Empathy In, "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

In what ways could this novel specifically develop empathy and emotional intelligence, as well as contribute to the self-awareness of the reader?

In the novel, “Their Eyes Are Watching God”, the reader experiences Janie go through her journey of becoming self-aware. We see her go through learning experiences and discover new parts of herself. In the essay, the main theme was being too self-centered and finding perspective in your life. By reading the essay, I already had a shift in the way I would usually think about the world. I feel as though in this day and age most of this don’t enjoy the daily, “day in day outs”. Many of us, especially people my age are too focused on social media and our phones that we seem to forget the world around us, while walking around disconnected. That is an example of how I became self-aware while reading the essay. When reading the novel, “Thier Eyes Were Watching God”, I wouldn’t describe as it a novel that had this deep effect on the way I view the world. Through the characters though, especially nanny, and hearing her experiences and stories, did allow me to understand how detrimental pre-assumptions can be. My first impression of nanny was that she was a narrow minded elder that would not allow her granddaughter to blossom and learn through experiences and rather just throw her at a man. Later realizing that nanny had plenty of trauma and scarring experiences in her life. This immediately made me question the importance of empathy with whoever I might cross paths with. Seeing as I felt tremendous empathy for the way nanny was trying to raise her daughter, and trying to lead her down a path that was much different than hers. Yes, I don’t agree with the premise of what she was trying to do, marrying her off to a man much older, but who knows what I would have done in that situation. That to me is empathy. That is what will resonate with me till the end. That is what “Their Eyes Were Watching God” has taught me.