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Essay on their eyes were watching god
Analytical essay on their eyes were watching god
Character in their eyes were watching God
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The use of symbolism is essential to writing a story as it explains complex ideas and themes in an enjoyable yet succinct way. In the critically acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, a biracial woman named Janie lives her life in search of true love and happiness but finds herself failing multiple times. In the end, she finds herself single yet in the state of happiness and enlightenment that she had longed for her entire life. Through the use of a pear tree, Hurston symbolizes the idealistic view of intimate relationships that most women desire. She uses the horizon as a symbol of the happiness that Janie, and many other women, want in their lives. By using these two symbols, Hurston conveys the message that women can be independent and lead a happy life without being in a relationship with a man. Throughout the novel, the pear tree represents Janie’s and many women’s quintessential view of what relationships should be like. Early in her life, Janie sat under a tree and noticed the interaction between a bee and a pear tree: She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! (Hurston 11) In the symbiotic …show more content…
The reciprocated romantic love symbolized by the pear tree is found to be unnecessary as Janie reaches her horizon at the end. The horizon reflects the state of happiness that Janie thought she could only reach through true love, but changes as she finds the strength to be happy with her independence. This message is important as it disproves the restricting status quo that women are dependent on men pushing for further equality between the
The pear tree, the ocean, the horizon, the hurricane are how Janie views nature. Hurston uses spring as a sign of fertility, blossoming sexuality, and a new start. The pear tree represents Janie blossoming into womanhood. In Janie’s eyes the pear tree represents beauty and freedom because she is able to reflect on her life, and her future. No one is telling her what to do when she sits under t...
Both Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwannee act as accounts of female recognition. The two protagonists of the novels, Janie and Arvay, come realize the significance of personal enjoyment of life for one’s self, and how such an awareness causes you to be surrounded you with people who love you for your own happiness. In both novels Hurston uses literal and figurative imagery of the sea as a symbol for this self-affirmation. The connection is more pronounced with Arvay, as she and Jim finally return to one another while actually at sea, yet the connection runs with Janie throughout Their Eyes… as well as both women struggle to reach their “horizons” of answers and satisfaction.
In the beginning, the pear tree symbolizes Janie’s yearning to find within herself the sort of harmony and simplicity that nature embodies. However, that idealized view changes when Janie is forced to marry Logan Killicks, a wealthy and well-respected man whom Janie’s Nanny set her up with. Because Janie does not know anything about love, she believes that even if she does not love Logan yet, she will find it when they marry. Upon marrying Logan, she had to learn to love him for what he did, not for that infallible love every woman deserves.
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God tells about the life of Janie Crawford. Janie’s mother, who suffers a tragic moment in her life, resulting in a mental breakdown, is left for her grandmother to take care of her. Throughout Janie’s life, she comes across several different men, all of which end in a horrible way. All the men that Janie married had a different perception of marriage. After the third husband, Janie finally returns to her home. It is at a belief that Janie is seeking someone who she can truly love, and not someone her grandmother chooses for her. Although Janie eventually lives a humble life, Janie’s quest is questionable.
In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author takes you on the journey of a woman, Janie, and her search for love, independence, and the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit seems to constantly be disregarded, yet Janie continues to hold on to the potential of grasping all that she desires. In, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Hurston illustrates the ambiguity of Janie’s voice; the submissiveness of her silence and the independence she reclaims when regaining her voice. The reclaiming of Janie's independence, in the novel, correlates with the development and maturation Janie undergoes during her self discovery.
Throughout the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Zora Neale Hurston uses colors and other symbols to describe the state of relationships, feelings, and even show a certain point of view. As Janie goes through relationships, she encounters different colors. Hurston also shows us Janie’s feelings within those relationships as well as the common view of the world on Janie. Next to the colors, Hurston uses other symbols to show the reader even more specific meanings.
