God
is Me
“Half-gods are
worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.” Quite distinctive
from the popular description of God, Zora Neale Hearston describes a unique
higher power. Starting from differentiating humans, demigods and true god, I
will try to analyze who in the story can be classified to such groups, and
suggest a new interpretation of Janie’s life.
No one in the
story holds a ultimately strong power over others from first appearance. Logan
Killicks, Jody Starks, Tea Cake and Janie all start as plain Negroes making a living.
However, as time passes on in the story, every single one of them gets involved
in conflicts with others (mostly with Janie) and acquires dominance over whom
they fought with.
This point is something
we have to consider carefully. From the fact that there is no morally perfect,
divine and almighty individual in the story, we can state that the god Zora
Neale Hurston was depicting was not a traditional Christian god. There is no
moral concept that penetrates through the story, creating a single us-them boundary
between the good and evil. There is no binary axis, but only several competing
characters. This absence of moral is shown in the absence of guilty conscience
of committing murder, adultery or slandering. The place of the traditional ultimate
being is empty in the story. This indicates that a new concept should be
employed to analyze the conflicts within the story.
However, there
could be an interpretation that natural beings such as the Horizon, the Pear
Tree and the Hurricane plays the role of God in the story. However, the Horizon
and the Pear Tree does not play an actual role in the story, it exists in the
Imaginary of Janie. It may have influenced Janie’s actions, but Janie fails to
meet these subjective mirages in the Real. In fact, it can be said as a set of
virtual images that highlights the limits of the Real of Janie.
If there should
be a godly existence, the Hurricane would be the closest. However, the
Hurricane is not in the place of God, it can be thought as divine violence, a
trace of Godly being, not God itself. However, the fact that Janie is the one
to pull the trigger to kill Tea cake after the Hurricane compels us to believe
that this story is about demigods striving to be gods. Maybe the Hurricane
might be a form of divine violence, but it is soon identified by the violence
that Janie executes towards Tea cake. This will be further explained in the
following paragraphs.
Anyhow, we would
have to view the main characters in this story as demigods striving to become
the true higher power. Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, Tea Cake and Janie all have
certain powers and strong will that differentiates them from the plain townspeople.
They do not obey each other, and in most cases, the existence of another is a
threat to survival of oneself. From this, I was able to conclude that all of
these demigods had “will to power”, trying to overcome others and escalate to a
higher position, to a place where common men would never understand.
All four of the
main characters are all respected to some degree, and this comes from the special
power that they have, qualities that make them demigods, not just common men.
For Logan Killicks, it was his diligence and land, while as for Jody Starks it
was his political & financial power. Janie is praised for her beauty, and
Tea Cake had the strongest, lasting dominance over Janie. They are all in a
sense “worshipped in wine and flowers” by the townspeople.
However, there
is one person who loses such respect from the town as the story heads to the
end: Janie. By this, it can be said that she is no longer a demigod (praised in
“flowers and wine”). Not only that, Janie is the sole character in this story
who kills or takes away the power of demigods. This relates to the phrase “Real
gods require blood”, which indicates that Janie is the closes character to a “real
god”.
But to conclude
so, there must be substantial proof to it. Logan Killicks’s power was diligence
and ability to take care of his vast land. When Janie first marries him, she was
part of his power. She helps Killicks do his production, but never something of
herself. By deserting Killicks, it can be said that her portion of the
production disappeared, thus weakening the power of Logan Killicks.
As for Jody
Starks, the blow is much fatal. We must draw are interest at the fact that
Starks plays god when he lights the lamp and say “let it shine, let it shine,
let it shine.” This alludes to Genesis, and indicates that Starks is striving
to become a true god. Also, his weapon used against Janie is making her shut
up, taking away her voice. Janie uses the weapon at Starks’s disposal, and
kills him with her own voice, slander. Janie uses the weapon at Starks’s
disposal, and kills him with her own voice. It is dramatic and victorious when
she kills Starks with the tool that Starks tried in vain to take away.
This goes same
for Tea Cake as well. Janie shoots Tea Cake with the skill that Tea Cake taught
her. This alludes to Shakespeare’s Tempest
or Plath’s Daddy when the
oppressor’s weapon is used by the weak to kill the oppressor. By getting rid of
Tea Cake, Janie becomes independent and apart from common men of demigods.
However, there
can be a claim that the case of Tea Cake is quite different from others, for he
really loved Janie. But as Deleuze puts it, “if you are caught in another's
dream, you are lost.” Love inherently brings of a Symbolic violence that Zizek in
Violence points out. One can never
know well of another, so love is “giving something one doesn't have to someone
who doesn't want it.” The act of loving oppresses the true being of the loved.
Because the object being loved and the subject of being is/are inevitably
different, the loved feels an endless gap between the Symbolic and the Real.
In such sense,
the love that Tea Cake gives to Janie is Symbolic violence. Then what can Janie
do to go against it? In a world where there already is Symbolic violence,
merely rejecting it or following is subduing. There needs to be a violence that
relocates the linguistic power structure that the Symbolic violence had set.
Such violence is named as “divine violence”. Divine violence is a violence that
is neither unprepared nor led, but of pure despair and will to survive by the
suppressed. Hence its name “divine”, we can refer back to the earlier analysis
of this essay on the Hurricane. The Hurricane deviate the normal life (original
power structure) between Janie and Tea Cake, and relocate the relationship
between Janie and Tea Cake. Then Janie pulls the trigger, as the final action
of the divine violence.
Janie was a
subordinate woman, obeying to her grandmother, husbands and townspeople. However,
towards the end of the end the story, Janie does not care about other’s gaze
anymore. Hence “and listenin’ tuh lot kind uh talk is jus’ luke openin’ yo’
mouth and lettin’ de moon shine down yo’ throat.” Another statement implies the
essence of this novel. Which is: “They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh
find out about livin’ fuh themselves.” If one meets his/her god, how can he/she
be devoted to herself, not God? Maybe it was because God was herself for Janie;
that was how she met and came to know herself, and started to live for what she
truly wanted.
