Janie's Evolution in Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Self-Designed Assessment (Based on an AP Question)

Janie's Evolution

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God begins with the development of Janie, whose self discovery is the foundation of the plot. Hurston utilizes the course of three marriages to detail Janie's discovery, creating examples of outward conformity in conflict with inward desire. Janie's submission to her second husband, Jody Starks, combines with her inward opposition to contribute to the ultimate realization of herself as a free woman who needs to be at peace with her own actions.

Through conforming to Jody's commands, Janie loses her sense of self and develops inner turmoil. Hurston uses Janie's long, beautiful hair to represent Janie's pride and essence. When Jody becomes jealous of other men's admiration of Janie and forces her to tie up her hair in a cloth while working, Janie feels stripped of her spirit. Janie's inner struggles with her own submission can be seen in Janie's unhappy description of the cloth as a "rag"." Such diction introduces Janie's inward versus outward conflict and combines with Janie's metaphor of herself as a "rut in the road beaten down by wheels" to emphasize Janie's loss of self. The lifeless rut is symbolic of Janie's lost spirit, and the relentless wheels parallel working in the shop every single day, representing Jody's commands and wearing Janie down. The relationship between the rut and wheels ultimately illustrates Janie's submission to Jody, therefore creating the image that Janie is no longer herself. By placing Janie in this situation, Hurston enables the reader to see that Janie's opposition to her own actions are the cause of her unhappiness. Therefore, Janie can progress towards questioning her wants.

Janie is moved to question who she is by her unhappiness and is able to embrace freedom as a part of her soul after Jody's death. After the rut in the road metaphor, Hurston quickens the pace of the novel, describing Jody's immense aging. This display of the passage of time serves as a check-point in which Janie re-evaluates herself after being unhappy for so long and tries stepping outside the line. Janie's insulting outburst at the store criticizing Jody's appearance and her feeling of triumph afterward exemplifies her exploration of what makes her happy. This act of defiance contradicts Janie's former submission and moves the protagonist towards resolution with Janie's positive reaction to her own actions. With the quickening pace of the plot, Jody abruptly dies of illness. Janie finds that she is finally happy after her husband's death, and embraces being free of unwanted demands. Having resolved her inner conflicts, Janie is able to realize that she can only be happy when she is at peace with her actions.

The resolution of Hurston's novel officially occurs after Janie's marriage to Tea Cake. However, Janie is well on her way to self-discovery after Jody's death. She has already realized who she is not, and has questioned who she really is. The marriage to Tea Cake simply lighted the way for the novel's resolution; the path was already there. Therefore, when Janie returns to Eatonville, she is at peace. She had realized that her unhappiness was caused by the conflict between her inner opposition and her outward conformity, and has learned to follow her own desires instead. The novel concludes with the resolution of the inward versus outward struggle, illustrating Janie as having united her mind and body.