Written by: punkonator
The human will and the will of God are two prevalent themes within Zora Neale Hurston’s American masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Not only do both themes play integral parts in the tone and continuity of the novel, but they also play into every other major theme of the book. These other themes being: self-discovery, love, independence, and nature’s power in one’s life. Both Janie’s personal will, and the will of God in this story are used to show the strengths and weakness of Janie as well the rest of the characters. The will of God is seen numerous times throughout the novel in order to test Janie and her will. God’s will is also seen directing other major and minor characters in the book. The wills of God and Janie are the guiding forces within the story and skirmish with each other throughout to create the backbone of this novel.
For Janie, there is a great conflict of wills her own and the will of God. On one side of her reasoning she feels the need to experience true love but on the other side, is God pulling the strings in her life. Her Nanny will have nothing to do with the later and thus pushes Janie in the direction of marriage, even if that means there is no love. Janie wants love but is still unsure in her young womanhood if all it takes to it is a simple marriage to a man who will take care of her. This can be seen when Janie asks herself, “Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated. Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?” She soon finds out that she should have listened to her instinct once she finds that being taken of isn’t that same as true love. Marriage is not what Janie wants. She wants love. Her desire to get out of the marriage is clearly seen in all the references to animals. She feels like a mule while she’s with Logan. She knows she has the spirit of a stallion inside her but she is literally surrounded by a gate and can only stare towards her impossible dreams of love down the road (25-27). Logan puts a tremendous amount of stress on Janie with his demands as well as his verbal and physical abuse seen often while she is his wife. In this time of despair Janie first mopes around because she can’t complain to Nanny anymore but then she becomes proactive and ends up running away with a man she barely knows, Joe Starks. This is an excellent example of her strong will. She knew what she wanted out of life and it wasn’t a life of verbal and physical beatings. She knew that Jody would treat her better than any man she had ever known and so she followed her instinct. Her instinct and determination to find love however, led her in the wrong direction. Although at first she commended herself and her will for the good choice she had made in leaving Killicks for Jody, she soon regretted it and had to live like a slave again for almost two decades. This is just another instance where Janie’s will didn’t end up taking her where she wanted to go.
Being with Joe Starks also showed Janie that love wasn’t everything that everyone had said it was. It wasn’t like the bees suckling on the sweet nectar blooms of the peach tree (page 11). Being the Mrs. Mayor taught Janie that her will and heart’s desire didn’t mean squat when a man was involved. This is where her struggles with self-discovery and freedom versus marriage come into play. These struggles are an internal test of Janie’s will and her character. Hurston was very creative in using them to piece together Janie’s flamboyant and eccentric personality. Janie has a definite grasp on life, especially after Logan’s death while she’s first courting Tea Cake. It’s interesting to see her develop into a [modern day] female character, even though it happens so late in the novel.
Janie becomes much stronger and she has control over her own will after Joe’s death. Her resolve at one time belonged to Logan and then it was Joe’s but when Tea Cake came along, he let her have her own life. It can be imagined Janie loved him so much because he loved her just the way she was and let her be whoever she wanted to be. This must have been great for her because it seems that her self-esteem got boosted up through the ceiling after meeting Tea Cake. She walked without a care in the world as if the grounds were clouds beneath her feet and the sun was always shining on her face. Tea Cake is Janie’s dream, that ship that had been on the horizon for forty years of her life. Janie was finally happy; she could be independent but still devote herself and her “self-crushing love” to Tea Cake in a very ironic way. This however, couldn’t last forever and soon after moving to the Muck she received a good dose of Tea Cake’s disciplinary medicine.
One question that arises upon completing this book is what does Janie’s will really want? What is her most spirited desire and what is she doing to get there? An answer might be, Janie is looking for an independent kind of relationship where love is exchanged freely and altruistically between both partners without pain or abuse. One could say that Janie still hasn’t found her true will because she’s only searching within herself and not looking at what her Creator is doing in her life. God plays another important role in this novel, quite possibly a bigger role than that of Janie’s. God is Janie’s unknown guide, putting her in situations that she doesn’t want to be in. He teases her with dreams of love and romance but never allowed her to experience to the fullest. This served Janie in her best interest though, and showed her who she really had become. A major example is the storm in which God finally shows Himself to Janie as the true power in her life.
God used his magnificent yet eternally mysterious powers to pull the strings of life so that it was only satisfactory to Janie and left her always questioning herself and her actions. He tested her will with every trial possible to humans. He let her taste all the fruits of life but never allowed her to bite so deep down that she’d have to eat the bitter cores of the men who said they loved her. This evokes another interesting question, what was God’s will for Janie in the novel? Could it really have been that he wanted her to become an independent woman who all the other women envied? Or did he want her to experience life down to the barest truth it had to offer. It’s evident that he didn’t want Janie to live a simple life like all the other girls in the story. He had big plans for her. His will was for her to become acquainted with herself and her personal will. The Lord wanted to give her what she desired but in a much more complex manner by throwing every which trial and stumbling block into her life. Without struggle there can be no invention and without invention there can be no process. God provided numerous struggles for Janie and she provided her own blend of sassy innovations and thus, she got through life. And although she never fully recognized it (except once during the hurricane scene when Janie shouts to the Lord and professes his name as her master), Janie’s life was controlled by the Lord through his ingenious manipulation in her existence and environment. He displays his power quite blatantly in the novel. He answers all her question including whether marriage is love or not, by giving her hand to Logan Killicks. He takes care of her desires too by giving her things like Joe Starks, who seemingly came out of nowhere and swept Janie off her feet. But even then, it wasn’t good enough for her and God knew it, so he gave her the love of her life who she would later have to kill. But only once during this whole time did she say that the Lord was her guiding light. In fact, Janie only questions the Lord one time when she says,” Ole Massa is doin’ His work now. Us oughta keep quiet” (159). He was indeed doing His work and the choices Janie made during the storm and prior to it were all based on the situations that He provided for her. He gave her all the opportunities to find the answers to her questions concerning her role in life, love, security, individualism, and marriage. He gave her the answers by providing the paths of dreams of and questions.