Zora Neale Hurston's Novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes are Watching God, there is lots of imagery about Janie’s emotions and personality. Janie is a free-willed person who doesn’t care what other people think and that is shown through Tea Cake and her friends. She is trying to find herself in the book and who she is supposed to be. She is also trying to figure out love throughout the novel. When she is young, she thinks she figured out love and that is shown through nature. At the end of the novel, Janie has showed the readers that love takes time and there are many ways to show it. In her case, she showed love and emotion through nature. Nature is a larger factor in the novel that represents Janie’s personality throughout. Nature is a large part of
She impacts the other characters greatly and the other characters impact her. Her first husband was Logan who taught her that love wasn’t just about getting married. After she left him, she met Joe. She thought that she had really loved him but he kept her of her freedom and her own thoughts. One example is on page 43. “ Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy. She had never thought of making a speech, and it didn’t know if she cared to make one at all. It must have been the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anythings one way or another that took the bloom off things. But anyway, she went down the road behind him that night feeling cold.”(43) This shows that Janie is truly aware that she doesn’t have any freedom with him because he took away the bloom. This shows her personality because she feels as if she is just there to please people. She just sits and takes her place like Nanny and Joe wanted her to do. She knows she needs to confront Joe about her thoughts and opinions. She tries to do that but Joe is in too much control of her. “ But she sat a long time with the walls creeping in on her. Four walls squeezing her breath out. Fear lest he depart while she sat trembling upstairs nerved her and she was inside the room before she caught her breath. She didn’t make the cheerful, casual start that she had thought out. Something stood like an oxen’s foot on her tongue, and then too, Jody, no Joe, gave her a ferocious look. A look with all the unthinkable coldness of outer space.”(84) Joe has impacted her greatly because she can’t stand up to him and she never does. The only reason she got away from him was because Joe got sick. Tea Cake also impact’s Janie in a number of ways. He undid what Janie had endured through Joe and taught her that she could be herself. He taught her that she didn’t need to listen to what other people thought because he was younger