Reading 1001 discussion

2. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel's final sentences in this regard?

Horizons are in the novel from the beginning, with the men gazing dreamily at ships on the horizon they will chase but never capture.

For Janie, horizons are places to aim for in order to find the life and the people that will be good for her.

Janie's horizons are conceptual, even when framed as literal horizons with roads leading towards them away from her physical location. They are mainly expressed in relation to her inner life. When she separates into an inside and an outside person, during her marriage to Joe, her horizon is somewhere she can observe her inside person being, even when her outside person is persisting in pretending her marriage is good.

Her first horizon is her sexual awakening aged 16, when she yearns to explore her new awareness of love and sexuality. That horizon is limited by her grandmother marrying her off, and she remains hemmed within the world of her first husband's 60 acres until Joe opens her horizon to include escape to a new life in a new town.

In the new town, in her role as Mayor's wife, her horizon is limited again to the house and the shop, so she develops an inner horizon that includes a tree she can lie beneath, as she did aged 16, and a hope that there will be a road she can follow away from Joe, as there was a road she followed away from her first husband.

After Joe's death and before she meets Tea Cake, Janie realises that she has been sidetracked from following her path to the horizons in search of people she felt kinship with. She blames her grandmother: "...Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon ... and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter's neck tight enough to choke her."

Meeting Tea Cake expands Janie's horizons, as she realises she needs to start over somewhere else in order to become the person she knows herself to be.

At the end of the book, she returns to Eatonville and draws her horizons in with her, so that everything she has experienced of the world is there with her, no longer distant.

I like Jan's answer I think she has covered everything :)

I too agree with Jan.

Jan's answer is more complete than anything I could write.

Jan you are very well spoken and your answers make me love the book even more.

Diane wrote: "Jan you are very well spoken and your answers make me love the book even more."

Thank you, Diane (and everyone!) Janie's frustrations and bravery in forging her own path felt very real to me. I thought this theme was the most beautiful thing about the book.

Thank you Jan for such a great explanation. I would just like to add some quotes. The book starts with the imagery of a horizon where men's wishes sometimes come in on the tide but "for others they sail forever on the horizon". When Jody beat her after a spoiled dinner she thought that "Nanny had taken the biggest thing that God ever made, the horizon - for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you ..." After Jody's funeral Janie realised that "She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people". The imagery at the end of the book is so beautifully written: "Here was peace. She drew in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders. So much of life in its meshes. She called in her soul to come and see." So the horizon was a symbol for her yearnings and when she returned to Eastonville she drew her searching in because she felt she had lived a fulfilled life.