I know it is a bit late to be talking about Their Eyes Were Watching God, but I realized a connection between Invisible Man and TEWWG after writing the Hurston response paper. TEWWG ends with Janie alone in her room, finally at peace and content. She is independent from her society, no longer needing to participate in porch-gossip or be the center of the community. The Invisible Man realizes that in order to discover himself he must get rid of any outside influences and hides out in a basement, writing and waiting. Both protagonists realize that society cannot help them achieve their goals. Also, in their travels, both protagonists experienced situations which they thought were beneficial for them. Janie thought that a life with Jody would be perfect for her. The Invisible Man thought the college and the Brotherhood would help him make something of himself.
However, there are some differences in how the novels end. While Janie has already found what she sought, having wrapped herself in the horizon, Invisible Man ends with the protagonist still working on understanding himself and discovering his identity. Also, while it is unclear whether Janie will participate in the community later, in Invisible Man, the narrator says he will eventually rejoin society once he is ready to perform his "social responsibility." There are reasons for the different endings. Hurston, interested in folklore, wanted to write a good story. The novel also had some feminist elements in it, so it had to end definitely and with a strong message to get its point across. Ellison wrote his novel to be an allegory for all American people. He stops at where the Invisible Man begins self-discovery because that will be different for every person who reads the novel.
Yes--they've both just completed narrating their own stories, but an important contrast is that the IM intends to rejoin society, while Janie seems content to retreat to her room and her memories of Tea Cake. But true to Hurston's interest in the oral tradition, we do see a strong sense that her story will live on: Pheoby has been "deputized" to tell it on Janie's behalf, and Pheoby herself claims to have been "changed" by having heard it (she sees herself differently now; she's going to insist that her husband take her fishing). In this way, Janie's story itself will enter the social discourse, even while she may retreat.
ReplyDeleteThese are interesting comparisons and I hadn't seen them before. I think another reason why each author chose to end the novel where they did has to do with where the characters are in their life. The Invisible Man is still a young man, and throughout the whole book he keeps pushing to make a difference, so it would go against his whole personality to stop striving for something (though he seems totally against being a public figure at the end, he did just write a book). For Janie, she is relatively old (I would guess late 40's) so her exploring days are pretty much done. Her whole life she's always wanted to do what she wants to do, and at the end of the book she's finally in a social and economic position to do just that, so it is makes sense that she will retire again to Eatonville.
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