Lessons Learned Essay, Research Paper

Lessons Learned In Their Eyess Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the chief character, Janie, is a adult female who develops her individuality throughout the novel by utilizing the cognition and experience she obtains from her three matrimonies. Janie & # 8217 ; s matrimonies to Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake are the most important elements in her development as a adult female. After each relationship is over, her attitude undergoes a metabolism, directing her towards her eventual independency. Janie, through young person and deficiency of authorization, is mislead to believe other people s definitions of love and matrimony until she is strong plenty to happen a relationship on her ain which satisfies her personal definitions of love and matrimony. The earliest influential minute on Janie s position of love and matrimony occurred at the age of 16 in her Nanny & # 8217 ; s back pace. Janie lies beneath the pear tree when, & # 8220 ; the unhearable voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom ; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to run into the love embracing and the enraptured tremble of the tree from root to tiniest subdivision creaming in every flower and foaming with delectation. So this was a matrimony! She had been summoned to lay eyes on a disclosure & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 11 ) . Janie & # 8217 ; s vernal idealism leads her to believe that this intense sensualness must be similar to the familiarity between lovers, and she wishes & # 8220 ; to be a pear tree & # 8211 ; any tree in bloom! & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 11 ) . The image suggests a integrity & # 8211 ; as bees pollinate flowers paralleling human sexual intercourse. From the beginning of her narrative under the pear tree, Janie undergoes the procedure of self-discovery, as she evolves through her experiences with three clearly different hubbies. Janie s first matrimony to Logan Killicks is the consequence of an agreement by Nanny, Janie s grandma. Nanny s dream is for Janie to achieve a place of security in society, high land as she puts it ( Hurston 13 ) . As the individual who raised her, Nanny feels that it is both her right and duty to enforce her dreams and her thoughts of what is of import in life on Janie. The struggle between Janie s idyllic position of matrimony and Nanny s want for her to get married for stableness and place is a confrontation that Janie will transport with her throughout her self-discovery. Janie, prior to her matrimony to Logan Killicks, still maintained the romantic impression that matrimony is what she witnessed under the pear tree. Nanny s thought of a good matrimony is person who has some standing in the community ; person who will acquire Janie to that higher land. Nanny wants Janie to get married Logan Killicks, but harmonizing to Janie he look like some ole skullhead in de graveyard ( Hurston 13 ) . Even more significantly to Janie, though, was the fact that the vision of Logan Killicks was profaning the pear tree ( Hurston 14 ) . Nanny leads her to believe that love comes after matrimony though love is secondary to the security matrimony provides. After they have the battle over Logan Killicks, Nanny says something, by manner of an account of why Janie needs to get married up the societal ladder. She says, De nigger adult female is de mule uh de universe so fur as Ah can see ( Hurston 14 ) . Janie, out of regard for her grandma, went off to get down her function as a married woman. Janie & # 8217 ; s matrimony to Logan Killicks was the first phase in her development as a adult female. She hoped that her forced matrimony with Logan would stop her solitariness and desire for love. She was naif about love before her matrimony to Logan ; she thought that love would come with clip if she married him but she rapidly comes to understand the world of matrimony. Right from the beginning, the solitariness in the matrimony shows up when Janie sees that his house is a & # 8220 ; only topographic point like a stump in the center of the forests where cipher had of all time been & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 21-22 ) . This description of Logan & # 8217 ; s house is symbolic of the relationship they have and is symbolic of Killick s ain character. Janie finally admits to Nanny that she still does non love Logan and can non happen anything to love about him. It is non long before the newness of matrimony wears off for Logan and he introduces Janie to the physical bondage that is expected of a married woman. Logan tells Janie I aims to run two ploughs, and dis adult male Ah m talkin turn is got a mule all gentled up so even uh adult female kin handle im ( Hurston 27 ) . There is small uncertainty why Logan would necessitate a mule so soft even a adult female could manage it. He does non handle Janie kindly, frequently handling her as a retainer instead than his married woman and often stating her that she is lazy and spoiled. Janie, although she tries, can non do herself love Logan Killicks. She knew now that matrimony did non do love. Janie s first dream