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

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

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