Silence

To understand how the quest for voice plays a role in Janie's life, it is also important to understand how silence plays a role. Within the first two pages of the book we are introduced to Janie, originally a mysterious figure. She walks right past the ladies sitting on Phoebe's porch, and she does so in silence. How does this silence represent Janie, and in a way, represent her search for voice. The silence we see in the first pages of the book comes to embody Janie's life. She often refused to live her life the way others wanted her to live it, originally with not wanting to marry Logan, which was Nanny's hope. Janie does the same by refusing to stop and socialize with the women on Phoebe's porch. It became a societal expectation for women to gossip together. Whether it was on the porch, or in the living room was simply a matter of the weather. The women want to know about Janie's life and why she didn't return home in her blue dress, or with Tea Cake, and rather than give in to the women, and give the material to gossip about all day Janie refuses to answer their questions. By remaining silent at this moment Janie also lets the women make assumptions. The way the women interpret her silence is completely different from how it characterizes Janie. The women jump to conclusions, many think that Tea Cake took all her money and ran off with a younger girl. This notion then leads the women to judge Janie. Many think she is too old for men like Tea Cake, and that she shouldn't be wearing overalls around town. The reality of the situation is actually much different. In the end Janie left Tea Cake because she could no longer find happiness with him in the everglades. Janie's silence not only defines her as a woman who does what she wants, but a woman who gives in to nothing. She follows no rules, or codes, rather only her heart. Some would argue her heart had led her astray, after all she is returning home alone, but Janie seems to accept this fact, and lives a life where decisions are not made with a guarantee of success, rather with a guarantee of some sort of pleasure. There is a notion that some believe you should speak only when spoken to, and there is also a belief that is better to be silent then to speak and look a fool. Neither is wrong, and neither is right, rather they are both philosophies on how one should act. In the end Janie would follow no one’s philosophies other than her own. She would speak when she wanted, to whom she wished, for any reason at all. This hardheadedness all started under the pear tree, which in reality was the start of Janie’s life.

The first time Janie let herself search for love, or pleasure, or whatever synonym you wish to call it, was when she ventured from under the pear tree to kiss Johnny Taylor. He reason for her searching was due to the events which she watched happen under the pear tree. She sat in silence, and solace, under the pear tree for as long as she could while she was younger. She didn’t ask questions, or speak, she rather let nature live its life, and she be the observer. One afternoon she observed a bee pollinating the tree, an act described in the book as a much more powerful and moving moment. By watching the bee give life to a creature so much larger than its, Janie felt as if her life had new meaning. She was no longer in search of material possessions, and rather was in search of possessions that would fill her with happiness, and joy, and excitement. In her quest to find these possessions, which is hard to say if she did, it started off sexually. She drifted from under the pear tree into the arms of Johnny Taylor. Now certainly there was no love in the kiss, or any real ambitions to follow up the kiss, it was none the less the first step in her journey for love. It followed with many men, Logan, and Jody, and lastly Tea Cake, but none the less it was a journey. The silence to which she gave her nanny after kissing Johnny came to resemble her true desires. She was silent to those who berated her actions of love, and would speak only to those in which she felt would better her in her journey. It was for this reason that she left Logan. While she didn’t respond to her grandmother, nanny took it in a much different way than Janie meant it. Nanny felt that she was truly in search of love and so, she wed her to Logan. She didn’t destroy any love, but certainly didn’t create any either. The thought at the time that for a women to succeed in life she needed a successful husband was a stereotype predating Janie’s beliefs. Her nanny wanted her to be well off, with good reason, and for this she tried to force Janie’s hand into love. Not only was nanny unsuccessful but she only strengthened Janie’s hope for true, pure love. Despite the novel being about finding voice, and love, Janie’s silence is what perhaps builds her up most as a character. It is not her words, but her lack of them that makes her who she truly is.