Hero Journey - Resurrection

There is no doubt that throughout the novel Janie goes through quite the roller coaster ride. There are many different ways to relate Janie’s extreme journey to the Hero Journey paradigm we have studied all year. Near the end of the novel I saw Janie’s near death at the hands of Tea Cake in chapter 19 as a representation of the Resurrection stage of the Hero Journey. This stage of the journey consists of such things as “the Hero’s most dangerous meeting with death, a cleaning or purification, rebirth/transformation.” It is also at this point that the Hero “must prove he has reached Heroic Status and accept this sacrifice for the benefit of the ordinary world.” In this moment when Tea Cake nearly shoots Janie she experiences all of these characteristics in one way or another.

It is beyond clear that in this moment Janie comes face to face with death. She herself can identify this as Hurston proclaims, “The fiend in [Tea Cake] must kill and Janie was the only living thing he saw” (184). Clearly Janie was bound to die in this moment unless she took action, which she did by shooting him herself. Clearly Janie makes her required sacrifice in this moment by killing the man she loved so much. By taking these extreme actions into her own hands Janie proves her heroic ability to transcend fear and intimidation. By killing Tea Cake she makes a large sacrifice but is able to save herself, and through protecting her life she keeps her hopes and dreams alive. Janie then undergoes her transformation as she “thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service” (184). It is at this moment that she realized how Tea Cake as given her all that she ever dreamed of since the day she was with Johnny Taylor under the tree: mutual love. Realizing this allows her to be reborn, and allows her to go back to Eatonville as a changed woman. Here she finally obtains once again the elixir of knowing what love feels like. Despite having to sacrifice the one who gave it to her, she can now bring it back to her ordinary world, which is now Eatonville. As she returns she may not find harmony because to many this inscrutable elixir is hard to grasp when in the hands of another individual. Despite this, Janie herself has encountered an irrevocable change in her own life, and this will allow her to complete the final step of the Hero Journey in her own unique yet equally meaningful way.