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Character development in their eyes were watching god
Character development in their eyes were watching god
Character development in their eyes were watching god
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In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie had a defining moment that helped shape her future. In the second chapter, she saw a pear tree and ever since she became obsessed with the idea of love. She spent every bit of free time she had to be with the tree. Many people have these defining moments which lead them on through life. For example, it could be an art set that one received at a young age that made them want to be an artist. Whatever the case may be, we all have our own passions. In this passage, the author uses personification and imagery to show how Janie’s curiosity for love affects her future relationships by giving them something to live up to. To begin with, Hurston uses personification to show Janie’s curiosity …show more content…
The author uses different pieces of imagery in the second chapter, page 10, to symbolize her future relationships. The author wrote “Barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom,” this piece of imagery symbolizes how Janie went through some tough relationships. The barren brown stems represent her first two abusive relationships with Logan and Jody but the glistening leaf-buds represent her relationship with Tea Cake. With Tea Cake she took her time, she was not looking for love and was cautious. After getting to know Tea Cake she knew he was the one. The new stems will come on the tree when it is the right time and when they are ready much like Janie’s only successful relationship. In the next paragraph, the author used imagery to show how the bees pollinate the tree, an example of this is in this quote “Meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree.” This quote shows how in relationships both people have to put the effort in, like the tree and the bees did. In Janie’s first two relationships she was the only one who would try to make things work. Jody would insult her and she would take it because she wanted to stay married. She does not realize until her third marriage that both people have to work together if they want to have a healthy lasting
The pear tree for example is similar to that of the Garden of Eden. The pear tree and the horizon signify Janie’s model of a perfect life. In the bees’ interaction with the pear tree flowers, Janie witnesses a perfect moment in nature, full of energy, interaction, and harmony. She chases after this ideal life throughout the rest of the book. Janie’s romantic and idealistic view of love, seen in her reaction to the pear tree, partially explains why her earlier relationships are not successful. It is not until later in her life, when she slowly opens up to her relationship with Tea Cake on a more mature level, that Janie sees what love really is. Janie resists Tea Cake at first, remembering her early pear tree encounters, and her early sexual awakening. She becomes infatuated with Tea
Oprah Winfrey mutilated the classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston by turning the movie into a story with no resemblance to the book. Throughout Janie Crawford’s life, love is a dream she wished to achieve. Oprah makes changes to Janie’s character, her marriages, and the differences of symbolism, the change of themes, and the significance of Janie’s childhood which will alter the entire moral of the story. Another difference is the way the townspeople gossip. Oprah changes the point of Janie’s life journey to find herself to a love story.
In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Sweat,” Hurston uses the characters Janie Crawford and Delia Jones to symbolize African-American women as the mules of the world and their only alternative were through their words, in order to illustrate the conditions women suffered and the actions they had to take to maintain or establish their self-esteem.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel that presents a happy ending through the moral development of Janie, the protagonist. The novel divulges Janie’s reflection on her life’s adventures, by narrating the novel in flashback form. Her story is disclosed to Janie’s best friend Phoebe who comes to learn the motive for Janie’s return to Eatonville. By writing the novel in this style they witness Janie’s childhood, marriages, and present life, to observe Janie’s growth into a dynamic character and achievement of her quest to discover identity and spirit.
The movie and the book of Their Eyes Were Watching God both tell the story of a young woman’s journey to finding love; however, the movie lacks the depth and meaning behind the importance of Janie’s desire for self-fulfillment. Oprah Winfrey’s version alters the idea from the book Zora Neale Hurston wrote, into a despairing love story for the movie. Winfrey changes Hurston’s story in various ways by omitting significant events and characters, which leads to a different theme than what the novel portrays. The symbolisms and metaphors emphasized throughout the book are almost non-existent in the movie, changing the overall essence of the story. While Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal gives a more in depth view of Janie’s journey of self-discovery and need for fulfilling love, Oprah Winfrey’s version focuses mainly on a passionate love story between Janie and Tea Cake.
