True Love in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Many literary works have love as a theme. By reading different novels, one receives a glimpse of all the different kinds of love and their purposes. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston represents love as the sea. By reading this novel, the reader comes to the conclusion that our capability to love deviates with every person we come across. Love is in some ways an art, and it transforms as people transform. Janie Crawford, perhaps one of the greatest love philosophers and the protagonist, says, “Love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore” (Hurston 191). The Janie Crawford’s dream of true love is combined with understanding, and equality between lovers. This advice should be shared across nations. Sometimes people “love” for the wrong reasons and need to figure out, like Janie, the definition of true love. When Janie finds this true love after looking for such a long time she finally feels that she has lived a whole and fulfilling life. Love is not as merciful to others, though. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, teaches that money cannot buy love. Jay Gatsby is trapped in this utterly obsessive kind of love that make makes him unable to basically do anything except think about Daisy nonstop. No money or material possessions will entice her, but that sure does not stop Gatsby from trying to win her over. The narrator, Nick Carraway reveals to the reader that Gatsby “hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from he...

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...the time. It takes special people to stand up for what is right and what pleases the Lord.

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