was dead, so she became a adult female ( Hurston 25 ) . This quotation mark is of import because, more than even the matrimony ceremonial, it marks Janie s passage from Nanny s kid to a adult female, non merely in the biological and societal sense, but besides in the sense that Nanny describes when she says that the black adult female is the mule of de universe. . . ( Hurston 14 ) . Janie became a adult female, a individual willing to except the loss of a dream and move on, cognizing that something was gained in the procedure. The & # 8220 ; skyline & # 8221 ; claimed one of Janie s dreams ; she would ne’er be able to make it. As Logan realizes more and more that Janie is non happy with him, he tries to coerce her into the traditional married woman function by holding her bash more and more of the take downing work around the farm. The last straw is when he asks her to acquire a shovel and travel a heap of manure. After recognizing that she doesn & # 8217 ; t want to pass her life as a slave, she runs off from Logan to be with a adult male she had met merely yearss before this realisation. It takes a piece for her to make up one’s mind this, but when she eventually does & # 8220 ; a feeling of sudden newness and alteration came over her. Janie hurried out of the forepart gate and turned south. Even if Joe was non at that place waiting for her, the alteration was bound to make her good & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 32 ) . She is eventually facing world and acquiring out from under Logan & # 8217 ; s regulation before it & # 8217 ; s excessively tardily. The quest for freedom for Janie begins with the reaching of Joe Starks. When she leaves Logan for Joe Starks, who she thinks is her reply to the pear tree, she hopes that she has found a adult male that she can love. As Janie says He spoke for far skyline. He spoke for alteration and opportunity & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 29 ) . In the beginning of their matrimony Joe treats her like a queen. He tells Janie that his adult female needs to loosen up in the shadiness sipping on molasses H2O and fanning herself from the hot Sun. Janie fell in love with the thought. But the freedom with Joe was non absolute. In some ways her matrimony with Joe Starks is more of a adversity on Janie than her matrimony to Logan. Although she stays married to Joe until he dies, she shortly begins to understand that she has exchanged the physical and emotional bondage of her matrimony to Logan for rational and societal bondage by Joe. The scene where Joe Starks is elected city manager illustrates this point, as the crowd wants to here from Mrs. Mayor Starks ( she no longer has her ain individuality ) . Mah married woman Don T know nothin bout no speech-makin. Ah ne’er marr

ied her for nuthin lak digital audiotape. She s uh adult female and her topographic point is in de place ( Hurston 43 ) . It shortly becomes evident that Joe is merely interested in holding a married woman to utilize as a show piece. Their matrimony was purely for societal visual aspect. Joe feels that his matrimony is a portion of his image, a portion of his occupation. He does non get married her for love. Joe marries Janie to look good in forepart of the people who look up to him. Janie wants to experience a portion of the community, but Joe keeps her stray so that she will go on to be his award and non go merely another adult female in the town. He did non recognize that Janie was different in her demands, she did non necessitate position or stuff goods, she required love. The suppression of Janie, both as a adult female and a human, is Jody’s most interesting aspect. He sets a bound on her self- fulfilment, handling her more like an object than a adult female. Of class, he lumps adult females in with mere things – “Somebody got to believe for adult females and chilun and poulets and cattles ( Hurston 71 ) .” He’s good to Janie, but he’s good to his animate beings besides. In fact, Joe’s attitude towards Janie is echoed in his behaviour towards the overworked mule he buys and sets free: he lets the mule free to roll around town as grounds of his generousness and wealth. As Janie so bitterly sees, “Freein’ dat mule makes a mighty all right adult male outa you. Something like George Washington…you got uh town so you freed uh mule. You have tuh have power tuh free things and digital audiotape makes you lak uh king uh something ( Hurston 58 ) . Joe desires Janie’s complete entry, and on occasion beats her when she does non subject. Janie was once more a captive as Joe sheltered her and made her feel different from the remainder of society. Janie easy begins to interrupt out of the clay shell that Starks has been modeling her into throughout their matrimony. “She was salvaging up feelings for some adult male she had ne’er seen. She had an interior and an outside now and all of a sudden she cognize how non to blend them” ( Hurston 72 ) . Starks’ decease makes this passage possible for her. She begins to allow herself unrecorded, with no boundaries keeping her dorsum. She was able to turn, flower, alteration, and go mentally free. She ceased to care what society and people idea of her.

