Reading to Find

It’s a wonder how a fictional character can be tantamount to an existent being. That a young lost or wayward person can pick up a novel, challenge himself to a difficult read, and finish with a new understanding of self, especially when that person can’t even find a counterpart in the real world.

The fictional character, Janie, in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a perfect portrait of my character. Given a strong reliance on self-worth, independence, and responsibility as well as the image of inter-racial and “intra-racial” equality, and the implied ideal of perfection from birth, I’ve gathered similar institutions of character as Janie (whom was raised by a strict formerly enslaved grandmother with strict ideals).

Similar to Janie, I never truly recognized my race until I was nine years old and soon after (at first) I felt awkward. Just as Janie was I am a fair-skinned, long-haired, black female, still today reaping the air of racial scorn (both inter and intra) from certain people about these features. (Quite honestly, not unlike Janie, I never recognized shades of black until a couple years ago.) And reminiscent of Janie’s character, the beginning of the nature of "womanly intentions" was aroused at 16.

Aside from the racial aspect of Janie's life and her nature of womanly intentions, Hurston offers a deeper insight into her character, which better provoked my understanding of self. Perhaps it was Janie's longing for love and true acceptance as a female (for me not so much the female part since women are much more accepted in society now, for me it's a simple longing for accepteance) that sparked her endeavor to reach beyond the horizon. Her grandmother's fundamental precept was basically to be financially secure, responsible, and successful - basically furnishing Janie's mind with the thought of perfection and high expectation, wherein the "similar institutions of character" I mentioned earlier come into play. I do have high expectations for myself and sometimes these high expectations mixed with discrepancy of the "true limit of self" (that nobody can be perfect), stifle and lose voice just as Janie's was lost and just how I can't seem to find mine when it would come in handy. Janie sought to be independent but was held back by her yearning for love and the influence of her grandmother. In the novel, quite honestly, I think that God sought also to teach Janie a lesson - wanted Janie to find truth in herself before she could be involved in a dependent relationship with someone else. This is why her first and second marriages didn't work out. This is why her third marriage was fruitful until God's wrath became apparent (the hurricane). This is why her third husband died, because through these trials, Janie finally gained her understanding of self. So one simple thread of knowledge I gained from reading this piece was that we often try to hold onto something that God is trying to tear apart, in so doing, we stifle our inbred success.


My point in writing this blog is to share an interesting find I made while reading a novel set completely in a different time period and how it could still relate to me, or issues that still go on now.