Janie"s entire life is one of a journey. She lives through a grandmother, three husbands, and innumerable friends. Throughout is all, she grows closer and closer to her ideals about love and how to live one"s life. Zora Neale Hurston chooses to define Janie not by what is wrong in her life, but by what is good in it. Janie changes a lot from the beginning to the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God, but the imagery in her life always conjures positive ideas in the mind of the reader. Janie"s life begins under the watchful eye of her...
is all she wants.

Tea Cake"s death reveals as much about his relationship with Janie as his life did. When he dies, Janie mourns in her overalls, because "she was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief" [180]. Janie allows her friend to share her story, because she feels that she cannot tell it again. She doesn"t need to. Janie has lived her life and survived her journey. Zora Neale Hurston closes off Their Eyes Were Watching God with one final, poignant image; Janie "[calling] in her soul to come and see" [184] the splendor of her life.