Janie's Voice and Growth in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Introduction: Janie's Journey Toward Self-Discovery

In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston utilizes the literary techniques of characterization, figurative language, narrative style, and voice to demonstrate Janie's emotional maturity. The novel centers primarily on Janie's journey of finding her voice. She emerges as a strong, confident woman because she remains open to life despite its hardships. Instead of becoming bitter and resentful, she learns from her mistakes and her misconceptions and tries to grow from them. She also finds her voice through the different relationships she has and learns that confrontation can be a good character-building tool. Through the tragic events of her life, Janie realizes that there is hope, faith, and, in the end, peace. This acceptance brings Janie to a comfortable spiritual understanding as well. By the end of the novel, Janie has come to own her character and can face the remainder of her life with the satisfaction that she did the best she could under the worst of circumstances.

Finding Her Voice Through Perception and Early Lessons

Much of the novel focuses on Janie's evolution as a person. Finding her own voice in the world is critical to her development. Only by learning who she is can she discover her true nature. Hurston first allows Janie to learn who she is through her vision — that is, how she sees things. As Nanny tells her, we "can't know nothin' but what we see" (Hurston 14), emphasizing that, most of the time, how we perceive things is how we believe them to be. Essentially, things are not always what they seem, and they are certainly not always what we perceive them to be. This is Janie's first lesson in the ways of the world and the beginning of many lessons she would come to learn. Because things are generally not as they appear, this is a fitting way to begin Janie's journey.

Relationships as Catalysts for Growth

Growth comes from interaction with others, and Janie is no stranger to that. While Janie finds herself in one difficult relationship after another, her voice becomes progressively stronger, and as a result she matures. Early in the novel, for instance, Janie believes that marriage always means love: "Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be true. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant" (21). She also naively believed that marriage removed the loneliness from one's life. Her first marriage, to Logan, allows her to see the falsity of that belief. Marriage is for Janie a constant struggle, and finding her voice is difficult because Logan continually belittles her.

As Janie moves on, she learns more about herself. As her character develops and she grows more aware of how things actually are, we find her telling Jody that even though he has lived with her for twenty years, he "don't half know me at all" (86). She finds the courage to confront him as well, declaring, "you got tuh pacify somebody beside yo'self . . . You ain't tried to pacify nobody but yo'self. Too busy listening to yo' own big voice" (86). This scene is significant because it shows Janie being assertive with Jody — and it turns out that he cannot handle the strong woman she has become. Janie, too, grows aware of her own strength, something that forces her to recognize many truths about life, none more important than the fact that she is becoming fully herself as a woman.

Conclusion: Janie as Heroine of Her Own Life

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a glorious and painful story of one woman's discovery of her own voice. Janie evolves as a person through experience — most of it painful. She learns from the difficult relationships she has lived through, yet, while her first few relationships were painful, they allowed her to appreciate the love she eventually found with Tea Cake. By the time she met Tea Cake, she had been developing her voice and was confident enough in herself to truly love another.