Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

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In the story Their Eyes Were Watching God the narrator immediately establishes an underlying difference between men and women in the opening paragraphs. While men fail to really reach for their dreams, women can control their wills and choose their dreams. The metaphorical “ships” suggest that regardless of their ultimate success or failure, men dream of great accomplishments of working and changing their outward worlds. Even if the ship comes in, it still begins as an external goal. For women, such as the main character Janie, pulling in to her horizon shifts the field of action to her interior goals. Her quest to the “horizon” requires experience of the world, other people, and places, but it is ultimately directed to achieve fulfillment of her life. At the start of the story Janie is looking for something more than a husband who is well off and can support her. She believes in a deeper kind of fulfillment; one that offers both physical and emotional connection. To her, the horizon represents imagination and limitless possibilities. It is the type of life Janie wants, opposed to the life she has. Her husband Logan’s goals are to control Janie and by this he tries to exert his power on her by forcing her to help him with physical labor in the yard. Subsequently, Janie meets Jody who “spoke for far horizon”. He represents possibility and freedom and bursts with ambition and power, unlike Logan. Although Janie realizes Jody will not offer her the figures of her youthful romantic desires, she is willing to abandon and compromise her desires in exchange to come closer to the horizon. While Janie’s search for the horizon requires her to undertake a spiritual journey toward love and self- awareness, Jody attempts to achieve fulfillment through the employment of power. As the opening paragraphs discuss, men focus their horizon on tangible goals. Upon the arrival at
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