Janie's High Standards

In chapter 11 Janie has an experience where she very quickly develops her own ideas about love and marriage that don't appear to really be based anywhere in reality. In class, we had come to the conclusion that from that point on Janie had an unreasonably high expectation of what to expect out of marriage. But does she really? I think it is true that what she's looking for is a perfect man and a perfect relationship, which really is a stretch, but I think it's also true that the men in the book tend to be extremely sexist and really don't care about love nearly as much as she does.

Both relationships up until now (I have not read past chapter 9) have deteriorated drastically within a relatively short time of being married, even though one technically lasted until death did them part. We've been assuming that her expectations for these men are just too high and she's just not willing to allow herself to enjoy the good things in them. But what about the men themselves? From what I can tell, nearly every single man in the book so far has managed to objectify Janie in some way or another, which tells me that sexism may be a big part of this book's setting, something that we're not used to to nearly such an extent today.

Within a very short time, both Logan and Joe began to take Janie entirely for granted and told her how to think and what to do. Joe even had his own moment of unrealistically high standards, where he tells her before he dies that he was never satisfied with her and was constantly trying to change her. Both of them only ever complimented her beauty rather than her intelligence or really any other characteristic of her. I really don't think that Janie's standards and values were too off base at all, especially considering theirs,  but it certainly seems to be the case for the setting of the book.

Reflecting on Narrative Voice and Dialogue

When we first discussed the narrative voice and the dialogue of Their Eyes Were Watching God in class, we were mostly going off of first impressions since we hadn't read very far into the book yet. We were examining the distinct differences between the two, and found most obviously that the narrator tended to talk in a literary voice that we as readers were very used to, whereas the dialogue in the book was very dialect-oriented. The contrast was pretty striking. We also talked about how the narrator used free indirect discourse and spoke in a very human voice, indicating that they probably had some connection to the setting of the book. Finally, we touched on how the dialogue could potentially be seen as being very condescending with its phonetic vernacular, especially in contrast to the explaining voice of the narrator.

I still haven't read especially far into the book, but I've noticed that my initially very slow reading of the dialogue has begun to gradually pick up speed as I get used to it. To a certain extent I find myself reading the dialogue with just as much fluidity as I read the narrative voice. It makes me feel like the striking differences between them are becoming less significant and I definitely see them as closer together. The dialogue also continues to feel less forced as I read, and I find it a whole lot easier to visualize actual people in these scenarios. I think the whole dynamic incredibly interesting and I hope I continue to feel this way for the duration for the novel.

Parallels Between Ellison and Invisible Man

The narrator of Invisible Man had been thrown out college after his third year and immediately went to New York, where he sought to earn some money with the hope of returning. While we were watching the documentary on Ralph Ellison in class, I couldn't help but think how funny it was that Ralph Ellison himself had left college for New York during his junior year, intending to return once he had made some money, but never did. It really made me wonder if there were any other parallels between his life and the book he had written.

Clearly there are a number of character traits and experiences that they both share, like spending a huge amount of time in New York and enjoying jazz music and improvisation, Ellison to such an extent that he studied it in college. Beyond that, especially during class discussion, I also noticed how he appeared as somewhat of a Bledsoe figure, even though he probably wasn't really. Some critics like Howe saw this, by saying essentially that his work wasn't "black" enough, considering his skin color, and he was trying to appeal only to white people in his novel. As untrue as it may have been, it's easy to imagine, since his work was so well-recieved by white critics and had a tendancy to be denounced by a number of black critics.

Additionally, I saw a couple of major themes in his life relfected in the book. He was described by his peers as being "elitist" after he had finished it, which reminded me a lot of the narrator. By the end of the book, he had ultimately decided that the best course of action, at least for him, was to dissociate himself completely from society in order to discover himself. This sounds a lot like the snobbishness and elitism that Ellison's peers describe him as.

Finally, a somewhat surprising but important piece of information to consider is that Ellison refers to himself as a Negro, despite its increasingly negative connotation. This greatly follows one of the important patterns in the book, where Ellison never truly denounces racism, but rather looks at it very carefully under his magnifying glass. All of these similarities are really interesting to look at and are a good reminder to me of just how closely intertwined an author is with their book.