Essay on Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston explores a woman, Janie, and her expedition for love and self-acceptance. She searches for freedom and independence from tremulous relationships, abuse, trauma, and other troubling situations. Therefore, given Janie’s character arc and evolution, Hurston kills off Janie’s true love, Tea Cake, for Janie to truly become autonomous from the interests of men; also, in sequence, Hurston makes sure Janie is finally independent in her new life. In addition, another reason for Hurston's disposing of Tea Cake’s character is a metaphor. In the final situation involving Janie and Tea Cake, Janie must kill Tea Cake for her survival and save herself. Henceforth, even though Janie is literally battling for her survival and truly saving herself, the words “saving herself” may be interpreted more philosophically because Janie is a non-disabled woman capable of thriving without men. In the beginning, Janie is a naïve, oblivious, and curious teenager. This innocence results from Janie’s sheltering and lust for love that many teenagers have at the age of sixteen. Meanwhile, Janie being abused, mocked, terrorized, and having trauma made her lose her innocence and hope for the world. Thus, Janie is a well-rounded, worldly, and independent woman by the end of the novel. In the novel, Hurston kills Tea Cake and gives Janie immense trauma for Janie’s redemption and character. However, Hurston gives Janie all of these tremulous relationships and tragedies, such as Tea Cake’s death,  to emphasize how Janie needs to be ultimately alone to develop into what she is destined to achieve: self-actualization/realization.

This journey for Janie’s self-actualization begins with her upbringing, which features Nanny and Logan. In the beginning, Janie, as stated previously, is a naive, innocent girl that wants nothing more than to be loved for who she is. In many instances, Janie is constantly navigating puberty with instances like the nature scene, where she witnessed “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight” (28). This instance is a perfect metaphor for Janie’s sexuality/sensuality when it comes to men and how naive she is at the beginning of the novel. At this exact moment, all Janie yearns for is true love, for someone to reciprocate love, as her soon-to-be-husband will not reciprocate her love whatsoever. Logan, unlike the man of her dreams, berates and shames Janie for not working enough; he threatens her by saying “Ah’ll take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh!” (49). Given Nanny’s nagging and Logan’s reprimanding, she realizes that she must find love elsewhere with someone else. At this time, she must love someone else, but not herself because Janie desperately craves love, which she believes can only be found through her co-dependence on men. Even though this co-dependence is harmful to Janie, it is a learning lesson for her by the end of the novel, when she finally loves herself.