This passage displays Janie’s intuitive and authentic idea of love. Janie is a young teenage girl under the care of her grandmother and this is the beginning of her sensual awakening and discovering her femininity. Janie is in the springtime of her life, with a fresh, young and unpolluted in her perception of love. She views the world as a place filled with romantic possibilities and opportunities, ready for exploration. This discovery ignites her desire to experience true love. The embrace between the bee and the flower impresses an idealized vision of love and a moment of equal and reciprocal serenity. The flowers “arch to meet” the “visiting bee” and the following harmony provides each companion with a beloved existence. Janie desires to …show more content…
search for true, equal love and fulfillment. This displays a deeper aspiration within love, which is composed of finding her identity and a sense of personal enlightenment. The language of this passage is sensual while expressing a natural romance. Jane is young and innocent and is still able to find spirituality and mysticism in the fruitful abundance of the natural world. Janie views nature and the world through the eyes of her own desires and “everywhere she found and acknowledged answers”, which consists of a world full of beauty and equal serenity. She pursues an idealized perception of romance because she wishes to experience a harmonization with the picturesque and wild love she witnesses under the pear tree. The pear tree portrays her vision of a perfect and ideal love with a man.
The sensual performance under the pear tree transforms Janie’s feelings toward boys. She becomes aware of her femininity and her own blossoming aspirations. Janie is now seeing the world in an entirely new way. Johnny once seemed mundane but now she is excited and enticed by him. Self-awareness allows her to view Johnny as a matured woman and romanticize him. On the other hand, Nanny has a cynical perception of love and a pessimistic vision of men. She considers men to be dangerous. “Janie talking in whispery snatches with a male voice she couldn’t quite place. That brought her wide-awake. She bolted upright and peered out of the window and saw Johnny Taylor lacerating her Janie with a kiss”. She perceives Johnny “lacerating” Janie, which portrays her grandmother’s violent perception of love and an innocent first kiss. Nanny is no longer able to view the world as an innocent and unaware woman. Her life experiences have resulted in viewing the world much more cautiously and she is unable to appreciate the young passion for love. Nanny was never able to experience the freedom and innocence of young love and she is incapable to relate to Janie’s newly discovered feelings. Feminine attraction is seen as a danger and threat to her individuality and freedom. She is consumed by worry and is compelled to shield Janie from the horror that she experienced as a young
girl.
1) Talk about the life Janie and Tea Cake live in bean-picking, swamp country and contrast it with Janie's life in Eatonville. What is Janie's attitude to the contrast?
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 idealized view changes when Janie is forced to marry Logan Killicks, a wealthy and well-respected man whom Janie’s Nanny set her up with. Because Janie does not know anything about love, she believes that even if she does not love Logan yet, she will find it when they marry. Upon marrying Logan, she had to learn to love him for what he did, not for that infallible love every woman deserves. After a year of pampering, Logan becomes demanding and rude, he went as far to try to force Janie to do farm work. It was when this happened that Janie decided to take a stand and run away with Joe. At this time, Janie appears to have found a part of her voice and strong will. In a way, she gains a sense of independence and realizes she has the power to walk away from an unhealthy situation and does not have to be a slave to her own husband.
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 and Arvay respond to their men in similar ways as well. Both women swing from extremes of doubt and distrust to passionate, all-encompassing love for their husbands. Moreover, both women reconfigure themselves to adjust to the man’s world, as when Janie moves to the Everglades with Tea Cake, and when Arvay goes out to sea with Jim on his fishing b...
The book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is about Janie Crawford and her quest for self-independence and real love. She finds herself in three marriages, one she escapes from, and the other two end tragically. And throughout her journey, she learns a lot about love, and herself. Janie’s three marriages were all different, each one brought her in for a different reason, and each one had something different to teach her, she was forced into marrying Logan Killicks and hated it. So, she left him for Joe Starks who promised to treat her the way a lady should be treated, but he also made her the way he thought a lady should be. After Joe died she found Tea Cake, a romantic man who loved Janie the way she was, and worked hard to provide for her.
In this novel the two contrasting places shows Janie as being loss and shows Janie as being found. This novel stands on that theme. Sometimes one would be loss but the problem comes in when they are never found. In Eatonville there was love of force but in the Everglades there was love of choice. Janie was able to find the bee pollinating the flower. “So this was marriage”. The contrasting places examine true love.
Identity is something every human quests for. Individuals tend to manipulate views, ideas, and prerogative. Janie's identity became clay in her family and friends hands. Most noteworthy was Janie's grandmother, Nanny. Janie blossomed into a young woman with an open mind and embryonic perspective on life. Being a young, willing, and full of life, Janie made the "fatal mistake" of becoming involved in the follies of an infatuation with the opposite sex. With this phase in Janie's life Nanny's first strong hold on Janie's neck flexed its grip. Preoccupation with romantic love took the backseat to Nanny's stern view on settling down with someone with financial stability. Hence, Janie's identity went through its first of many transformations. She fought within her self, torn between her adolescent sanction and Nanny's harsh limitations, but final gave way and became a cast of Nanny's reformation.
