Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

Finding Yourself To be different is to be unique and to stand by your own judgment. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Hurston, is a coming of age novel with a heartwarming romance in the 1930s by showing the integrity of the narrator, Janie Crawford whom tells her viewpoint of what it took to find love, by first finding herself. Alike, from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s excerpt Self-Reliance and Henry David Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience, these transcendentalist thinkers also believed individuals should be able to trust their selves to make the right decisions in life by following their instincts, and to not abide to society’s obligations. And so, the readers are shown how society was the puppeteer, while Janie was the puppet lost in the
mist of unfit marriages and searched for love when she was honestly trying to search for herself. Janie at last becomes an individual by maturing to value herself, seeking the horizon as the embodiment of happiness for herself, and striving for love. In the beginning of the novel, Janie found her young soul prancing around, inquiring love, and in addition, experienced her first kiss. However, Janie was able to mature through the individual hardships each of her marriages presented, and therefore learned to value herself. Janie was still in her adolescent years when Nanny married her off to Logan Killicks. However, Janie and Nanny did not meet eye to eye on what love is. The image of love forbids Janie to connect with Logan, but she tries to compromise and says “yes, she would love Logan after they were married... Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (Hurston, 21). Janie belittled herself to Nanny’s obligations and conformed to society. Though, as time went by Janie knew that there was more to love, and especially, more to who she was as a woman, and so left her arranged marriage to find herself. Which is when Janie met Tea Cake, her third husband, who gave her more than a companion, he gave her a life long journey of adventure with love. With Tea Cake, Janie felt a self-crushing love, and “so her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston, 128). Janie was finally free to express herself and choose to not follow the rules of marrying an older man with money and land. And although society did not agree with Janie running off with a younger man, whom they thought would steal all her money; she didn’t give it a second thought and in return she became an individual living the urban life with Tea Cake. And as Thoreau once said, “I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man” (Thoreau, 104). Thoreau is stating that society will try to forbid you from flourishing into an individual and will instead bring you down if you are not a similar prodigy. Therefore, Janie does not allow society to hinder her from growing and maturing into a woman with her own mindset. Towards the end of the novel, Janie completely values herself when she shoots Tea Cake, due to his illness, for she learns to appreciate herself in this world and matures to know that there was nothing she could have done for Tea Cake, but to put him out of his misery, even if it meant losing the love of her life. Janie is a transcendentalist thinker in the aspect that one is in control of their own future and must make their own decision in order to live life to its fullest. Janie values herself as an individual and seeks freedom, by which she creates a standard of what is acceptable for herself to be happy.
Furthermore, as contemplating the thought of happiness, the horizon is the embodiment of Janie’s goal for true happiness.
Like the horizon, it is far off to the distance and it can never be touched, but you can still feel the warmth of the setting sun. Janie at first thought she understood and captured her happiness when Joe Starks, her second husband, a well suited gentleman enters her life, she leaves her previous husband and Joe and Janie ride off onto “the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged” (Hurston, 33). Janie believes Joe was her carriage ride to happiness as they rode down towards the horizon and wed. It is true, Joe did treat Janie fairly as he bought her a life of luxury by coming to Eatonville and making a Mayor out of himself. However, he secluded her from society’s interaction and hid her in his shadows and therefore Janie lost her happiness and her will power to speak her mind. Janie has concluded that she “hates disagreement and confusion, so [she] better not talk. It makes it hard tuh git along” (Hurston, 57). She has hushed her lips and let the talking be talked by her husband. Janie’s happiness has diminished into a thin ray over the horizon. One the contrary, Emerson once said, “trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” (Emerson, 78). Emerson is referring the iron string to knowledge, and how knowledge is a part of every person, but some people choose to not listen to
their selves and conform to other people’s idea and opinions. Although Janie did allow Joe to abuse her and downgrade her youth, she acknowledges the fact that she was not happy and so while Joe was lying on his death bed, Janie finally broke out of her confined shell and metaphorically, Janie robs Joe’s will to live as she tells him that he’s going to die no matter what and before he does she wants to let him know of the person she really is and how Janie’s “mind had tuh be squeezed and crowed out tuh make room for [Joe]” (Hurston, 86). Janie finally speaks her peace and is content, but not truly satisfied. After Joe’s death, Janie felt freedom and vowed to not be tangled up with any men for the sake of her freedom, but Tea Cake gave her the opportunity to love and took her far beyond the horizon. Janie has always used the fading sun as her enlightenment for happiness and says, “Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see” (Hurston, 193). At the end of the novel Janie was able to reach complete tranquility. The powerful image Hurston created in order for Janie to capture the inevitable, was finally captured. It also implies that because the sun is intertwined in Janie, she does not have to search for a deeper meaning of happiness outside of her own soul because it will always be within her.
Finally, Janie has become an individual of her own life by searching for love, even if it meant breaking the traditional rules of marriage.
As Emerson once said, “Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today” (Emerson, 82). Emerson is applauding the sense of being misunderstood because every life’s decision is a compromise between one’s will and society’s obligation. So, that is why Janie’s viewpoint of love had differ multiple times because her first two marriages where defined by society, whereas her marriage with Tea Cake was her own decision. Janie’s marriage with Logan was due to Nanny’s will, while the marriage alongside Tea Cake was due to her own freewill. Alike, the marriage with Joe was violating her freedom because she “pressed her teeth together and learned to hush” (Hurston, ), as opposed to Tea Cake, who allowed Janie to voice her opinions and listened. The love between Tea Cake and Janie was challenged by society. For a marriage is between an older man and a younger woman, it is balanced by the wealth one person carries, and the stability a man can offer. However, as Janie once said, “Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore” (Hurston, 191). Every person falls in love one way or another, to Janie, she choose Tea Cake for the realization that wealth and
stability was not what comforted her in life. Instead, Janie persisted on through the different types of marriages and became an individual that knew love was with Tea Cake.
In conclusion, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston was a self-realization novel which proposed the idea of becoming an individual. Through the character Janie, Hurston depicted the image of a transcendentalist thinker that seek to value herself, find happiness, and strive for love.

Works Cited
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self-Reliance. The InterActive Reader Plus. Ed. Sharon Sicinski-
Skeans. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 2003. 78-83. Print

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper, 1990. Print

Thoreau, Henry David. Civil Disobedience. 1847. The InterActive Reader Plus. Ed. Sharon Sicinski-
Skeans. Evanston: McDougal Littell, 2003. 90-105. Print