How Does Hurston Use Imagery In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Symbols in literary works can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Symbols can appear in a novel as an event, action, or object. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author, Zora Neale Hurston, uses the symbols of the gate to show Janie’s transitions to womanhood, independence from oppression, and realization of what love is to Janie.

Though it is not one of the main themes in the novel, poverty and its effects on people can be seen abundantly in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The demonstration of poverty that I chose to discuss is how wealth causes a person to act toward others. The most notable examples are Janie’s three husbands, Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake, and the way they treat Janie. In the novel, the wealthier a man is, the more power he has over people and the more entitled he feels.

Janie Crawford is surrounded by outward influences that contradict her independence and personal development. These outward influences from society, her grandma, and even significant others contribute to her curiosity. Tension builds between outward conformity and inward questioning, allowing Zora Neal Hurston to illustrate the challenge of choice and accountability that Janie faces throughout the novel.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, many critics have argued over whether or not the main character, Janie, finds her voice by the end of the novel. Yet many seem to be confused as to what her "voice" is. Her voice is her ability to express her thoughts and display her emotions verbally. Many relate the question of Janie’s voice to her amount of emotional strength (her ability to confront her problems or run away from the current situation rather than be isolated in it), yet these things are a completely different matter entirely. While Janie’s emotional strength varies throughout the novel, her voice is always there.

In Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the reader is taken on an expedition through the life and love of Janie, which provides the reader different levels of imagery and symbolism. “Hurston… use the journey motif to structure and enhance their heroines‘quests as well as lyrical image patterns to evoke and communicate the processes of growth, regeneration and intimations of the Divine within each character.” (Sullivan 1364) Through this expedition Janie strives to achieve her principles about what love was and how she should be living her life. Hurston chose to introduce the reader to the return of Janie as the opening of the book. “Janie’s existence will become a continuous struggle to bring her own experience into harmony with her initial vision of the pear tree” (Maroto 72) Janie was not focusing on what is wrong in her single life, but what was good in it. “Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and

To many, nature is closely associated with the beauty and fertility within mother earth. Trees in general are a symbol of permanence, longevity and its firm base symbolizes the concept of ‘roots’ and the ongoing relationship of trees with their natural surroundings. Trees are apparent in common metaphors such as the tree of life and ancestral heritage depicted in family trees. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the role of tree imagery is meant to portray Janie’s flourishing womanhood, her idea of an ultimate loving union, and the legacy that she had come from.

Zora Neale Hurston’s highly acclaimed novel Their Eyes Were Watching God demonstrates many of the writing techniques described in How to Read Literature like a Professor by Tomas C. Foster. In Foster’s book, he describes multiple reading and writing techniques that are often used in literature and allow the reader to better understand the deeper meaning of a text. These of which are very prevalent in Hurston’s novel. Her book follows the story of an African American woman named Janie as she grows in her search for love. Hurston is able to tell Janie’s great quest for love with the use of a vampiric character, detailed geography, and sexual symbolism; all of which are described in Foster’s book.

In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, she focuses on the life of the main character, Janie Crawford. The novel takes place in a small town down south called Eatonville in the 1930’s. Janie is on a quest to find her true identity or in other words, her horizon. Along Janie’s quest for true happiness, she faces numerous obstacles that continue to hinder her from finding her true identity and a man she can truly love. As the expectations of others control her life, Janie keeps pushing and is determined to find a true inner happiness. Janie has to fight the expectations of others all throughout the novel until she reaches a point

Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.

She felt free in a way but she knew that if she showed her new found freedom that the town would judge her. Finally she stopped mourning and she started seeing Teacake. She wore her hair down and wore blue dresses. She was no longer scared to show how liberated she actually felt. But as she predicted she was ridiculed and judged. The town felt as though she should still be mourning since Joe had only been dead a couple of months. Some even confronted Janie about it. But after all the harsh words toward Janie she realized she did not have to please them. She became more confident with herself and disregarded what everyone was saying and just focused on her and Tea Cake's relationship. The words the town said about her made Janie live for her and realized she could never make everyone happy with

Janie grows throughout the book and her life is shaped around finding true love and finding herself through love. The pear tree is a reoccurring symbol in the book. The first instance of the pear tree in the book is when Janie watches a bee pollinate from a blossom. The pear tree represents what Janie thinks marriage and love should be like

Hurston illustrated that how blacks provided American culture with “its only genuine folk tradition”. She was “the only key writer of the Harlem literary movement to carry out a organized study of Afro-American folklore”. In Their Eyes Were Watching God (first published in 1937), she describes her black identity as a consequent from African heritage. Since her early life in Eatonville, Hurston was nurtured by colorful, figurative storytelling. Hurston’s folk pride is very well documented in her portrayal of Eatonville in almost all her novels. She observed this little black hamlet as a haven in the race biased US. Her characters experience tranquility and prosperity only at

Hurston uses the pear tree to show the development of Janie’s fantasy of love and her search for it in the novel. Janie’s first feelings

Janie's discovers this love through Teacake her first love. The first signs of this love appear when Teacake goes ‘missing’ for a few days on a trip, Hurston demonstrates how much Janie cares for Teacake through her actions while he is away“It was always going to be dark to Janie if Tea Cake didn’t soon come back. She dwindled down on the floor with her head in a rocking chair”(Hurston 120). The idea of never seeing Teacake again is so devastating to Janie that she sinks to the floor in grief. To Janie, Teacake is her world and if he didn’t come back she would never be able to find light. Because Janie feels as if she needs Teacake in order to continue to live on , this demonstrates that she found the love she wanted when she was a

their clothes had been torn away; till he hurled her to the floor …. doing things with their bodies to express the inexpressible; kissed her …. and they fell asleep in sweet exhaustion” (Hurston 137-138), that Tea Cake truly loved her more than anyone. This passage shows the deep connection between them, and how they expressed the love that could not be expressed through words, true love. They expressed their loyalty to each other by the expressions that their bodies created. In the culture that Janie lived in, they would express their deepest and truest feeling for someone through sex, so the actions of Tea Cake showed Janie that he loved her and only her. Even though she realized that he was loyal to her, she still had doubts, but it was not until Chapter 18 that she truly realized that she should not have any doubts. In Chapter 18, Tea Cake saves Janie from a rabid dog, proving to Janie of how much he loves her. “They fought and somehow he managed to bite Tea Cake….” (Hurston 166), this results in Janie apprehending the firm devotion that Tea Cake had towards Janie. As a result of it being a rabid dog, if he had gotten to Janie, the dog would have killed her, but because of Tea Cake’s courage and strong love for Janie, he saved