Dream Crushed in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

What we hope for is not always what we need. This is prevalent in the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston where the characters have his or her dream crushed for the sake of fate. This is especially true for Janie who strives throughout the novel to have her dream of “the pear tree” realized, and Hurston shows this using a variation of metaphor, imagery, and personification.

Janie’s attempts at achieving her own pear tree and fails, nevertheless this is done so that she can find for herself that adventure and life experiences are more important than love alone. It didn’t take Janie long to learn her first lesson but after she left Logan “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead” (Hurston 25). Janie sought to have her own “pear tree” which meant that she wanted a perfect relationship with a man, defining her as a dependant early on. Once Logan began demanding more of Janie and stretching that thin fabric that is Janie’s loyalty she left him, Janie will experiment with Jody and learn the same lesson. Hurston personifies the extent of Janie’s dream by stating that it is “dead” showing that Janie chases her dreams extensively and she will do this continually until she achieves her own horizon. When Janie lives with Jody she is suppressed and her search for perfect love is shattered once more except this time she learns how to defend herself from this malice, “You ain’t tried tuh pacify nobody but yo’self. Too busy listening to yo’ own big voice.” (Hurston 87). We see once more that Janie is denied of her grand dream and is taught another valuable lesson, how to defend herself. Janie demonstrates her independence as a woman by living without a man for the

following weeks and d...

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... nothin but uh lil blow” to show how strong Tea Cakes misconception was and to show how Tea Cake is a bad judge of the magnitude of any given situation. Each of these characters was a part in shaping Janie and leading towards achieving her horizon, it just so happened that all of these characters had to die for Janie to have her deserved dream realized.

In the end Janie becomes independent and achieves a slightly different pear tree that she had imagined at first, nevertheless she had to have her dream altered for her to deserve it. Hurston uses many examples of figurative language like personification and imagery to convey the symbolism in these ideas of Janie; in addition Hurston uses metaphors and diction to underline the importance of how the other characters impacted Janie on her adventure.

Works Cited

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston