Zora Neale Hurston 's Their Eyes Were Watching God

[she longed] to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she... [was] waiting for the world to be made" (11). Janie, feeling herself opening like the petals of a flower, yearns to delve into the unfamiliar - to find the sweet marriage represented by the bees and blossoms.

Tea Cake, whose real name is Vergible Woods, is Janie's soul mate, both of them being tree metaphors. He’s the only one of her husbands who haven’t been described as dead wood. Hurston writes, “looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom - a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with every step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.” His nickname too holds significance in referring to something sweet, just as she has hope dor "things swee wid mah marriage" (24). Because Tea Cake is unconcerned with her money, for instance, in that he asks her to keep her savings aside and live from his current earnings, Tea Cake is clearly contrary to the norm of suitors who preceded him following the death of Joe, who didn’t want her for her. He is a man truly in love with Janie, a man who understands her. In instructing “Everytime Ah see uh patch uh roses uh somethin’ over sportin’ they selves makin’ out they pretty, Ah tell ‘em “ah want yuh to see mah Janie sometime.’ You must let de flowers see yuh sometimes, heah Janie?” (181), he shows that he too sees her mirroring, even competing with nature. It is with him, that Janie is pollinated to realize the meaning of the pear tree’s mysteries and

The pear tree experience, along with her Grandmother’s words to her, help Janie determine her expectations for her future relationships. The pear tree experience establishes the feeling she seeks for the rest of her life, as she wants just as intimate of a relationship as the bee and the flower. Janie’s grandmother’s initial goals for Janie are inscribed in Janie’s original ideals, even though she denies it. Her grandmother’s original intent by marrying her off to Logan, besides for her safety, was to find her a way out of the working life, and into one where she would be allowed to relax, and escape the life of toil that both Leafy and Nanny suffered through. While Janie

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).

In the beginning of the passage, the author sets the scenery by saying Janie was sitting under a "blossoming pear tree" on a "spring" afternoon. The author emphasizes how important this pear tree is by using multiple examples of visual imagery. Hurston using "barren browns stems to glistening leaf-buds" to help the reader picture this nice blossoming pear tree that is in the backyard. Later on in the paragraph, the author uses personification to talk about the blossoming that Janie wants. She does this by writing "[the singing] followed her through all her waking moments." this portrays the blossoming as a song that follows Janie around.

Janie spends her chore-time in the backyard garden admiring the pear tree and the glistening world of nature surrounding her with peace and tranquility. In Zora Neale Hurtson's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she accompanies a wide range of rhetorical devices such as onomatopoeia, simile, imagery, so on to visualize the world in Janie's eyes on her own home.

These relationships allow her to understand what real love is in contrast from mislove. Moreover, Janie becomes more independent in the midst of a male-dominated society and learns to embrace her sexuality despite society’s idea of how women should behave. Hurston constructs Janie’s character arc through the use of motifs. Hurston uses the motif of bees,

“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” (11). Janie is curious of the forbidden fruit and soon eats the fruit. This is shown when Johnny Taylor and Janie kiss. Similar to when Adam and Eve start a new life when they

To see yourself like a tree in leaf is a beautiful way to go about life, at least it is for Janie in the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It centers around Janie Crawford, a Person of Color growing up in the 1930’s. She’s independent and smart and strong willed and has to learn how to live like that in a world working against her, she struggles with finding love, first with a man she is forced to love, then with one who give her everything, and then with one who makes her feel young. But seeing herself as a tree, Janie grows and changes as her life does, expanding her branches. At numerous points in the book Janie compares herself to a tree, but the author symbolizes the change and the relationship’s within the book through the use of the metaphor of wood and trees. Some examples of this are Mr.Killicks chopping firewood, the oak tree in the centre of Eatonville, and Tea Cakes treatment of Janie’s trees.

In this next quote that the narrator says has to deal with the fact that Janie starts to worry that there is no love in a marriage, and now turns into a young woman. “So Janie a bloom time, and a green time, and an orange time. But when the pollen again glided down the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn’t know exactly… The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” (Chapter 3 Pg 31) The quote explains how the Janie has given up hope on her biggest dream, which was for love as she pictured in a marriage. Then this is where she officially becomes a young woman in her adventure through

Janie’s love story in the movie went over her progress in life “…the love story overshadows the character development. And in essence, that’s what the novel is, a study in character and personal development” (Miller). She was given more strength in the movie than she had in the book and it changed the story about how it was supposed to go. In the movie you cannot see Janie gain strength over time and truly find herself. The love story that is given to us is not in the book at all. Janie’s progress in life was the main part of the story not a love story.

Janie upholds an unusual perception of love and marriage. Janie says, “ Ah wants things sweet and mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah..” Janie associates love and marriage with nature, which may partially stem from the profound fact that no women in her family have ever been married. Janie’s lack of representation

The bumblebee taking pollen from the flower showed Janie that love is a beautiful mutual exchange and that is what defined a marriage to her. This is the love that Janie

Throughout the book, Janie reveals herself as a strong feminist because she searches for love that she always desired ever since she was a little girl. As stated by Zoey Neale Hurston, the author of the book, "She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery” (Hurston, 11). Janie is captivated by the blooming pear tree in her nanny’s backyard and spends as much time as she can there. She was drawn to its transformation which foreshadows a transformation within herself. For Janie Crawford, it took her three marriages to fully achieve her goal of becoming a feminist. Her

There is no red-leaf tree in front of her home, but a peach tree. She always came here and talk with her soulmate.