The opening scene of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God shows Janie coming back from her excursion away from home with her third husband, Tea Cake. She is dressed in overalls, which accentuate her curves in the right places, and her hair swings confidently behind her back as she walks up the dusty road to her home of twenty-plus years. Backbiting neighbors watch and criticize Janie's lack of manners when she walks past them without much notice. The reader gets the first introduction to the protagonist through the eyes of these neighbors as they air their opinions about her having run off with a younger man. Fortunately, a voice of kindness emerges from Janie's friend Pheoby Watson, who takes Janie some dinner to lighten the traveler's load upon her return home.
While Janie eats, Pheoby talks. Eventually, Janie opens up to her friend and tells her where she's been. However, Pheoby doesn't simply get the story of where Janie has been for the last couple of years; she gets the story from Janie's early beginning when she lived with her grandmother. Therefore, the opening scene is actually the closing scene. Janie is at the end of her journey, but talking with Pheoby gives the reader the passage through which to start back in time where Janie first began. The opening scene leads to a flashback that eventually encompasses the whole novel; thus, it is the pathway to the beginning.
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