Under a pear tree in Nanny's backyard, however, Janie, as a nave 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). Under the pear tree on that spring afternoon, Janie sees sensuality wherever she looks. The first tiny bloom had opened.
At age sixteen, Janie is a beautiful young girl who is about to enter womanhood and experience the real world. Being joyous and unconcerned, she is thrown into an arranged marriage with Logan Killicks. He is apparently unromantic and unattractive. Logan is a widower and a successful farmer who desires a wife who would not have her own opinions. He is set on his own ways and is troubled by Janie, who forms her own opinions and refuses to work. He is unable to sexually appeal or satisfy Janie and therefore does not truly connect with her as husband and wife should. Janie's wild and young spirit is trapped within her and she plays the role of a silent and obeying wife. But her true identity cannot withhold itself for she has ambitions and she wills to see the world and find love. There was a lack of trust and communication between Logan and Janie. Because of the negative feelings Janie has towards Logan, she deems that this marriage is not what she desires it to be. The pear tree and the bees had a natural att...
Janie's outlook on life stems from the system of beliefs that her grandmother, Nanny instills in her during life. These beliefs include how women should act in a society and in a marriage. Nanny and her daughter, Janie's mother, were both raped and left with bastard children, this experience is the catalyst for Nanny’s desire to see Janie be married of to a well-to-do gentleman. She desires to see Janie married off to a well to do gentleman because she wants to see that Janie is well cared for throughout her life.
Janie’s first attempt at love does not turn out quite like she hopes. Her grandmother forces her into marrying Logan Killicks. As the year passes, Janie grows unhappy and miserable. By pure fate, Janie meets Joe Starks and immediately lusts after him. With the knowledge of being wrong and expecting to be ridiculed, she leaves Logan and runs off with Joe to start a new marriage. This is the first time that Janie does what she wants in her search of happiness: “Even if Joe was not waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good…From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything” (32). Janie’s new outlook on life, although somewhat shadowed by blind love, will keep her satisfied momentarily, but soon she will return to the loneliness she is running from.
Janie's Grandmother is the first bud on her tree. She raised Janie since she was a little girl. Her grandmother is in some respects a gardener pruning and shaping the future for her granddaughter. She tries to instill a strong belief in marriage. To her marriage is the only way that Janie will survive in life. What Nanny does not realize is that Janie has the potential to make her own path in the walk of life. This blinds nanny, because she is a victim of the horrible effects of slavery. She really tries to convey to Janie that she has her own voice but she forces her into a position where that voice is silenced and there for condemning all hopes of her Granddaughter become the woman that she is capable of being.
First, Janie’s failing love endeavors with her first two husbands. The first ideas about love that Janie was exposed to was those of her grandmother, Nanny. Her grandmother saw that Janie was entering womanhood and she didn't want Janie to experience what her mother went through (getting pregnant without being married). So Nanny went out to marry her as soon as she can. When Janie asked about love, Nanny told her that marriage makes love and she will find love after she marries Logan which was the old man that has been interested in Janie for a long time. Nanny believed that love was second to security and stability.
Nanny Janie’s grandmother disapprove the kiss between Janie and Johnny Taylor under the pear tree (11). Janie was only sixteen years old and naïve to think that was love. Nanny knew Johnny Taylor did not mean to cause no harm, but she felt Johnny was trying to mislead Janie to hurt and humiliate her by being sexual that can be dangerous (Hurston 12-15). Likewise, Janie was forced into marrying Logan an older man, Nanny approved of because Janie will have a husband that will love her. Same as, Hurston describe Janie emotions of unhappiness within the marriage not having affection and desire for Logan, Hurston implies, “Ah ain’t got nothin’ tuh live for.” (118) Hurston also describes Janie as confident that caught men attention as well as her physique, the women were jealous of Janie implying “Janie will never fit in the upper class of white men because of her appearance.” (Hurston 41) The women try to make Janie feel worthless and unattractive of not having enough sexually appeal. . Hurston writing engage the character from love to lust in a unhappy marriage that lead to a prolonged period of difficulty
Hurston uses a pear tree as a symbol of love and romance, proving the main message that finding love within oneself is necessary for happiness and peace. As Janie and Nanny discuss Logan Killicks and how he would be ideal to marry, Janie thinks, “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that” (Hurston 14). The pear tree is symbolic of Janie’s feelings during her relationships. For instance, with Logan, the pear tree is barren and desolate, reflecting Janie’s unhappiness. Janie’s romantic needs are not fulfilled by protection and security, but instead by appreciation and gratitude, which Logan does not provide. Therefore, Janie is disconsolate because she does not have love for herself.