GirouxWatchingGodEssay

GirouxWatchingGodJournal

 Amanda Giroux  Block 8  12-18-09

While I was reading the novel, __Their Eyes Were Watching God,__ by Zora Neale Hurston, I had many questions. One such question is why Hurston repeatedly refers to the horizon. "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time"(pg 1). This quote is describing how everyone has a dream and how some people achieve them while others just watch them die before their eyes over time. I think that Hurston wants her readers to connect to how Janie has a dream of true love and she won’t stop trying to get it, even after years of watching it on the horizon. "Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon- for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you- and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love (pg 89). Janie is the person who sees oceans out of mud-puddles and her Nanny is the "other" kind, but she won't even let the women who raised her distract her from her dream of getting real love. "Janie pulled a back a long time because he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon" (pg 29). Zora is elaborating on the fact that Janie doesn’t seem to love Joe Starks quite yet but she loves what he is talking to her about and she believes that love will come. Another time Zora mentions a horizon is when Janie is telling her friend Pheoby, “So Ah’m back home agin and Ah’m satisfied tuh be heah. Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons” (pg 191). Zora tells her readers that Tea Cakes was Janie’s horizon. Tea Cake held all of Janie’s dreams about love, happiness, and what marriage should be like. He showed her how her life could be and even though Tea Cake is gone now, he left her the good memories to get her through the rest of her life. The main character, Janie, changed from the beginning of the story to the end by becoming her own person. What I mean by this is Janie starts to live her own life and do what she wants to do instead of what other people told her to. An example of this is when she first marries. "Ah can't be always guidin' yo' feet from harm and danger. Ah wants to see you married right away" (pg 13). Janie's Nanny married her off to a horrid man, with ugly feet, nauseating body odor, and a huge belly, without taking Janie's heart into consideration. Janie thinks that marriage will bring love and when she finds out that that isn't the case, she is miserable. Even when Janie goes to go talk to Nanny about this, Nanny tells her to stop crying. But Janie can't spend the rest of her life with that abominable man, Logan, so she runs away with a man who tells her that he loves her and that she will be happy with him. "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 bouquets. After that she came to where Joe Starks was waiting for her with a hired rig" (pg 32). In this passage Hurston tells the readers how Janie is throwing her old life away and heading into a new one even though she knows that that is not what Nanny would want her to do. Another example of how Janie becomes more independent is when she refuses to leave Joe's death bed when he repeatedly tells her to leave. "'G'wan out. Ah needs tuh rest.' 'Naw, Jody, Ah come in heah tuh talk widja and Ah'm goin' tuh do it too'" (pg 85). I believe that this story shows how humans will basically do anything to be happy. Janie proves this in many ways. She leaves Logan to be with Joe Starks, as seen above (pg 32). Another example is when Janie also leaves Eatonville. "Ah'm older than Tea Cake, yes. But he done showed me where it's de thought dat makes de difference in ages. If people thinks de same they can make it all right…Some of dese mornin's you and it won't be long, you gointuh wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone (pg 115). This is after Joe dies and Janie leaves with Tea Cake. Many people gossip how she is far too old to be with Tea Cake, but he makes her happy so it doesn't matter to her what other people think. Janie also does something that always seemed to cause an uproar with her husbands. “’After dis, you betta come git uh job uh work out dere lak de rest uh de women…’ ‘So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along Tea Cake" (pg 133). Tea Cake had her come to work with him, but the difference is he asks her to come out of love. Logan and Joe just tells her to work because they believe that they have a right to order her around. Tea Cake treats her like an equal instead of a slave, so she works with him because she notices that when he is happy, she is happy. The way people do things to make them happy reminds me of the movie, __The Devil Wears Prada__. This woman hurts her friend to get what she wants by hurting one of her best friends, just like Janie hurts her husband by giving herself to a new husband, Joe. The author, Zora Neal Hurston, is very successful in creating a good piece of literature. First off, her writing is extremely timeless. The novel has a theme that will inspire generations to come: don’t care about what other people say, just be happy. “Some of dese mournin’s and it won’t be long, you gointuh wake up callin’ me and Ah’ll be gone" (pg 115). In this particular part of the story, Janie is telling her friend that she’s happy with Tea Cake and if she wants to leave town to be with him, she will. She’ll let the rest of the folks in town talk about what she has done because 1: she won’t be there to hear it, and 2: she doesn’t care what they think. “Wait till you see de new satin Tea Cake done picked out for me tuh stand up wid him in (pg 115). Janie is supposed to be in mourning, meaning she can only wear dark colors but she still flaunts the fact that she is wearing extremely bright and inappropriate colors right after Joe’s death, showcasing how much she doesn’t care about what the people think. Second, Hurston’s writing made her readers feel something when they read her book. “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!” (pg 11) When I read this, can feel how desperately Janie wants her marriage to be full of pleasure such as this. When I read, “’Sorta pull de flesh together with stickin’ plaster. Ah’ll be all right in uh day or so.’ ‘Janie was painting on iodine and crying’” (pg 127), I fell both Janie’s and Tea Cake’s fear of death. Tea Cake doesn’t want to leave Janie, and Janie doesn’t want him to leave. “A minute before she was just a scared human being fighting for its life. Now she was her sacrificing self with Tea Cake’s head in her lap. She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. Janie held his head tightly to her breast and wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service. She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to tell him for the last time. Then the grief of outer darkness descended” (pg 184). When I read this passage, the emotions that were evoked moved me to tears. With this evidence, I can conclude that the novel, __Their Eyes Were Watching God,__ is an extremely good piece of literature.