Lack Of Freedom

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Lack of Freedom In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston portrays a woman named Janie in search for freedom. Janie’s life is presented as a journey. Janie survives Nanny, her grandmother, three husbands, and innumerable amount of friends. Throughout her journey, she moves towards her ideals of freedom and how to live one's life. Hurston uses a head rag as a symbol of Janie’s lack of freedom. Throughout the novel, Hurston uses Janie’s long hair to help resemble her freedom. Janie makes sure that her hair is neat and looks nice. Jennie’s long hair is what every girl envies but every man desires. She does a lot to make sure that people can see her hair and she is not afraid to show off her individual spirit. However, Joe, her second husband, shows his dominance over Janie by making her tie up her hair in head rags. Joe not letting Janie wear her hair the way she wants to takes Janie freedom of individualism. Joe’s reason of insisting of Janie to wear the head rag is due to jealousy since he would see other man touching her hair (Clarke). Janie’s freedom is taken away the moment she cannot longer wear her hair freely the way Joe did not want her to. This upsets Janie but she does not show it and instead she acts pleasant around him since she knows Joe has full power over her. When Joe passes away, she feels that she is now free from him and no longer has someone controlling over her. The first reaction that Janie has is to go up to the mirror, stared at herself, and take of the head rag (Hurston 87). As soon as she knows Joe was gone she felt her freedom come back. Getting home from the funeral “Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house the next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist” (89). Over the time, she had learned of an inside feeling that her lack of
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