Journal #1

Zara Neale Hurston’s their eyes were watching god uses flashback to begin the story of the main character Janie Stark. In the start of the book, Janie is seen returning from the funeral of a character yet to be introduced, and she quickly becomes the topic of gossip among the villagers. They criticized her overalls, tsked at her unbound hair, and discussed the “young lad of a boy she went off here wid”. Janie walks right past them, providing them no answers to their questions. She was later sought out by Pheobe, her best friend for details about her recent absence, and thus, she began her story. 

Janie tells of how she was born as a result of her mother "Leafy" being raped by a school teacher. Leafy disappeared after Janie's birth and Janie was raised by her Grandmother "Nanny", in the backyard of the wealthy whites who Nanny worked for. Because she often played with the white kids of the house, she had thought of herself no different until she was shown a picture one day, and from then on, she starts to learn the burden of being coloured in the "white man's world". 

What really stood out to me in the five chapters that we've read so far is the section where Janie describes her "discovery" of being colored. 

"Ah couldn't recognize dat dark chile as me. So Ah ast 'where is me' Ah don't see me." ... Ah looked at de picture a long time and seen it was may dress and may hair so Ah said: 

"Aw, aw! Ah'm colored!"

This particular passage stood out to me because it was a strong representation of the society structure in Janie's days. The other colored children ostracized Janie simply because of her white appearances and behavior. This shows that even the children were aware of the animosity between the colored and white, further proving the extensive gap between the two races. If even children, who are probably the most innocent and accepting in the human society, are learning to segregate and discriminate, how would they learn to live equally? It is human nature to be influenced by our surroundings, and if children are growing up in a society that teaches them the opposite of what is right, they will grow up to teach their children just the same. 

The same idea applies to Nanny. Because Nanny was born into a period of slavery, she lived through hardship and understood the difficulties of being a colored women. Therefore, she wanted to shelter Janie of this pain by marrying her off to someone that she believed could support Janie, so that she wouldn't have to be "a mule" in the world where the white man is the ruler. Because of this belief, Nanny wouldn't allow her to explore the world on her own, to live a life that she wanted. This leads to Janie's "search for love".