earticle

영어

I explore how Janie defeats her false gods in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her false gods signify her oppressors, such as Nanny and Joe, and the constricting conventions of the dominant culture. At each stage of Janie’s development, they pressure her to deify white culture. Janie fights her way out of them and, through the signifyin(g) discourse, comes to find her own voices in life. These voices are paramount to Janie’s growth. As a young girl, Janie is confronted with her grandmother’s desire that Janie have everything she did not have. When her grandmother, Nanny wants Janie to be totally under her control, she calls repeatedly on the Lord. The frequency of these references attests to the depth of her need to achieve her wishes rather than the strength of Nanny’s conviction. Nanny’s apostrophes to God are transformed into Joe’s own ultimately rigid and stultifying godhood. “I god” interjects Joe over and over as he wields his big voice. Joe believes that the acquisitions of wealth and status would make himself a big voice and bring him closer to the white culture which thought him inferior. Hurson details Janie’s fight for self-growth by negating the values imposed by the false gods. Janie has taken on the role of the folk trickster, “the signifying Janie,” and resisted the false gods of the white world.