La Gringuita Analysis

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the main character, goes through a complex series of events that allows her to realize her dream at the end. Janie’s American Dream involves finding someone who understands her and loves her, in turn, helping her to find herself. Janie has gone through many experiences, both good and bad, that have molded her as a person. She was married at 17 to someone she didn’t love. “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman” (Hurston 25). Hurston uses the idea of Janie’s false hopes to show us how crushed she became after her marriage. She left him for another, and they loved each other. This was until he treated her like his inferior, and Janie was no longer
As she drifted farther from Spanish and closer to English, she also drifted farther from her culture and roots, and closer to the American culture. “Our growing distance from Spanish was a way in which we were setting ourselves free from that old world where, as girls, we didn’t have much say about what we could do with our lives” (Alvarez 63). Julia and her sisters believed that by speaking English instead of Spanish, they were proving their individuality and gaining freedom from the restraints that their culture held on them. As Julia and her sisters grow up in America, they slowly lose their Spanish and find that they struggle to fit in with their family. “More and more we chose to answer in English even when the question was posed in Spanish. It was a measure of the growing distance between ourselves and our native culture…” (Alvarez 64). When Julia fails to connect with her Dominican boyfriend who only speaks Spanish, she realized she was no longer connected to her roots as she thought. At the end of the essay, when Julia’s husband decides to listen to Spanish tapes in order to learn the language, Julia makes a decision, reflecting on who she is. “I had decided to join him in these lessons, in part to encourage him, but also because I wanted to regain the language that would allow me to feel at home again in my native country” (Alvarez 73).
They both deal with finding oneself through experiences. Janie’s life events trigger a self-revelation into who she is and how her life has affected her. Julia’s constant family discussions and talks trigger a self-revelation into who she has become and how she feels a slight bit of remorse for not sticking to her roots. Janie wants to find her voice. Julia wants to find her voice in Spanish. Both of their American Dreams involve self-reflection and finding