The pear tree for example is similar to that of the Garden of Eden. The pear tree and the horizon signify Janie’s model of a perfect life. In the bees’ interaction with the pear tree flowers, Janie witnesses a perfect moment in nature, full of energy, interaction, and harmony. She chases after this ideal life throughout the rest of the book. Janie’s romantic and idealistic view of love, seen in her reaction to the pear tree, partially explains why her earlier relationships are not successful. It is not until later in her life, when she slowly opens up to her relationship with Tea Cake on a more mature level, that Janie sees what love really is. Janie resists Tea Cake at first, remembering her early pear tree encounters, and her early sexual awakening. She becomes infatuated with Tea
In the beginning of the book, Hurston foreshadows the issue of Jamie’s quest for love. She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze and the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She was a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to the tiniest branch and creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage! (pg. 11). Hurston is foreshadowing the central issue of her novel; Jamie’s quest to reach her horizon. The unification of the bee and flower is the fulfillment and reflection of love that Jamie desires through her give and take love relationships throughout the novel.
In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the character of Janie is a prime example of overcoming adversity. She is faced with racism early in life, and then forced to marry at a young age. In her lifelong search for true love, Janie goes through three marriages, several moves, and an incredible journey of self-discovery. On Janie's quest for unconditional, true, and fulfilling love, she gains her own interdependence and personal freedom, which makes her a true heroine in this novel. Because Janie strives for her own independence, others tend to judge her simply because she is daring enough to achieve her own autonomy. "Ah wants things sweet wed mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah…" (Eyes 23) Throughout the novel, she searches for the love that she has always desired, one that is represented to her early in life by the marriage between a bee and a blossom on the pear tree that stood in her grandmother's backyard. "She was stretched o...
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford the main character goes through some big changes. Throughout this book Janie struggles to find her inner voice and purpose of love. She looks high and low for a sign of what love really is and she finds it as being the pear tree. The pear tree is very symbolic and ultimately shows Janie what love is and how it should be in a healthy relationship. This tree, with the bees pollinating the blossoms, helps Janie realize that love should be very mutual and each person needs to provide for the other equally. Janie tries to find this special kind of love through her three husbands, but she comes to realize it is going to be much harder then she expected. Each one of Janie’s husbands are a stepping stone for her finding her voice.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she utilizes an array of symbolism such as color, the store, and her husbands to solidify the overall theme of independence and individuality. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered by many a classic American Feminist piece that emphasizes how life was for African Americans post slave era in the early 1900s. One source summarizes the story as, 1 ”a woman's quest for fulfillment and liberation in a society where women are objects to be used for physical work and pleasure.” Which is why the overall theme is concurrent to independence and self.
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
“She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood. She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating. She had the memory of his numerous trips to Orlando with all of his wages when he had returned to her penniless, even before the first year had passed. She was young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscles limbs, her harsh knuckly hands, and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone else. This case differed from the others only in that she was bolder than the others. Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely.” (Hurston 680).
In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the image of a pear tree reverberates throughout the novel. The pear tree is not only a representation of Janie's life - blossoming, death, metamorphosis, and rebirth - but also the spark of curiosity that sets Janie on her quest for self-discovery. Janie is essentially "rootless" at the beginning of her life, never having known her mother or father and having been raised by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny even says to Janie, "Us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways" (Hurston, 16). Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a naïve sixteen-year-old, finds the possibilities of love, sexuality, and identity that are available to her. This image, forever reverberating in her mind through two unsuccessful marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, is what keeps Janie's spirit alive and encourages her quest for love and life. "It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep" (10).
When Janie is growing up, she is eager to become a woman and is ready to dive into the strain, maturity, and exhilaration of adulthood. In the beginning of Janie’s life story, Hurston introduces the metaphor of the pear tree, a symbol of Janie’s blossoming, and describes how “she had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her,” which successfully captures her excitement and perplexity of entering the adult world (11). Janie’s anxiety of growing up is also articulated with the image of her “looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made” (Hurston 11). In her teenage years, it seems as if her life revolves around the anticipation of womanhood. Even as Janie grows older, she continues to hold on to her aspiration of living an adventurous, invigorating, and passionate life. In criti...