Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

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Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, presents many different symbols that all relatively revolve around two things; love and the fulfillment of Janie’s life. Janie frequently refers back to many things to guide her life, but her grandmother, “Nanny”, was the most prevalent of them all. As a child Janie spent almost all her time with Nanny who set guidelines for her. Nanny attempted to mold Janie’s mind to teach her to fend for herself, but to also find a man who could provide her with protection and a comfortable lifestyle, this way Janie did not have to worry about living a life Nanny lived. Their Eyes Were Watching God portrays Janie while she is married to three men; Logan Killicks, Joe “Jody” Starks, and Tea Cakes. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston displays symbols in Janie’s relationships that help Janie direct her way through her life consisting of the pear tree, the removal of the head rags, and the horizon.
At the beginning of the book Janie is sitting under a pear tree admiring its perfect harmony with nature as “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” (Hurston 11). Janie realizes that “this was marriage” (11). This relationship between the tree and the bees provide the perfect image of marriage and making love to Janie. As a sixteen year old girl Janie is understandably inexperienced in all aspects of love, but after Janie sees the accord between the bees and the tree she understands and badly yearns for it. Her first marriage with Logan Killicks did not provide her with the l...

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...izon which symbolized her final “destination” of happiness that Janie strives to obtain before she dies. What can love truly mean to a person? Janie, like many other women, wants the perfect relationship with the perfect man but the freedom to do as they want, as referenced with the pear tree, but this book provides the reader with proof and examples that there is no such thing. In Janie’s search for her pear tree relationship she comes upon her head rag incident, preventing her from showing her individuality, and her search for the horizon which did not allow her to find the perfect man. The pear tree, the removal of the head rags, and the horizon together symbolize the restrictions placed on Janie’s life throughout her many years of marriage with different men.

Works Cited

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. N.p.: J. B. Lippincott, 1937. Print.

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