this is water and their eyes were watching god

The novel deals with judgement and societal expectations and standards. Janie is constantly judged by others in the novel. When she is married to Logan he calls her spoiled when she was just asking for an emotional connection, and when she is in Etonville the townspeople think she is stuck up and pretentious when she was only being forced to act that way by Jody, and when she was courting Teacake the town thought she was shameless and improper when she was really with someone who made her feel young again. These are different example of where only one interpretation of a situation can lead to a very narrow and wrong idea.

Wallace’s theory is that humans have the ability to choose what they concern themselves with. He says that if humans can choose to think about the experiences of other people we can become more mindful and less stressed. Caring about only ourselves and looking at every experience through your own eyes is limiting and makes us feel like the world is working against us, if we can choose to look at things through other peoples eyes and perspectives we can understand that our one way of thinking or living isn’t applicable to others, and this idea that just because something isn’t happening like you expected it to, or wanted it to, doesn’t mean it isn’t right in the end.

In regards to Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of the main ideas is about how the ability to share your point of view will help. The novel is a way for the audience to finally get Janie’s perspective on her life. In the novel Janie finds her voice and is able to tell Pheoby all about her life this gives her the ability to share her perspective without being judged, and her perspective and the actual reality of things differ greatly from what other people thought about her.  Hurston and Wallace share similar ideas about the power of changing perspectives and looking at a stories and experiences from other people’s point of view.