Throughout the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching
God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the reader consistently finds Janie, the main
character, somewhat alienated in her two communities of Eatonville and the
muck in the Everglades. Although Janie is an outsider, she always has
at least one person with whom she is closely connected. Chapter one
does especially well demonstrating that Janie’s estrangement in her community
is a theme throughout the book and, at the same time, demonstrates how Janie’s
distance from the rest of the community members, aside from one, has given
her a sense of power that has allowed her the opportunity to grow personally.
Had Janie been an active member of either community, she would not have been
able to grow and change in the same way throughout the novel.
In chapter one, when Janie returns to Eatonville, and
goes straight to her house without stopping to speak to anyone, she demonstrates
a sense of power that the other community members do not have. When
the town folks saw her coming, without the husband and fancy clothing she
left with, they began to whisper judgments about her among themselves, but
as soon as she was close enough to hear them …”nobody moved, nobody spoke,
nobody even thought to swallow spit until after her gate slammed behind her”
(2). She has a sense of power in the community. The people are
all curious about where she has been and why she has returned, but no one,
aside from her one good friend, Pheoby, dares to ask because they are intimidated
by her. It is not so much the fact that Janie does not address the
community that makes her powerful, but more that she does not care what the
community thinks about her. She says to Pheoby about the community’s
gossip, “if God don’t think no mo’ ‘bout ‘em then Ah do, they’s a lost ball
in de high grass” (5). Janie is not affected by the opinions of her
gossiping neighbors. She feels no need to try and get along or connect
with them; she just brushes them off and pays them no attention, which clearly,
only she has done.
Janie’s distance from the community is necessary for her
to be able to grow and change on a personal and mental level. Being
distant from those around her allows her to pick up and leave if and whenever
she pleases. When Joe is alive, he is her one close connection.
They are close in the sense that they see one another every day and interact
with each other more than with other community members. Once he dies
Janie has no other connections and begins to express her feelings of freedom.
The evening of Joe’s death, “she [burns] every one of her head rags and [goes]
around the house the next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging
well below her waist” (89) which is something Joe absolutely hated.
Although the condition of Janie’s hair has little affect on her relationship
with the community, it is symbolic of the power she feels within herself,
the same power that allows her to leave Eatonville if she so desires.
Being free of her only connection in Eatonville, Joe, and full of a sense
of personal power, as well as being distant from those around her allows
Janie to leave.
The circumstances surrounding Janie’s experience on the
muck are different than those of Eatonville even though her pattern is still
the same. Janie gets along very well with the other workers on the
muck, one may even venture to call them her friends. But, even so,
she is not close enough to them for them to have any real influence on her
or her decision to leave the muck after Tea Cake, her one intimate connection,
has died. The workers and close friends of Tea Cake “begged her stay
on with them and she had stayed a few weeks to keep them from feeling bad.
But the muck meant Tea Cake and Tea Cake wasn’t there” (191). Because
Janie has no real friends nor an intimate relationship with the muck community
after Tea Cake’s death she is able to pack up and leave without worrying
much about the opinions of the muck workers. She stays on for an extra
week to keep from hurting the feelings of Tea Cake’s friends, but that is
because she likes them and they get along fairly well. It is because
Tea Cake is gone that Janie can leave the muck and go back to Eatonville
where Pheoby, her only connection in the world, is living.
Chapter one of the novel demonstrates immediately Janie’s
relationship with her Eatonville community while at the same time sets up
the theme of community that can be traced throughout the novel. The
reader finds
that Janie is
an independent and strong woman who is estranged from her community whose
members enjoy gossiping about her while
she is not in their presence. However, Janie cares not about the gossip
that goes on behind her back. In fact she uses her estrangement from
the others as a means by which she is able to grow personally. Had Janie
been an active part of either the Eatonville or muck communities, she would
not have been able to grow and change in the same way.
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