Their Eyes Were Watching God - Janie's Life and the Pear Tree
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story centered on the idea of life cycles. The experiences that Janie faces and struggles through in her life represent the many cycles that she has been present for. Each cycle seem to take place with the start of each new relation ship that she faces. Each relationship that Janie is involved in not just marriages, blooms and withers away like the symbol of Janie's life the pear tree from her childhood.
Janie's Grandmother is the first bud on her tree. She raised Janie since she was a little girl. Her grandmother is in some respects a gardener pruning and shaping the future for her granddaughter. She tries to instill a strong belief in marriage. To her marriage is the only way that Janie will survive in life. What Nanny does not realize is that Janie has the potential to make her own path in the walk of life. This blinds nanny, because she is a victim of the horrible effects of slavery. She really tries to convey to Janie that she has her own voice but she forces her into a position where that voice is silenced and there for condemning all hopes of her Granddaughter become the woman that she is capable of being.
The affect of Nanny is the marriage to her first of three husbands, Logan. He is a man that sees no wife in his relationship with Janie he sees a worker. The intelligence of Janie to realize this is a prime example of the capabilities that Janie possesses as an independent woman. Logan is the pollution to Janie's tree of life. He is good for one thing and that is delaying the inevitable; delaying Janie from realizing that she can be a woman with an inelegant thought not just a good house worker. He prevents the self-sufficient woman in Janie from reaching its potential.
The next cycle is that of Joe Starks. The role of this marriage is of a different nature. Janie no longer is a house slave. She chooses to take the role of a trophy wife in the times that this takes place in. She still works but in a clean and respectable manner as to suite her Mayor husband. Joe seems to be a possessed man, in the respects that he shows no love for his wife, not an ounce of passion. His attention is always directed towards what brought them together; the idea that this new found town will bring him respect and a new start in life and in all honesty that is what Janie was looking for as well a new start a change in life but the problem that she eventually faces is that the new style was not suited in any respects for her, or her dreams.
The third time is always the charm. Tea Cake is a man that respects who, his wife is. He enjoys the ideas and thoughts that Janie possesses as an intelligent person. He shares life with Janie not just the work. When they work their hard days they do it together as a real team. Janie has finally found the bud on the tree that she enjoys to look at the one that stands out in the bunch. Sadly to say like all of cycles they must come to an end. It's sad to see beautiful things die; it raises so many what if's in peoples minds. But like all cycles, there will be another one starting.
The pear tree is what always survives, the flowers and leaves and pears may grow and wither and die but the foundation the roots and the trunk and branches the base of the tree always remain just waiting for the next spring to start the whole cycle over. Janie thought alone is finally where I think she wanted to be in the first part trying to find her own dream in life not just her Grandmothers dream of marriage.
With this time she will find it and the cycle of the pear tree will once again produce the wonder site of flowers.Partner sites: Bulldog, Study Spanish in Mexico, and The Great Gatsby