Now that we've read through Their Eyes Were Watching God all the way through, I want to go back to the opening again and relate it to the story as a whole. I remember being really confused by it when we first read it, and going back there are some interesting connections to make. The first paragraph refers to ships, saying "For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon" (1). The ships are said to carry every man's dream, which brings to mind the three men that we get to know in Janie's story; Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake. So for whom did the ships land and for whom did they sail on the horizon? Well, we don't really know with Logan, since we never saw the end of his life. For Joe, it seems that he achieved many of his goals. He started the town, became the mayor, had the prettiest wife, etc. However, he failed to reach his internal goal of owning and controlling Janie forever. She does exhibit little acts of rebellion and especially at the end of Joe's life lashes out at him. For Joe, it's like his ship was an illusion on the shore but truly on the horizon. And then there's Tea Cake. Honestly it feels like Tea Cake is the winner here because his dreams were just to live contently and be happy and in love with Janie, all of which he achieved. Even at the end, Janie loved him, and probably deep down Tea Cake also loved Janie. His ship officially landed.
The second short paragraph talks about women, who "forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget" (1). This also is interesting to look at in retrospect, as this theme is carried in the telling of Janie's story. She tells very little about her relationship with Logan, mostly because she didn't enjoy it and wants to forget it. She tells little details of her twenty year relationship with Joe because there are important lessons to have from that relationship, but there isn't much there compared to her retelling the story of her and Tea Cake, which may actually be longer than the number of pages given to her story with Joe. This is because her time with Tea Cake is actually something she holds dearly to her heart and she wants to remember every moment she spent with him down to the last second.
After reading the book, I never went back to the beginning to try and make sense of everything in the first few pages! It makes total sense that the ships would represent Janie's 3 husbands. I also thought that the imagery of a horizon seems to be a sort of un-achievable goal, which Janie has managed to achieve. Each of the 3 husbands were never able to fully achieve their goals, but Janie says she has been to the horizon and back, symbolizing her achievement of happiness.
ReplyDeleteI like your interpretation of the three ships as Janie's three husbands. Additionally, the line about women forgetting seperates people's experiences by gender from the start. This separation is evident because the novel focuses on womens' freedom and independence. Hurston's novel centers on womens' experiences, which would be completely unheard of before the beginning of the women's liberation movement and before the roots of feminism evolved.
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