Imagery in Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Imagery in Their Eyes Were Watching God

The novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" contains beautiful imagery that conveys the thoughts of the author towards the antagonist of this story, Janie Crawford. Through her four distinct lives as Janie Crawford, Janie Killicks, Janie Starks, and Janie Woods she realizes that each day the sun rises a new change is apparent in her life. The experience of each distinct life makes her realize more about herself than she ever knew before. She comes to a self-revelation about herself. Even though it takes her the entire novel to realize her sexual awakening from the blossoming pear tree to experience unadulterated love, she does so as the sun falls and rises past the years of her maturing life.

The novel starts out with Janie at the ripe age of sixteen realizing her sexual peak. "She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her." (Hurston: 11). Nanny realizes that Janie has become ready for marriage, after settling for a kiss from a tall and lean, yet poor boy by the name of Johnny Taylor. So, Nanny arranges a marriage between Janie Crawford and Logan Killicks to start Janie's new life as Janie Killicks before she would be able to get entangled in the humble life of a poor black man like Johnny Taylor. She was a former slave, so Nanny believed in the value of financial security and respectability. Therefore, she forced Janie into marrying Logan Killicks when she was still in her teens. A year passed by with Janie realizing that she did not love Logan and would never love him, so she felt it was time for a change. Janie left...

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...ruel journey towards a true self-revelation of herself. Starting with her teen years, she was hassled by her Grandmother to marry for stability and money, not love. She would then follow a man with a big voice to escape the laborious and unaffectionate life with Logan to marry Jody. Realizing that Jody was an even bigger nuisance for a much longer period of time, she would then go on to marry Tea Cake. Janie has returned to her own place, as her own woman, with her own memories to guide and comfort her. Although she grieves Tea Cake's unfortunate death, she has come back a wiser person and is stronger because of it. She will keep Tea Cake alive in heart to keep her company and live joyfully in the next stage of her life knowing that Tea Cake helped her realize her capacity to mature into a loving adult and actually love a person to the fullest extent possible.

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