Janie's Many Marriages

There has been a lot of talk lately about Janie and her two marriages, from both perspectives, those who feel sympathy for Janie and those who think she is being "whiny."

In her first marriage Janie is married, against her will, to Logan Killicks, a farmer with 60 acres of land. Logan really loves her and for about a month he waits on her and praises her constantly. But after a while he stops and begins asking her to help out around the farm by doing things such as chopping wood and shoveling manure. Janie refuses to do these things and takes them almost as an affront, it seems as though she believes that these tasks are beneath her. Then along comes Joe Starks all handsome, suave, and rich and she immediately runs off with him. I don't think that this is something that Janie should be severely criticized for; she didn't love Logan at all and was forced to marry him. 

After living with Jody for a while with him as that mayor of Eatonville and her as the mayor's wife Jody begins to seem like a bad husband as well. He forces her to work in the shop all the time, even forcing her to wear a hair rag so that the other men won't look at her. He won't let her partake in the town gossip since that is "beneath" her in her position as mayor's wife, and as they grow older he begins to point out her signs of aging like wrinkles, in an attempt to draw attention away from his own aging. Some people seem to be very sympathetic for Janie at this point and there is some sympathy to be had for Janie but I think that it is partially her own fault. What was stopping her from just leaving Jody when he started acting like this towards her? It says that they were married for 20 years, so this isn't a new occurrence by the end of their marriage. It seems to me like she could have just as easily run away from Jody as she did from Logan.

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First Impressions of "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

A few days ago, I read the first three chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God and I was struck by the stark difference between the narrative parts of the novel and the dialogue. The narrative is very poetic, almost to the point of being flowery and then suddenly the reader is thrown into the dialogue which is written phonetically in a sort of vernacular of the time. It is written as it would be spoken by the characters, accounting for accent and dialect. This difference in writing style between the narrative portions and the dialogue helps the reader understand how the people that Zora Neale Hurston is trying to portray would have spoken. 

I think that it is interesting that although the characters' dialogue is written differently from the narrative, they are both still able to convey the same message and the author does a good job of making transitions between them very fluid. A good example of this is when Janie is telling her story to Phoebe. The story starts out as Janie speaking to Phoebe in the house and it is written in the style of the dialogue, but as the story progresses the narrator kind of takes over the story and it is written in the style of the narrative. Despite this change of style, it is still apparent that Janie is telling the story, and the same ideas are conveyed. 

It will be interesting to see how these two very different styles of writing work together throughout the remainder of the novel. 

Final Thoughts on Invisible Man

As we finished our discussion of Invisible Man in class I began thinking about the narrator and his progression throughout the novel. It seems to me that not only has he gained a greater knowledge/sense of his invisibility, but by the end of the novel he has also gained a better understanding of how the world and society works.

The book opens with him stating "I am an invisible man," and by the end of it the reader understands how he came to be living in this cellar, invisible to everyone. I think that this final realization of the power of invisibility, that he can wield comes in the scene where he has diguised himself to avoid Ras' men. He is mistaken for a guy named Rhinehart at least 3 times and each time he learns a new about piece of Rhinehart's personality. How Rhinehart is actually 4 or 5 very different people all at the same time. I think that this is the truning point for him, because he realizes that by being invisible he can do whatever he wants without as many societal restrictions.

Not only did the narrator become invisible by the end of his story, but he also gained an understanding of how the world works and how society works. In the beginning he was completely oblivious. Bledsoe sells him this story of earning a job in New York and then returning to college, when in reality he is being expelled, the Brotherhood tell him that he will be the next Booker T. Washington, when really they are just using him and in the end they get rid of basically everything that he's already done. Only at the very end of the novel does the narrator realize that the Brotherhood was simply using him. At this point, I think he finally understands the dynamics of society. How Bledsoe tricked him, how the Brotherhood used him, it's all part of how this wolrd works and it takes the entire book for the narrator to finally realize that not everything is as it seems and that all of these "opportunities" that he has received have really been tricks and illusions to get him to do what the people want him to do.

I guess that what I'm getting at is that the narrator realized more than just his invisibility by the end of the novel, he also realized how society functioned around him.