The notions of freedom and independence are rather controversial ones. The problem is rooted in the thing that everyone sees these notions in his or her own way. It often happens that freedom and independence as one person understand them cannot be offered to him or her just because the people around have a bit different assumption of these values.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston presents the reader an opportunity to consider these notions as the main character, Janie Crawford, sees them. The reader observes Janie’s search for her freedom and independence, thus being encouraged to appreciate their significance in one’s own life.
The novel is concerned with a story of Janie’s life. She is a black woman living in the town of Eaton where the back-white relations remain a serious problem:
It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment (Hurston 2).
The object of judgment was a woman who searched her personal happiness in three marriages and was tried for the murder of one of her husbands. Though Janie does not feel her duty to clear out herself, she explains the story of her life to her friend. We are inclined to believe that she did it to better understand herself and to ensure that her actions were justified.
Janie seems to be a person whose feelings and minds always contradicted each other. She had a philosophical assumption of her life: “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom were in the branches” (Hurston 8), but she refused to be a leaf blown by the wind.
The reader observes the development of Janie’s character and the changes in her attitude to life. Since childhood Janie did not realize her identity: she knew neither that she was black nor her own name. Her mother’s story made her believe that to marry does not necessarily mean to be in love. When it comes to expressing herself Janie hides her personality.
Janie’s second marriage was her first radical step in searching for her freedom. Though the second Janie’s husband Joe was always restricting her, he played a crucial role in her self-development. The moment when Janie refuses to keep her hair tied as her husband asks, serves as a pivotal moment in her understanding of the feeling of personal freedom. After Joe’s death, she feels free of the restrictions placed by Joe and decides to start a new life where she will do what she wants to.
Soon, Janie realizes that her grandmother’s idea about finding and fulfilling the dreams contradicts her views. Her most cherished dream was real love which meant freedom for her. Janie got one more chance to become free and happy – she went off and married Tea Cake. Despite the public opinion, that was real love.
We believe that the person who is capable of love and does not hesitate to demonstrate one’s feelings can be called a really free one. Though love presupposes some voluntary interdependence, those who once feel it does not worry about the problems that human life is full of. A person in love is inspired by this feeling so that he or she feels absolutely free. Since Janie got her love more and more often she looked at the mirror and realized her right for happiness.
Though Janie was absolutely happy with the man near her, Janie’s life did not stop to put difficulties: a great hurricane, a rabid dog – these all hardened Janie’s character and made her power to resist the problems. But Janie’s destiny was really hard on her – killing the one man that she really loved made Janie broken-hearted. Still, the trial found Janie innocent and this gave her the power to live further.
As we do not differentiate between Janie’s love and her independence, she remained independent as she remained faithful to her beloved and to her idea of real love. She feels that Tea Cake is still with her and is satisfied by this fact. Thus, we may say that she succeeded in her search for love and independence that meant the same thing for her.
The Their Eyes Were Watching God makes the reader admire the main character’s yearning for freedom and evokes his or her burning desire to build one’s own happiness as Janie did.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Harper Perennial Modern Classics,1998.