Adapting to Life


Ever dreamed about how life would turn out? Many children, like me, think they will have it all—everything they thought they needed or deserved. Money, fame, a perfect romantic marriage. Janie probably thought she could have it all. Not the same “all” as us, but the “all” within her realm of possibility. At least, the perfect romantic marriage.
It’s hard when life doesn’t go the way you wanted. You don’t accept it at first. You try to change it and return to that state of hopeful ignorance. Janie tried to do that by running off with Jodie. She still felt entitled to those happy things. Unfortunately, Jodie was not what Janie wanted him to be. Janie learned pretty quickly that she wouldn’t have the things she thought she would and adapted. We all adapt as life goes wrong. We experience injustices that used to exist only in our nightmares and tragedies that we read about in story books, and we normalize them. We expect them, and the next time they happen, we’re not as shocked. We adapt to the mundane too. Life was supposed to be fun and free and awesome, but that childhood fantasy breaks down, and what’s left is depression and helplessness and quiet submission. Although, it’s hard to completely kill that small part of us, though it lies dormant and buried, which holds on to the wishful thinking that a new life come. When Janie was with Jodie, she lost her place in the world. Under submission to him, all she could do was quietly watch her years slip away. I wonder if she yearned for a new life to find her, and what that looked like in her mind. Would Jodie die? Would he change his ways and fix their marriage? Would a second Jodie come around and offer her a way out, like the first Jodie with Logan? I wish I knew Janie’s bitter imaginations.
Janie kept adapting. She settled into her new routine once Jodie died. All she could do was adapt, finding power in the wisdom she gained along the way—this time, she knew not to give herself to a man. She learned to work hard and live alone—always adapting, that’s all we can do. Then, Tea Cake appeared. Janie adapted to him too. However, Tea Cake was different from anything before. He returned her to her childhood. He gave her the thing she had probably given up on—a loving marriage. That was something that Janie did not need to adapt to. It was the opposite—a strip down of all the adaptations she had been forced to make and accept, and becoming her small child self again. She returned to her natural state and was able to be freely happy for the first time in many years. Maybe love is one thing we can’t adapt to. It’s so wonderful that the joy is overwhelming, and you cannot afford to normalize it. Janie never adapted to her marriage with Tea Cake; she was just a kid, blissful and timeless. When Tea cake died, that’s when Janie adapted again, this time with the nostalgic peace of a dream fulfilled.

Comments

  1. Minji ChoiNovember 18, 2019 at 5:39 PM

    I love your characterization of Janie's story as a series of adaptations. Though she went through unimaginable things, she always adjusted and adapted to changing circumstances. She never broke; she just kept changing and getting stronger. Amidst the hectic events that fill her story, I'm able to see the incredible strength that Janie develops.

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  2. Lauren L.November 22, 2019 at 4:50 PM

    Though Janie and Tea Cake's relationship was a huge improvement from her previous two marriages, I feel like Tea Cake was pretty unfair to Janie, especially those times when he left her for days and hours without giving her a heads up before hand and taking her money for gambling before they moved to the muck. I suppose that could just go to show how unpredictable love can be and thus how intense yet fleeting those emotions are, however I still feel like that was pretty awful of Tea Cake to leave her hanging like that. :/

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  3. Curtis AlthausNovember 22, 2019 at 8:05 PM

    I think that each of her marriages played key roles in her development as a character. When Janie is under the pear tree, we can obviously see her immaturity, as can her grandmother. When she is with Logan, she realizes the importance of love in a marriage, and how things can go wrong very quickly. When she is married to Jody, she realizes that having a marriage that looks good on the outside but fake on the inside is not what she wants either, which leads us to Tea Cake. Janie is mature enough at this point to be able to recognize a fraud when she sees one, and she chooses to love Tea Cake despite the townspeople's' opinions about him. I think this shows the importance of each marriage in her development as a character.

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