Katherine Mansfield's Bliss Essay

The pear tree is her inspiration and her first true desire. She longs to bud and blossom, like the tree, and cannot wait to discover herself and all the wonders of the world.

Well I think the pear tree has two real significant meanings. The first being an allegory on how humans are so easily tempted by sin, and the other relates back to Adam and eve the first sin. Throughout St. Augustine’s’ confessions he places a great reembrace on his sins. He looks back on them all, even going so far back to his baby years when he would sin by crying and fussing disrupting his mother and father. But the reason it the pear tree is significant is because it is Augustine’s first sin. I.EA the original sin. The action to go against god even though there were explicit instructions not to goes back to Eve and Adam both taking from the tree of knowledge. It was the first sin ever committed and was the cause of all the pain and suffering in the word. Augustine’s stealing of the pear was his first

The narrator's vision of her ancestors expanding a plentiful life is emphasized with the picturesque “blue fields…with leaves and vines and orchards.” This then strikes the narrator with the realization that cutting down the tree would be a betrayal to their ancestors, their dreams and the demise of the heritage of the

Throughout the novel, Janie searches for the love that she has desired from her adolescent years. A depiction of love represented by her grandmother's pear tree where bees and blossoms connect. The pear tree symbolizes her blossoming sexuality which sparks her interest in romance and her idealistic views towards relationships. In relation, the pear tree represents her crave for sexuality while the bees are the men needed to fulfill her blooming. Under the pear tree she masturbates and

At a very young and tender age, Janie develops an ideal view on the concept of marriage and romantic relationships, which is soon shattered by her experiences in her first two marriages. Her ideal view is shaped and created by the time she spends under the pear tree. Many an afternoon Janie would bask in it's shade, and observe the bees “sink into the sanctum of the bloom”, and watch the “thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and ecstatic shiver of the tree from the root to tiniest branch” (Hurston 11). She assumes that the flitting of the bees around the pears is “marriage” and feels as if she has been “summoned to behold a revelation” (Hurston 11). These seemingly pure interactions between the bees and the pear tree

The imagery of the bees and the pear tree are the catalyst of Janie’s coming-of-age, representing her first “springtime” and the awakening of her sexuality. The moment Janie sees the bee pollinating the blossoms on the pear tree is when she becomes aware of her sexuality. She finds herself empathizing with the blossoms; both being young and undergoing the springtime of life. Contrastingly, however, Janie has no “bees singing for her” like the blossoms do (Hurston 11). In Janie’s eyes, the relationship between the bee

Thus, when considering the sexualized symbolism of the pear tree blooms, Janie reveals she comprehended the idea of what a marriage should be through witnessing the pollination of a bee into the blossoming pear tree.

In the beginning, the pear tree symbolizes Janie’s yearning to find within herself the sort of harmony and simplicity that nature embodies. However, that

Throughout the entire novel, Janie refers to the blossoming pear tree as a symbol of her ideal relationship, and compares her husbands to the harmony she witnessed between the bees and the blossoms of the pear tree. Janie sees the vision of Logan to be ìdesecrating the pear tree,î as she does not love the man at all (13). On the contrary, she finds her true love in her marriage to Tea Cake, who ìcould be a bee to a blossom Ö Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he tookî (102). As the pear tree is symbolic of Janie's sexual epiphany and her ideal relationship, it also coincides with her quest for her true love. Her pear blossom wilts with her marriage to Logan Killicks, but it blooms again in another cycle with Tea Cake.

This quote demonstrates that the pear tree marks end of Janie’s childhood and the beginning of her journey to womanhood; as it is under the pear tree in which Janie has her first sexual experience as she longs to have the “love and affection from a man that the tree receives from the pollen-bearing bee” (Dilbeck, 102). When Nanny (Janie’s grandmother) sees her act on this sexual awakening by kissing Johnny Taylor, the narrator states that it was “the end of her childhood” (12), as Nanny then insists that she get married to Logan Killicks, and so Janie must quickly move into adult world of marriage. The quote also seems to assert that the only way for Janie to embark on her journey is to leave home (one of the major characteristics of the quest narrative) as “nothing on the place nor her grandma’s house answered her” (11).

Janie spends the spring afternoon in West Florida under the blooming pear tree attempting to uncover a mystery behind its attractive presence. "In a way ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery". In light of the scenario, Hurtson points to an achievement to where Janie can solve a "riddle" to the magnificence of the pear

“Later that night when Thomas roller over and lurched into her, she would open her eyes and think of the place that was hers” this proves the point that she cannot even express herself sexually because she does not feel as if she has control in the situation.  Her mind wanders elsewhere, in a place where she is her own master, instead of what is reality. Additionally, the main character’s husband shows some selfish tendencies in the fact that he may not notice his wife’s discontentment with his affection.  However, this may also present the lack of communication between man and wife and therefore may cause a sense of isolation from her husband.

Secondly the Pomegranate tree can be seen as a symbol of Amir and Hassan friendship, childhood innocence and shelter. The tree is presented to the reader in two different states. When the tree appears in the first part of the story, in chapter 4, the tree is shown as being fruitful and blooming with ‘blood red’

It not only threatens, but also breaks through. Betrayed by love once in her life, she nevertheless seeks it in the effort to fill the lonely void; thus, her promiscuity. But to adhere to her tradition and her sense of herself as a lady, she cannot face this sensual part of herself. She associates it with the animalism of Stanley's lovemaking and terms it “brutal desire”. She feels guilt and a sense of sin when she does surrender to it, and yet she does, out of intense loneliness. By viewing sensuality as brutal desire she is able to disassociate it from what she feels is her true self, but only at the price of an intense inner conflict. Since she cannot integrate these conflicting elements of desire and gentility, she tries to reject the one, desire, and live solely by the other. Desperately seeking a haven she looks increasingly to fantasy. Taking refuge in tinsel, fine clothes, and rhinestones, and the illusion that a beau is available whenever she wants him, she seeks tenderness and beauty in a world of her own making.

Feeling no regret at all, she then began flirting with the man back who was giving her the attention she always dreamed of. Being interested in the stranger, “Her breast swelled passionately “[…]” Kneeling there, her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers. Her hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth” (Steinbeck 18). The man then realized what she was doing, but did not react; instead he acted as professional as well as he could. After his departure, she then felt a depression knowing that she might have lost her one chance of happiness. As her husband is taking her out to dinner later on in the night, she asks Henry questions about his hobbies of watching fights and realized that she never had anyone as interested of her gardening skills as much as the departed man did. She felt that at this moment, her dream was then put on hold once more, so her shadow of loneliness and emptiness took over. Her shadow was revealed towards the man who gave the attention she wanted from her husband. She no longer hid or neglect her shadows because she realize what made her happy and went for it in order to fill her