Their Eyes Were Watching God Language Analysis

The Author of Life
“Love is lak de sea… it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore” ( Hurston, 191). Janie challenges traditional concepts of love in her journey to find her sense of self. Pushing aside societal boundaries, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston uses diverse relationships and colloquial language to prove that women have power over their own lives.
On a race to finding her place in the world, Janie goes through different relationships that test her resolve and help shape her worldview. Her first encounter was with Logan Killicks, her first husband who “desecrat[ed] the pear tree” (14). The pear tree is an idealized symbol of reciprocal love that Logan cannot live up to because his vision of love, a man dominating a woman, is not on par with that

When Janie leaves Logan, her sense of self becomes further damaged with Jody. The epitome of power and jealousy, Jody was weakened by too much strength, foreshadowed by his reference to Janie as a “pretty doll-baby… made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan [herself]” (29). Jody’s pampering of Janie is less of believing her to be a valuable human-being than believing her to be a valuable object. Logan similarly viewed her as an object, but for Joe, Janie was an object to look at, not use. Jody insults Janie’s “rump hangin’ nearly to [her] knees” (78) in order to deflect attention from his own age. After this turning point, Janie refers to him simply as Starks, emotionally distancing herself from his mistreatment of her. After meeting Janie, Tea Cake claims “naw, you ain’t sleepy, Mis’ Janie. You jus’ want me tuh go. You figger Ah’m ruh rounder and uh pimp and you done wasted too much time talk’in wid me,” (104) and allows himself to speak his fears of Janie just being