Analysis Of Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston is an African-American novelist, writer of the famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Their Eyes Were Watching God is a story of Janie Crawford who has gone through so much to find love. From reading this novel, one discovers that it takes past relationships to fully understand what love is, which Janie shows us because she was able to find the love she envisioned as a youth, along with the necessary components needed in a relationship.

First off, one would like to know what is Janie’s view on love as a youth. While sitting under a pear tree one day, “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

So this was a marriage!” (10). This is what Janie first sees as love. She sees the bee with its blossom, as they both need each other. The flower arches to meet the bee, which shows that it is not just the bee working in this relationship. They work together for their relationship of fulfillment for what they need. This is the love Janie sees. A love through mutualism to fulfill the needs of their partner. Also, when she sees the bee and the blossom, she thinks the love between them is related to marriage. It brings upon the idea that love equals marriage. Shortly after seeing this exchange between the bee and the blossom, she discovers how she wants this love. She wants to explore her possibilities. So that is what she does; she decides to go to the first boy she sees. “In her former blindness she had known him as shiftless Johnny Taylor, tall

Right away, there is a huge difference between Jody and Tea Cake. The first thing Tea Cake does when he meets Janie is asked her to play checkers with him. This is something Jody never let Janie do. Janie “found herself glowing inside. Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play” (91). This was a new experience for Janie; this was the first time she was equal to a man she was interested in. After days of flirting with each other, Janie thinks that Tea Cake might be the one. Of course, she has her hesitations after her two previous marriages. Those marriages taught her what was needed for a relationship, and she needed that before she would she would do anything with Tea Cake. Despite her hesitations, she falls in love. Janie said that “he could be a bee to a blossom—a pear tree blossom in the spring” (101). Again going back to the bee and the blossom she saw as a youth, Janie calls Tea Cake the bee, implying that he will be equal with Janie; he will fulfil the needs of her. That was what Janie envisioned as love as a youth, and Tea Cake falls within that idea. Because Janie met Tea Cake, she was able to find the love she envisioned as a youth. However, Janie had to of had her past relationships with Logan and Jody to know that this is the right love. Her past relationships taught her that she needed to be in love before she married him, they needed to be equal, and they needed to