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Their Eyes Were Watching God Part 6: Janie's Voice 2575 Views


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Description:

A story about voices couldn’t have been framed better than in a frame narrative. Well...maybe in a really classy picture frame. Like, the ones that cost twenty bucks at Target. That probably would’ve done a decent job, too. Anyway. Hit play to discover how voice plays a role in Their Eyes Were Watching God.


Transcript

00:01

We speak student!

00:06

Their Eyes Were Watching God

00:08

Janie's Quest

00:09

a la Shmoop

00:11

Telling your own story is both a verbal tradition and a physical one.

00:16

And as we think about all coming of age stories,

00:20

they are a quest. Some are journies out.

00:24

Prototype would be, I don't know,

00:26

teenagers on a boat exploring an island.

00:29

Swiss Family Robinson, [ indistinct ], whatever.

00:31

But it can also be a journey in,

00:34

and they're finding who they are.

00:35

Think Holden Caulfield's is really more of a journey in than a journey out.

00:38

In this case,

00:40

Janie is on a kind of quest

00:43

influenced by a lot of voices. And it's interesting to

00:47

place this in the context of a quest, because

00:49

we typically think of quests as being associated with

00:52

grail myth journeys, which are men.

00:55

And Odysseus is probably the ultimate prototype of quest.

00:59

So talk to us about that,

01:01

and her journey out and her journey in,

01:03

and contextually how it all kind of connects.

01:05

Sure. Janie's story is a quest and it is

01:08

a woman's quest. Like you said,

01:09

we have Odysseus, we have...

01:11

- Think of all of our modern day quests, even. - Luke.

01:14

Yeah, Luke, Frodo, et cetera.

01:16

It's almost always men, so

01:18

having a woman's quest,

01:19

especially at this time, published in 1937,

01:21

is really out of the box.

01:24

So one of the last things

01:25

that Janie tells Phoebe is that

01:27

"you gotta go there to know there."

01:29

And this is kind of one of the famous lines of the book.

01:31

Showing how the actual, physical

01:35

process of moving and changing

01:37

reflects the process of self-discovery.

01:40

So that kind of journey outward

01:42

quest that she has

01:43

is what allows her to also have the journey inward.

01:46

It's really a typical quest in many ways,

01:49

like we have in a fantasy novel.

01:52

The hero goes on an adventure,

01:54

encounters obstacles, meets interesting people,

01:57

fights a demon, gets some help,

01:59

and then wins a reward and comes back to the place of origin.

02:02

And we see this with Janie.

02:03

She goes out on her own,

02:05

lots of obstacles in the form of men,

02:07

finds some help along the way with Phoebe,

02:09

combats a lot of her demons,

02:11

and then returns to her place of origin,

02:13

because she ends up returning to Eatonville

02:14

after kind of going out to a lot of different places.

02:17

[ pen writing ]

02:19

In what way is Janie's story like a quest?

02:23

What similarities does her story share with other famous quests?

02:30

I think that's it. If you need anything else, let me know.

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