Janie's Journey

Throughout Janie’s life journey she overcame many emotional obstacles like being controlled by someone, to being content with herself, and to finding out how to be the strong-willed person she was at the end of the novel. Happiness is not a destination but a journey. Janie quickly realizes this when she gets married to Logan. First everything was like ice-cream and cake, sweet and comforting. Then, slowly it began to melt away. The bliss was gone and reality started to set in. Logan’s true colors began to show. Janie started to realize Logan wasn’t what she wanted. This was not how she thought marriage was suppose to be. But she just waited it out. One year later, still nothing changed and Janie now realized her dream of marriage was wrong. “ The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (25). The author uses the gate to portray that Janie is looking for something better than what her marriage with Logan is giving her. The gate represents how Janie feels, trapped. Realizing that marriage was not at all how she dreamt it to be she subconsciously grew up and gave up on what her childhood dream of how marriage was and replaced it with the reality of how Logan was treating her and what her marriage was like; no love and no happiness, kind of like a job. Janie obviously not happy with her marriage wanted out but didn’t know how to do it, so when the first man came around she quickly jump on it and ran off with him, thinking that she would now be happy for the first time in a year. Running off only proved to herself that she was a strong enough person to leave Logan and move on to something better, or so she hoped. So she continues her long journey to try and find happiness. ` Everyone likes to have a little freedom, to not be controlled in every aspect of their life. When people start getting their