Imagery In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Though both modernist authors, Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neal Hurston often turn to natural imagery and elements in their novels. In Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has an immediate connection with her natural surroundings, namely the pear tree and blossoms. This relationship defines how she views herself and the world around her. Like Janie, Hemingway’s character Nick Adams in In Our Time has a special relationship with nature, seen in the first and final stories featuring him. His experiences shape who is he is. Both authors apply reproductive imagery to the natural world, creating a connection between the feminine and nature that teaches Janie and Nick about their relationship with their gender.

In Eco-critical analysis

of literature, there is a branch that examines the relationship between gender and nature. Hemingway and Hurston provide two texts perfect for such analysis because of the inclusion of nature and gender being at the core of their works. Eco-critics, especially eco-feminists, acknowledge how femininity is often associated with nature, the natural world given feminine aspects and pronouns. One of the biggest reasons this happens is because of the association of reproduction with both women and nature (Soper, 139). This connection is shown in both In Our Time and Their Eyes Were Watching God, namely in the story “Indian Camp” and the scene where Janie witnesses a bee pollinating a pear blossom. Nick discovers what it means to be masculine from his father, who is performing a Cesarean section. For Janie, the blossom and bee show her that love is a union, but the scene is charged with sexual energy, suggesting that reproduction is the root of marriage.
By performing an unnatural birth on a Native American woman, Nick’s father teaches him that to be masculine, they must dominate the natural world. “Indian Camp” is the first story that features Nick therefore setting up how he is portrayed for the rest of the novel. He is first seen entering the camp with his father on a rowboat, “Nick lay back with his father’s arm around him” (Hemingway, 15). Since Nick’s father acts as the dominant and masculine force, his arm around his son shows that he is guiding his son, taking him along on this trip so he will understand what he needs to know. It is not soon after that comes across his first example of dominance over the natural world. As the men enter, attention is drawn to the path, “they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills” (15). It becomes clear that this camp has already been touched by men, foreshadowing the act that the doctor will perform later in the story. The trees being cut down, shown in this observation, “It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides” (15), connect nature with women because like the land and trees, the pregnant woman will have her baby cut from her body.
As Nick watches his father perform the operation on the woman, he witnesses physical and emotional dominance over her, seeing that she is merely a thing to them. The clearest example of the physical dominance is when the operation begins, “Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still” (17). Since the woman is giving birth, there is a connection with nature, and the men exhibiting force over her is them trying to control nature. The doctor continues to take agency from the woman by basically performing the birth himself. By delivering the baby through a Caesarian section, he is taking the natural process of birth away from the mother. To further demonstrate the fact that nature means nothing to him, Nick’s father reduces the woman to merely a medial conquest, “‘That's one for the medical journal, George,’ he said. ‘Doing a Caesarian with a jack-knife and sewing it up with nine-foot, tapered gut leaders’” (18). Like men have claimed the land for logging, he has taken control over her body. Nick is witness to this all and is not happy with what he sees. In fact, Nick chooses to not watch at all, “He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing” (17). This repulsion is shown as father and son leave camp, “In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing” (19). In the beginning of the story, Nick sits alongside his father, eager to be guided by him, but now that Nick understands how he is supposed to act, he sits far away not wanting anything to do with it. This experience sets Nick up with how he views nature for the rest of his life, especially apparent “Big Two Hearted River Part One and Two”.
Janie has a similar experience as a girl, learning from nature what it means to be a woman.

As Janie sits under a pear tree, she witnesses “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom” (Hurston, 11). Already, the imagery and language is very sexual, the bee holding what the blossom needs to create life a clear symbol for the male and female. The bee “sinks” into the “sanctum” of the bloom just as a penis would penetrate a vagina. The reproductive imagry continues as “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). Now it becomes clear that the blossoms are female because of the word “sister”. These female flowers are eager to be with the bee, resulting in ecstasy. “Frothing” and “creaming” bring to mind thoughts of ejaculation, signaling the completion of intercourse. The sexual energy remains with Janie moments after witnessing the bee and blossom, “Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid” (11). Her physical state is one comparable to a woman after a fulfilling sexual experience, showing Janie that a relationship should not only be emotionally satisfying but physically too. Her body feels as if it was the one who shivered in delight, not the tree, creating a physical connection between nature and the female

body.
It is clear that the bees and blossoms represent man and woman, specifically their reproductive organs, so when Janie compares herself to the tree, she is connecting herself to the feminine part of nature. She explains, “She had glossy-leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” (11). Janie’s body is no longer a mystery to her, coming to understand it through what she sees in her surroundings. Leaves and buds replace her womanly parts. Now not only does she understand nature, but she has become it. Since her body is the pear tree, it makes sense that she searches for a bee to pollinate it, seen in her question.
Janie’s connection with nature carries through the rest of the novel, defining her relationships and how she view herself.

When she falls out of love with Jodie, she realizes, "She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be” (74). In this statement, the “blossomy openings” refer to sex. Because this marriage no longer mirrors that of the bee and blossom, Janie knows she cannot continue to love and have sex with Jodie. Nature had taught her that marriage should be an equal give and take. The second part of this passage, the lack of “glistening young fruit”, is the absence of children in Janie and Jodie’s life. Once a blossom is pollinated by a bee, it grows into a fruit. If nature is Janie’s model for what it means to be female, then she should have children, adding to the theme of reproduction in nature. There is an understanding that Janie has and she knows she cannot love a man who does not treat her like the pear

blossom.
Just as Janie’s experience influenced how she treated nature and herself throughout her life, Nick’s life is shaped by his trip with his father. When he returns from war, Nick is a changed man suffering from PTSD. However, in the final scenes of the novel, Nick turns towards nature for renewal. He is seen respecting nature, the opposite of what his father did many years ago. Nick has intimate knowledge of the wilderness, knowing how to leave the smallest footprint and treat the wildlife with respect. Because of this, nature acts as a mother to him, giving him new life. Though he does not act dominating like his father, Nick still is a masculine character. He knows how to use nature for himself, but does so in a respectful way. His father taught him what not to do. So nature has a clear roll in both novels, it teaching the characters how to act because they both lack positive role models. Though modernist writers, Hemingway and Hurston show that nature still hold importance in a new urban age.