Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Words: 870
Pages: 4

Their Eyes Were Watching God introduces us to Janie Crawford. As a young African American girl, she lived in a tattered hut behind a white country home. Growing up, she played with the children of the Caucasian family. Janie stated while recounting her childhood to a friend, “Ah looked at de picture a long time and seen it was mah dress and mah hair so ah said: aw, aw! Ah’m colored! Den dey all laughed real hard. But before ah seen de picture ah thought ah wuz just like de rest” (Hurston 9). This was just the start of Zora Neale Hurston showing us Janie’s blooming American Dream. As Janie grew older, her American Dream blossomed, and she finally had a take on what she wanted. She wanted love, happiness, and to feel like she truly belonged. …show more content…
Logan was an older gentleman that had been seeking Janie's hand in marriage for awhile. Janie’s grandmother thought he was respectable because of his acres of land, and Janie was handed off to Logan within the week. Janie, only being sixteen when entering her first marriage, had no idea what to do, so she took her directions from Logan and followed his wishes. Time passed, and she felt like her dream was slipping away from her. She did not love Logan, and was not happy with him, so when a new opportunity came strolling down the street, she took it. A few days later Janie ran off with her new opportunity, Joe Starks, and they got married. Joe took her down south where there was a town just for African Americans. He ended up being the mayor of this town which made her the mayor's wife. That wasn’t her dream though, and Joe was too busy trying to be successful that he forgot to put in the effort for them to have love in their marriage. One day after Joe had slapped Janie, she began to think, “Janie stood where he left her for an unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside