Empathy and Human Experience in TEWWG

The article, 'This is Water', by David Wallace discusses the idea that we as people put ourselves as the center of our universe while disregarding how people around us are feeling where the 'lack of empathy' factor plays in suggesting that we don't allow ourselves to empathize with the people around us but instead we create stereotypes off of first impressions. This can also be seen in Their Eyes Were Watching God, when Janie is judged by the people of her town in the beginning of the novel as they assume that Tea Cake had left her for a younger women. However, when Janie tells her story to Pheoby, she explains how she feels that she has lived her life to the fullest and now understands the meaning of love which is another common theme between the article and the novel since Wallace explains the importance of living through a situation to fully understand it. This can be seen when Janie was young and wanted to understand the feeling of love and had her own assumptions of what it would be like but to fully come in terms with what love truly feels like she had to experience it.This can be seen when Janie realizes that she doesn't want to continue her marriage with Logan and notices that she would be more happier with Jody whose ambition makes her believe that he would help her reach her goal of knowing the feeling of love. This shows that you can never truly understand what someone is going through unless you experience but challenging yourself to understand and put yourself in other people's situations can help create empathy towards the reason why they are acting and behaving the way they are.

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