Critical Analysis: Chapter 9

  
        In Chapter nine of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God the reader sees Janie entering a period of self-discovery.  For the first time in her life she is free to make her own decisions and live her life the way she wants to, rather than being told how to live it.  When Janie gains this power, she realizes she desires something different from what those around her had told her she would desire.  At this point she severs aspects of her life that represent her past.  In severing herself from those who had controlled her life, Janie has the power to live the dreams of love and freedom she had as a child.  Once Janie is on her own, she begins a journey of self-discovery in which she learns that while others told her she should want a husband and security in her life, what she truly wants is freedom and love. 

            At Joe’s funeral the reader can already see the small transformation in Janie’s feelings.  On the outside she appears the same to all those attending the funeral but inside she is changing.  She feels that “inside the expensive black folds are resurrection and life” (88).  Janie suddenly experiences the emergence of something “new” inside of herself.  In fact, the feeling she is building within herself is comparable to the feelings she had during her dream and vision of the pear tree.  While her “outside” went to the funeral, her “inside” “went rollicking with the springtime across the world”(88).  Already Janie begins to feel a change within her.  These changes create feelings that she has not had since she was younger and dreamt about love before Nanny forced her into marriage. These feelings within Janie lead to a period of self discovery.

            Upon asking herself questions Janie realizes the impacts Nanny and Joe have had on her life.  Janie’s grandma, forcing her to marry for stability instead of love, caused her to live a life she did not want.  In the past, Janie was “getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people….But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things” (89).  Nanny caused Janie to sacrifice the love she dreamed of.  In her youth she had a great dream of a pear tree during which she came to realize what love was.  Janie desired a love like the one in her dream, but her grandmother forced her to put her dreams aside.  Janie is a dreamer who had always wanted to be one who “could look at a mudpuddle and see ships” (89), but her grandmother “loved to deal in scraps” (89).  When Janie was young “she had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around.  But she had been set in the market-place to sell”(90).  Here we see Janie come to the realization that her dreams were cut short.  In her youth she wanted to live a  life as full as the horizon, the biggest thing God had ever made, but Nanny had “pinched it to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her”(89).  Janie’s realization that those in her past had forced her to forgo her dreams and live as they see fit creates a movement within Janie to separate herself from her past and live the way she had dreamed of when she was younger.

            Janie’s realization of how she had been treated causes her to severe ties to those from her past who had controlled her.  No scene demonstrates Janie freeing herself from her past more than the one following Joe’s funeral where she burns her head rags and wears her hair in a long ponytail (89).   This is a message that Janie is doing as she pleases, not as Joe would have wanted.  For Janie this is a symbolic act where she is freeing herself from Joe’s control and the life he had forced her to live. By doing this she is separating herself from the life she had lived with Joe, and with the ashes of the head rags Janie will begin a new life for herself.  As for her grandmother, Janie admits to herself that “she hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself….under a cloak of pity”(89).  Janie had always felt sorry for her grandmother and pitied the life Nanny was forced to live, therefore she could not admit to being angry at Nanny for forcing her to marry.  But in this chapter Janie realizes how Nanny has affected her life and opens up her real feelings about her grandmother.  This alone is a large step in the road to self-discovery for Janie.

            Once Janie looks inside herself she finds freedom.  It is something she did not know she wanted, yet she covets it once she has it.  This is evident almost immediately after Joe dies and Janie admits “she liked being lonesome for a change.  This freedom thing was fine” (90).  Janie enjoys her new feeling of freedom.  Throughout the chapter Janie incorporates more and more freedom into her life, without caring how people in the community view her.  When Joe was alive, Janie made sure she was seen in a likeable fashion by the community, or Joe would punish her.  As Janie begins to discover more about herself, she is free to make the decision that she does not care what the community thinks about her.  This is evident when Janie tells her friend Pheoby, “Tain’t dat Ah worries over Joe’s death, Pheoby.  Ah jus’ loves dis freedom”(93).  Pheoby replies by telling Janie that she should not let anyone hear that and Janie replies, “Let ‘em say whut dey wants tuh, Pheoby.  To my thinkin’ mourning oughtn’t tuh last no longer’n grief”(93).  When Janie has control over her life she discovers the appeal of freedom.  She realizes that freedom is a necessity if she wants to live the life dreamed of. 

            Janie’s desire for love in her life is something that is evident very early in the book, from her dream of the pear tree to her telling Nanny that she wants to marry for love.  Once Janie begins to discover things about herself, her desire for love becomes a large part of her life.  When numerous suitors show up to see her, Janie feels like slapping them for “trying to make out they looked like love” (90).  It is obvious Janie is looking for love because the actions of the men might not have otherwise bothered her.  The fact that Janie becomes angry makes it clear she does not want them to ”look” like love she wants them to be love.  Janie refuses to marry the men because they “don’t represent a thing she wanted to know about.  She had already experienced them though Logan and Joe”(90).  Janie is looking for love, because she had never felt it in her relationships with Logan and Joe.  If she could not experience love from her suitors then they could not contribute anything to her life that she did not she already experience with Logan and Joe.