Janie & # 8217 ; s resiliency is rewarded when she eventually meets and marries Tea Cake, who represents the closest gloss to her vernal idealism sing love and matrimony ; he besides represented another measure to freedom. He looked like love ideas of adult females. He could be a bee to a flower a pear flower in the spring ( Hurston 106 ) He provides the ultimate fulfilment of her idealism sing what matrimony could and should be. Her matrimony to Tea Cake is opposite from both of her old matrimonies. Tea Cake makes Janie feel like she can make anything. Tea Cake makes Janie a portion of his societal life and this is something new to Janie s life. He makes her experience like an equal homo being. The love she feels for Tea Cake and the love she is given in return helps Janie genuinely understand what love means. Tea Cake respects Janie as an intelligent adult female, acknowledging her individualism, giving her the feeling that she now has room to populate. Janie is making for her ends and is eventually get downing to accomplish them. All of Janie s life she was hidden behind a mask that merely was taken off with Tea Cake s love. He teaches her to play draughtss and encourages her engagement in all the activities he is involved in. When Tea Cake is lonely on the sludge picking beans because Janie is non with him he requests that Janie join him in the Fieldss. Unlike Jody who wanted Janie to & # 8220 ; category off & # 8221 ; and move like a lady ( more like a trophy ) ; he is more concerned with holding her by his side because he misses her presence. Although Tea Cake still believes that he owns Janie slightly, he wants her to be happy at all times. After being married for a piece Tea Cake begins to slap Janie around. & # 8220 ; Bing able to flog her reassured him in ownership. No barbarous whipping at all. He merely slapped her around a spot to demo he was foreman & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 147 ) The physical whipping didn T change the relationship between Tea Cake and Janie.. Janie still feels that he gave her the unconditioned love that she longed for all her life. Janie and Tea Cake love each other for who they are, alternatively of loving the functions they have forced each other into. With Janie & # 8217 ; s relationship with Tea Cake they are non looking for people to make full any function in their lives other than the function of psyche mate. He drifted off to kip and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her psyche crawled out from its concealing topographic point ( Hurston 128 ) . Tea Cake non merely encouraged Janie s growing to independence, but besides given her a way toward her new life. He makes her dream of love semen true, and merely two old ages with him satisfies her for the remainder of her life. She does non repent anything in her life because she was able to pass those old ages with Tea Cake. Her development as a adult female is complete after life and larning with Vergible & # 8220 ; Tea Cake & # 8221 ; Woods. She was like a small seed, able to blow in the air current and travel wherever she chose to travel. Even though Tea Cake is gone physically, he is at that place with Janie until the terminal of the novel when she finishes stating her narrative to Phoeby. He could ne’er be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thought. The buss of his memory made images of love and visible radiation against the wall. ( Hurston 193 ) Tea Cake s decease freed Janie for the remainder of her life. When he was gone she had nil else to look after in life except herself. Love is lak de sea. It s a movin thing, but still and all, it takes its form from de shore it meets and its different with every shore ( Hurston 191 ) . Janie is stating that love takes a different signifier depending on who you are with, each different individual stand foring the shores. This shows Janie s growing because she says that no affair what you do, you have to turn into a love and you can non foretell what your following experience is traveling to be or even who it is traveling to be with. You can non prejudge love. It merely comes of course or it does non. You either link with a individual or you do non. Janie takes each individual she is close to and all the state of affairss her life brings to her signifiers her ain sentiments on love. Janie grows from a moony kid with her fairy narrative ideas on love to cognize that you can non foretell what comes in the hereafter. Janie went from allowing everyone in her life stating her what love means to holding a set definition, a personal definition, on what love truly means to her. Janie finds in the terminal, that love is undeniable. It is a different experience for each individual you spend your clip with. Not one individual can come and state Janie anything different about love. Janie eventually has a head of her ain. In her defining minute of individuality formation, Janie & # 8220 ; pulled in her skyline like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the universe and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her psyche to come and see & # 8221 ; ( Hurston 193 ) . At the terminal of a fresh focussing on self-revelation and self-formation, Janie survives with the cognition she has claimed her skyline.