Hurston Opening Doors Analysis

The imagery of opening doors is used by Hurston in order to display the chances, and options one has after escaping the room that had all those doors that would have led to many different paths much earlier. Tea Cake and Janie sit in the store drinking Coca-cola when Tea Cake offers to Janie if she wanted a passenger train or a battleship using the questions “Which one do you want? It all depends on you.” (101) The freedom of choice is finally in Janie’s hands as Tea Cake asks her “Which do you want?”. Hurston projected the emotion of contentment through the last quote “‘Tain’t dat Ah worries over Joe’s death, Pheoby. Ah jus’ loves dis freedom.”(93) then moving on to Janie making a choice on her own of her own free will, no longer controlled
by someone else and what they want. Freedom from a person that needed to have power over people is an experience only few get to have. In Janie’s case she lost her freedom of speech which in turn slowly took away her will to fight against Joe and his oppressive ways, but after so long she broke away from his cage and found Tea Cake who offered all the missing pieces of her freedom back to her. After being trapped by Joe for all those years Janie broke away from him, found Tea Cake and her freedom. She was given choices that Joe never gave, choices she never thought would ever be offered to her, and she took them spoke out her answers without being afraid of the consequences. In the end she realized that since what they had was not love she needed to live for herself and do what she thought was the best choice for herself.