Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s pursuit of true love remains crucial in her life. A summer-time fantasy, a pear blossom and a bee, imprint within her mind a vision beyond the futility of riches and reality. This natural beauty becomes her lifelong quest – to find within her life true love. Two men leave her fruitless, having not given to her that which is her heart’s pursuit. However, one man, poor and unknown, actually bestows upon her the beauty that remained shrouded in mystery so long. Janie does find true love, and it is not only a detail in her life.
True love’s significance in Janie’s life begins when she is sixteen. Young Janie is in her grandmother’s backyard, admiring the pear tree above her,
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He makes his name known to her as Vergible Woods but requests she call him Tea Cake. After that first visit, she is shaken by something about him. “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life” (Hurston, 117). He does not treat her like the other men she knew. Fishing, checkers, shooting – all sports she was forbidden from enjoying – were encouraged by Tea Cake. “But every hour or two the battle had to be fought all over again” (Hurston, 125). The battle being fought is to not care about him, but no matter what she tries “she couldn’t make him look just like any other man to her” (Hurston, 125). She begins to think to herself, “He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring” (Hurston, 125). Through the course of time, Tea Cake convinces her of one truth – he is the one she is waiting for. “With Tea Cake, she finds a spiritual sense of love that had been absent in her first two marriages” (“Their Eyes…”). They marry and enjoy an amazing life until he dies a tragic death. She buries him in the place that he had loved so dearly and returns to Eatonville. After telling this story to her friend, she goes inside and realizes one amazing truth, “[Tea Cake] could never be dead… the kiss of memory made pictures of love… here was peace” (Hurston, 227). “Finally, she finds true love when she at forty years old and learns a value of …show more content…
In the beginning, she does not know of this mystic beauty. “She marveled when she saw a bee in the center of bloom to extract pollen in her grandmother’s backyard where she [found] the concept of love and marriage” (Sutirah). Even here, before she experiences true love, the idea of it impacts her as to create her ultimate pursuit. The worry and dissatisfaction she suffers through in her first marriage come as a result of her inability to love him. “Janie went on inside to wait for love begin. The new moon had been up and down three times before she got worried in her mind… Cause you told me Ah mus gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t” (Hurston, 25 & 27). In anticipation of finding love, she leaves him for her second husband Joe Starks. However, their marriage is one of image, not love. When Joe dies, she resists the temptations of other men pursuing her because she knows they cannot give her true love. However, from the moment she meets Tea Cake, her relationship with him is different than any other relationship she knew. Her reward is that mystic beauty she strives for her entire life. The impacts of her quest last from before she knew marriage to beyond her true love’s death. Her first two marriages prove fruitless, but fade away after she finds the man of her dreams. Tea Cake is her true love; he is the bee to her blossom; he is the man who changes her life. He
What is one’s idea of the perfect marriage? In Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has a total of three marriages and her best marriage was to Tea Cake. Janie’s worst and longest marriage was to Joe Starks where she lost her dream and was never happy. The key to a strong marriage is equality between each other because in Janie’s marriage to Joe she was not treated equally, lost apart of herself and was emotionally abused, but her and Tea Cake's marriage was based on equality and she was able to fully be herself.
For a short time Janie shared her life with her betrothed husband Logan Killicks. She desperately tried to become her new pseudo identity, to conform to the perfect "housewife" persona. Trying to make a marriage work that couldn't survive without love, love that Janie didn't have for Logan. Time and again Janie referred to love and her life in reference to nature, "Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think... She often spoke to falling seeds and said Ah hope you fall on soft grounds... She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether"(24 - 25). Logan had blown out the hope in Janie's heart for any real love; she experienced the death of the childish imagery that life isn't a fairytale, her first dose of reality encountered and it tasted sour.
Janie gained this experience in love as she discovered that the promises of love are not always true. Janie was promised many things in her life and most of them were the promise of finding love and obtaining it. Janie’s grandmother promised her that even if she did not like Logan Killicks that she would find love in her marriage with him, but Janie discovered that no love was to be found in her marriage and that those more elderly than her would think she was wrong for her values (Hurston 21-25). Then after her marriage with Logan, her luck did not change with her next husband Joe who promised her nothing, but lies. Yet again promises persuaded her into another marriage where she was not happy as Joe went back on the words he promised her
Janie’s love for nature and turbulent relationships comes from the myth of the Haitian Goddess of love, Ezili Freda. In the novel the main character, Janie, is deeply interested in love and sexual energy in nature. Such is shown when Janie is sitting under a pear tree and just examining the beauty before her eyes. Throughout most of the story Janie has less than perfect relationships with men. Janie’s loathed her first three husbands and had to eventually kill her fourth one. The Haitian Goddess of love, Ezili Freda, has these exact same characteristics (Collins). Freda was the Goddess of love and was very sexual and flirtatious, but as with the fate of Janie, Freda would always fail to find one man that would be able to spend life with. It’s clear, with the similarities presented, that Hurston based the character Janie on Ezili Freda. Even when Freda was able to find someone that was right for her it was destined to be tragic. This is just like when Janie finally met Tea Cake but in the end had to kill him. Both had finally found love but due to their unfortunate fates both were destined to lose them.
