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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie battles to find Individualism within
herself. Janie, all her life, had been pushed around and told what to do and how to live
her life. She searched and searched high and low to find a peace that makes her whole
and makes her feel like a complete person. To make her feel like she is in fact an
individual and that she’s not like everyone else around her. During the time of ‘Their
Eyes’, the correct way to treat women was to show them who was in charge and who was
inferior. Men were looked to as the superior being, the one who women were supposed
to look up to and serve. Especially in the fact that Janie was an African American
women during these oppressed times. Throughout this book, it looks as though Janie
makes many mistakes in trying to find who she really is, and achieving the respect that
she deserves.
Living with her Grandmother and theWashburns’, Janie was surrounded and
raised with white children. She always believed that she was white herself, and that she
was no different than anybody else. As she was growing up, she was told what to do and
how to live by her grandmother. Janie’s grandmother planned her life out for her. She
told her that she must get married right away. “Yeah, Janie, youse got yo’ womanhood
on yuh. So Ah mout ez well tell yuh whut Ah been savin’ up for uh spell. Ah wants to
see you married right away.” Janie’s grandmother did want what was best for Janie, but
she basically told her what to do instead of letting her know what she wanted for her.
Janie’s grandmother told her exactly who she was going to marry and who she wasn’t
even to think about. “Whut Ah seen just now is plenty for me, honey, Ah don’t want no
trashy negro, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin’ yo’ body to wipe his foots
on. Brother Logan Killicks, he’s a good man.......You answer me when Ah speak. Don’t
you set dere poutin’ wid me after all Ah done went through for you!” She is basically
telling Janie that she can’t marry Johnny Taylor, the one she is exploring her womanhood
with, the one she wants, and that she must marry Logan, for protection. Towards the end
of the book, Janie resents her grandmother for “living” her life for her and planning her
future. To find out what will happen in a persons future, they need to live their life on
their own and not have it planned for them. They can’t be told how to live there lives in
order to succeed.
To succeed, we need to learn from our own mistakes, and live with the weight of
our decisions. This is exactly what Janie did in her marriage to Logan. She did as she
was told, or rather, expected to do. Janie didn’t want to marry Logan, but if it made her
grandmother happy, then by all means, why not give it a shot. If it meant that she’d be
secure. In her marriage to Logan, she found out that that’s not what she wanted. Janie
wanted love, happieness, comfort and enjoyment. She didn’t want her first marriage to
be like a prison sentence. “Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated, did it
compel love like the sun the day?” This is asking if marriage made love for Janie as the
sun makes the day for the world. Is the basis of love marriage...just as the basis for day is
the sun. To Janie, this was not true. She did not feel as though she loved Logan, and
that’s all she really wanted. She didn’t want to be treated as the rest of the world was
treated. She wanted to be treated as an individual and not as a slave. She was a slave to
marriage. She didn’t want to be there, where there was no warmth.
Joe Starks stole Janie away from Logan. He saved her from the boringness of
their dull marriage. He woed her with his words of kindness. He promised her
happieness. “De day you puts yo’ hand in mine, Ah wouldn’t let de sun go down on us
single. You ain’t never knowed what it was to be treated lak a lady and Ah wants to be
de one tuh show yuh.” He wanted her to feel special, and be treated like she was
somebody. Janie began to wonder if this was her conclusion to her search of her
freedom. She figured that this is where her happieness was, and that Joe would give her
all that she wanted. Together they built a life. Joe bought her things she never even
dreamed of. When they built Eatonville together, Janie expressed her feelings and
opinions the way she always wanted to. She, finally, was her own self. Or so she
thought. Towards the end of this blissfull marriage, she grew tired to this life, and the
way Joe was treating her. He treated her special...but not in a unique sort of way like in
the beginning. He started treating her the way everyone else was. She was expected to
do things and dress and act certain ways. She was tired of being the one in charge in
Eatonville. “She must look on herself as the bell-cow, the other women were the gang.”
When Joe became the Mayor of Eatonville, she was in charge of many things. She was
the leading lady. Although this was different than how her life was before, she didn’t
like having to take care of most everything. In the beginning, it felt important, but
towards the end, she felt unappreciated for the things she had done, and it pretty much
became expected of her. She seemed to become more of a problem than a solution. “No
matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave
some. She was a rut in the road.” Being a leading lady in the town, she didn’t like being
in authority. She wanted to be treated respectibly, the way she was, but she didn’t want
that kind of relationship with the people. She just wanted friends...and not inferiors. So,
Janie was not happy once again with her situation.
Janie kept on searching for this hidden happieness that she knew she wanted, but
could not find. She soon met Tea Cake. A man that made her laugh, made her happy,
and made her feel as though she was the same as everybody else. “Then Tea Cake went
to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and
throwning grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and then she
woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp.”
Tea Cake and Janie obviously shared a special love between them as their relationship
grew. The things he did for her made her feel unbelievable. They did things she had
never even thought of. Tea Cake took her places she had never been. “To Janie’s
strange eyes, everything in the Everglades was big and new.” Janie went to many new
places and met many new people that she would’ve never met had she stayed with Logan
or stayed in Eatonville with Joe. She would’ve just kept on living the same life...never
doing anything new with the same boring people. With Tea Cake, Janie began to work,
and to feel a certain freedom she had never felt before.
Janie found what she was looking for. She searched all her life to find what was
within herself, and one special person was all that was needed to bring it out in her. Even
though her and Tea Cake’s relationship ended in a tragedy, she knew that he really loved
her for who she was. She didn’t need to be with him for protection, or she didn’t need to
be the leading lady of a town or a mayor’s wife, she just needed the right kind of love and
affection to bring out what was best in her.
Word Count: 1368
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