her mind, and how she wants to leave her home. She feels as if love will save her, but the only thing it does is put her in bad situations. “She bolted upright and peered out of the window and saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss” (pg. 12). I believe this is her first mistake. By rebelling against her grandmother’s wishes, Janie gets herself into a situation that calls for an arranged marriage, which she is not happy with. But everybody says that everything happens for a reason. If she wasn’t arranged to marry Logan Killicks, she wouldn’t have ever met Tea Cake, the man she longed for all of her life.  As the book carries on, Janie becomes very experienced and mature. At the end of the book, there's a passage in the text that explains everything that she has gone through in the past few days: “The day of the gun, and the bloody body…she called in her soul to come and see” (pg. 192-193). I’m not sure what it is about that paragraph, but it feels as if Hurston is trying to make the readers feel as if Janie knows that Tea Cake will never lead her side, no matter where she is. They are truly in love, and as the paragraph goes on explaining how “the kiss of his memory made pictures and love against the wall” (pg. 193), it tells of the true bond between Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship. At the end of the book, Janie is a woman who has gone through more than most women have in that time period. Her transformation from being a little girl, who craves to be loved, ends with her killing the only man she truly loved in self-defense. At least now Janie is at peace and she knows that Tea Cake will always be in her heart.  In Biology class, I watched a video about DNA mutations. During the video, a scene came up where a two year old baby, Hayden, had Tay - Sachs disease. Tay -Sachs disease is a fatal genetic disorder in young children which progressively kills off the central nervous system. The child slowly becomes blind, creates a strong startle reaction, and can even become paralyzed. The average life span of a child possessing this disease is about three-five years. As I was watching this and listening to how the parents did everything they possibly could do to hold onto Hayden a little bit more, I realized that this was the same exact situation that Janie was in when Tea Cake was dying from rabies. The doctor told Janie, "Bout de only thing you can do, Janie, is to put him in the Country Hospital where they can tie him down and look after him" (pg. 178). Janie doesn’t want Tea Cake to feel abandoned, so she keeps him as close to her as she possibly can, never leaving his side until the end.  If Janie brought Tea Cake to the hospital, she wouldn't have been with him when he finally dies. I think that's why Hayden's parents took such good care of him. Both Janie and Hayden's parents want to be with their loved one when they pass so they knew that no matter what situation they are in, they are loved by the people who mean the most to them. In general, people don't want to give up the things that they care for the most. About two years ago, one of my cats got attacked by a fisher cat and then hit by a car. She was in the animal hospital for days, and finally passed away when I was up in Maine. To this day, I regret not being there when she died because I now feel guilty that she may have thought we abandoned her when she needed us the most. People who truly love things want to hold on and keep them close for as long as they possibly can. I can feel the pain that both Janie and Hayden's parents had to go through as they watched the people they love the most move on to a different place.  <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Zora Neale Hurston did an amazing job with writing this book. The theme, don’t stop until you’re completely satisfied with who you are and what you want, is timeless. For generations to follow, people will live by this lesson. In the book, Janie wasn’t happy with the way life is going. She gets fed up with the way Logan Killicks is treating her, so she stops standing by and taking it, and does something about it. “The morning road air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet” (pg. 32). Janie is tired of living life chained up to a wall. When she is living with Logan, that’s how she felt, like a prisoner. The two of them are fighting continuously about how Janie should be helping outside and how she should be able to “grab dat ax and sling chips lak uh man” (pg. 26). When she wasn’t happy with him, she moves on to Joe Starks who she thinks is the one who will make her the woman she always dreams of being. “Janie, if you think Ah aims to tole you off and make a dog outa you, youse wrong. Ah wants to make a wife outa you” (pg. 29). Little does she know that their relationship will begin to go south when they officially get married. He controls her, "That night he ordered Janie to tie up her hair around the store" (pg. 55). This is the first act that Joe does to her. As the book continues, and Joe passes away, Janie finally meets Tea Cake, who she is extremely happy with. Even though Tea Cake flirts with Nunkie (pg. 136), he still makes her feel like she is the one woman he'll always love. "You'se something tuh make uh man forgit tuh git old and forgit tuh die" (pg. 138). From this point on, Janie is happy and nobody can make her feel different. She loves Tea Cake with all of her heart. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';"> <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Janie learns from her marriages with Logan and Joe that to receive the best, she must be willing to overcome obstacles in her way, in any shape or form they come in. Many people, and myself, feel that to be completely satisfied with your life, pushing yourself is the only way you will come out on top. I think that for years and years to come, people will live by this lesson. When life gets me down and I think that no matter how hard I try, I will not succeed, I tell myself over and over again that it will all work out in the end to the way I want it to. This book made me feel exactly that, to get the best, I must work at it. Hurston did a great job in creating this book so she could make me understand that the values of life come with great perseverance and commitment. <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">