Zora Neale Hurston once said, “Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.” In post-slavery African American society, this statement was unusual, as society was focused on materialistic values. The “veil” Hurston mentions is a lens used to sift through one’s beliefs; to help one understand that what they have is more important than what they don’t. Hurston alludes the veil in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in the form of a fish-net, saying “She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it in from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulders" (193). Just like the veil, the “fish-net” allows one to sift through one’s beliefs, deciding what is important and what is not. Essentially, Hurston
True love is something that Janie, the main character in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, spends her entire life looking for. Ultimately her primary goal is to be happy and live her life how she wants to instead of how everyone else thinks that she should. Throughout her journey to find true happiness she meets three men, Logan, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each of whom had a different effect on her as a person. When comparing these relationships, Janie was happiest when with her last husband Tea Cake. Although one could argue the opposite, given the way their relationship ended, it was actually a perfect representation of true love because of the freedom, security, and respect that Janie was given.
Zora Neale Hurston, an acclaimed African-American writer, wrote the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God during a time when women did not have a large say in their marriages. The novel follows the main character Janie in her quest to find what she thinks is true love and happiness. Hurston highlights the idea of healthy and unhealthy relationships throughout Janie’s three marriages. Each marriage had its advantages but they were largely overshadowed by their disadvantages resulting in Janie learning the hard truth about married life for a women of color in the 1920s. Ultimately the reader and Janie learn that in order to be happy in a marriage you must love, learn, and lose from past relationship experiences to figure out what truly makes you
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.
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
She encounters struggles that test who she really is and what her true worth is. Although the townspeople gossip about her, Janie's story is told throughout the novel about what has happened and how she had to deal with certain situations. In a way, the beginning foreshadows the event that is revealed near the end that changes Janie's perspective on life. A quote in chapter 2 marks the beginning of her spiritual awakening as it states that "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" (11). The work's argument is introduced to the reader, and he later finds out that Janie has always struggled with finding her perfect love, while experiencing societal judgement. The author then supports her argument by continuing to go back in time to tell about Janie's experiences with her first two marriages. They seemed to be quite satisfactory at first, but then they change into a different person and show their true intentions and wants towards
Common ideas in literature and the tangible human life often center on a type of journey or trip. The protagonist of these journeys venture out into a world that is unknown to them, yet this same world holds the ultimate destiny that they have been searching for. This is what Janie, the protagonist from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, does throughout the early years of her life. Zora Neale Hurston expresses Janie’s journey from a gender oppressed woman into a strong female character at the end of her story where she finally blossoms.
While sitting under the pear tree, Janie notices a bee and a flower and the loving and gentle embrace that occurs between the two. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (Hurston 11). The revelation that Janie experiences capitalizes upon her immaturity and innocence. Without knowing anything about love, Janie bases her ideals that she wishes to see in a marriage on an interaction between a bee and a flower. Because Janie wishes to find this love, her gullibility leads her to kiss Johnny Taylor, something that her Nanny, detests. Nanny, who does not share the same vision regarding love, believes that marriage should be one where practicality is the most important aspect. To her the thought of emotional based decision, what Janie values in a marriage, is seen as unsuitable to the lifestyle of happiness that she wishes for her granddaughter to have. This directly connects to society because Logan, the man with land and a stable living, is seen as the practical and wise choice for Janie. However, Janie wants a marriage where love is the key component, not practicality. For her a commitment to Logan Killicks is something that deprives her of what she veiws as paradise, and therefore
First, Janie’s failing love endeavors with her first two husbands. The first ideas about love that Janie was exposed to was those of her grandmother, Nanny. Her grandmother saw that Janie was entering womanhood and she didn't want Janie to experience what her mother went through (getting pregnant without being married). So Nanny went out to marry her as soon as she can. When Janie asked about love, Nanny told her that marriage makes love and she will find love after she marries Logan which was the old man that has been interested in Janie for a long time. Nanny believed that love was second to security and stability.
“True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together.” This quote by Ricardo Montalban tells us that true love simply has to develop and it doesn’t happen right away. Janie is the main character from the book Their eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and she struggled on the concept of true love.This quote explains exactly why Janie never found true love. At least not until she met Tea Cake and went through a lot with him. Janie is a biracial woman from the early twentieth century in the novel and goes through many life changing experiences. One experience that has helped her grow was finding love. Janie was married three times in the span of the novel and only found love with one person, Tea Cake. Much of the reason is because her grandma, Nanny. Nanny taught her to look for someone who can provide for her rather than what her heart felt was right.This concept stuck
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.