Their Eyes Were Watching God Voice Analysis

Every person has ideas and opinions, and to communicate these thoughts, he uses his voice. Sometimes a person’s voice is encouraged and respected, but other times his voice is restricted or silenced. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston demonstrates that different factors can affect a person’s decision to use his voice by depicting the relationships Janie Crawford experiences. Janie’s caretaker as she grows up is Nanny, her grandmother who believes she knows what is best for Janie. Nanny wants to marry Janie off quickly to Logan Killicks, so that after Nanny died, Janie would be protected. Although Nanny believes she is guaranteeing Janie’s safety, she is also quelling Janie’s voice and her ideas of love. Janie believes in marrying for love and after marrying Logan, believes that she will eventually love him. This is not the case, and Janie’s “first dream [is] dead” (Hurston 25). Her dream of finding true love is crushed by her grandmother, who thinks she had Janie’s best interests at heart. Later, as Janie reflects on what to do after her second husband’s death, she realizes that her grandmother had “taken…the horizon” and had “[tied] it about her granddaughter’s neck
Before, Joe would not let her participate in porch gossip, but with Teacake, Janie could “even talk some herself is she wanted to” (134). Teacake does not try to control Janie like Joe does and values her input and opinions. Janie loves Teacake, and when she shoots him after he contracts rabies, Janie uses her voice to speak up while on trial because “it was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.” (188). Janie is not testifying to save herself from death; she is testifying to destroy the misconception that she does not love Teacake. She wants everyone to know the truth, so she speaks up for something she considers worthy of her voice: her love for