Janie has developed from a little girl into a young lady over the years. She spends most of her days underneath the pear tree surrounding herself with nature. Under the pear tree, Janie is awakening to the idea of love and marriage. She is beginning to be attracted to the opposite gender seen previously from when she kissed Johnny Taylor, a guy who before she did not take interest in his looks. As Janie gazes at the intimacy of the flower and the bee, she sees how the tree is pleased in the end from this exchange. Then, this action dawns to Janie when she realizes this is how love should be, a give and take relationship where both parties benefited from each other. Janie from this experience sets up standards for what her future admirers would
“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). The novel, Their Eyes Were Watching, God by Zora Neale Hurston, tells a story of a woman, Janie Crawford’s quest to find her true identity that takes her on a journey and back in which she finally comes to learn who she is. These lessons of love and life that Janie comes to attain about herself are endowed from the relationships she has with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford the main character goes through some big changes. Throughout this book Janie struggles to find her inner voice and purpose of love. She looks high and low for a sign of what love really is and she finds it as being the pear tree. The pear tree is very symbolic and ultimately shows Janie what love is and how it should be in a healthy relationship. This tree, with the bees pollinating the blossoms, helps Janie realize that love should be very mutual and each person needs to provide for the other equally. Janie tries to find this special kind of love through her three husbands, but she comes to realize it is going to be much harder then she expected. Each one of Janie’s husbands are a stepping stone for her finding her voice.
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches" (8). When Janie was a teenager, she used to sit under the pear tree and dream about being a tree in bloom. She longs for something more. When she is 16, she kisses Johnny Taylor to see if this is what she looks for. Nanny sees her kiss him, and says that Janie is now a woman. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the main character, is involved in three very different relationships. Zora Neale Hurston, the author, explains how Janie learns some valuable lessons about marriage, integrity, and love and happiness from her relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.
What is a symbol? It can mean many things to many different people. To me a symbol means you say something but it means a totally different thing. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston she uses a lot a symbols throughout the novel. Janie is a beautiful black woman with partially white ancestry. As a child, Janie is brought up by her grandmother, Nanny. Janie listens to her grandmother and marries a man of her choosing Logan Killicks. Janie leaves Logan when she realizes that she doesn't love him. She runs away with Joe Starks, a man with huge dreams for the future. Instead of allowing Janie to develop her own voice. After Joe dies, Janie finally finds her true love Tea Cake Woods. When Tea Cake dies suddenly, Janie returns to
So many people in modern society have lost their voices. Laryngitis is not the cause of this sad situation-- they silence themselves, and have been doing so for decades. For many, not having a voice is acceptable socially and internally, because it frees them from the responsibility of having to maintain opinions. For Janie Crawford, it was not: she finds her voice among those lost within the pages of Zora Neale Hurston’s famed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This dynamic character’s natural intelligence, talent for speaking, and uncommon insights made her the perfect candidate to develop into the outspoken, individual woman she has wanted to be all along.
Through her use of southern black language Zora Neale Hurston illustrates how to live and learn from life’s experiences. Janie, the main character in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a woman who defies what people expect of her and lives her life searching to become a better person. Not easily satisfied with material gain, Janie quickly jumps into a search to find true happiness and love in life. She finally achieves what she has searched for with her third marriage.
...h and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob to sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace.” Janie lay in her bed reminiscing and is convinced that Tea will stay in her memory until the day she dies, after that day she will be together with him again – together with Tea Cake in heaven. The emptiness in Janie that was present in her before she left town with Tea Cake has subsided. Due to the love of Tea Cake let her know, Janie is now complete, the bee has nurtured the flower, and allowed it to grow.
In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the image of a pear tree reverberates throughout the novel. The pear tree is not only a representation of Janie's life - blossoming, death, metamorphosis, and rebirth - but also the spark of curiosity that sets Janie on her quest for self-discovery. Janie is essentially "rootless" at the beginning of her life, never having known her mother or father and having been raised by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny even says to Janie, "Us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways" (Hurston, 16). Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a naïve sixteen-year-old, finds the possibilities of love, sexuality, and identity that are available to her. This image, forever reverberating in her mind through two unsuccessful marriages to Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, is what keeps Janie's spirit alive and encourages her quest for love and life. "It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep" (10).
Love is a major theme in this novel because the main character Janie’s ultimate goal in her life is an ideal romantic relationship. “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) This experience under the pear tree makes her idea of love become unrealistic and sets a high standard for the men that are going to be part of her life. “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree but Janie didn’t know how to tell nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted at the floor.” (Hurston. 14). Janie’s idea of love is set when she had her experience under he pear tree when she was sixteen years old. Her experience under the pear tree glamorized her idea if love. Because of this experience t...