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We speak student!

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Janie's Quest

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a la Shmoop

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

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And as we think about all coming of age stories,

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they are a quest. Some are journies out.

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Prototype would be, I don't know,

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teenagers on a boat exploring an island.

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Swiss Family Robinson, [ indistinct ], whatever.

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But it can also be a journey in,

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and they're finding who they are.

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

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In this case,

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Janie is on a kind of quest

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

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place this in the context of a quest, because

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we typically think of quests as being associated with

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grail myth journeys, which are men.

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And Odysseus is probably the ultimate prototype of quest.

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So talk to us about that,

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and her journey out and her journey in,

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and contextually how it all kind of connects.

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

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a woman's quest. Like you said,

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we have Odysseus, we have...

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

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Yeah, Luke, Frodo, et cetera.

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It's almost always men, so

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having a woman's quest,

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especially at this time, published in 1937,

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is really out of the box.

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So one of the last things

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that Janie tells Phoebe is that

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"you gotta go there to know there."

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

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Showing how the actual, physical

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process of moving and changing

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reflects the process of self-discovery.

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So that kind of journey outward

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quest that she has

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is what allows her to also have the journey inward.

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It's really a typical quest in many ways,

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like we have in a fantasy novel.

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The hero goes on an adventure,

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encounters obstacles, meets interesting people,

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fights a demon, gets some help,

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

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And we see this with Janie.

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She goes out on her own,

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lots of obstacles in the form of men,

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finds some help along the way with Phoebe,

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combats a lot of her demons,

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and then returns to her place of origin,

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because she ends up returning to Eatonville

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

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[ pen writing ]

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

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What similarities does her story share with other famous quests?

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

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