Their Eyes Were Watching God Analysis

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In Zora Neale Hurston’s text Their Eyes Were Watching God it is very apparent that the Janie is unsure of her life and is unsure of the things that are going to make her happy in life. Is it love that will make her happy or is to be alone? Janie values the ideas of love because of the beauty in the pear tree. Why does the pear tree symbolize love and marriage to Janie? Does Janie need to be alone to be happy? Is the destructive force of the hurricane a symbol of being alone to Janie and her life? Why are these figures so significant to the text?
The novel indicates that the pear tree symbolizes Janie’s desires in a relationship and her ideas of a marriage. Janie spent majority of her childhood near that tree because she used it as her center towards life and love. In 2005, Emily Kendall, Symbols and Metaphors, published
“As a sixteen-year-old girl, lying beneath a pear tree in the spring, she watches a bee gathering pollen from a pear blossom. The experience becomes a symbol to Janie of the ideal relationship, one in which passion does not result in possession or domination, but rather in an effortless union of …show more content…

The symbol of the hurricane is chaos and devastation amongst Janie and the other characters and everyone’s life. It is a dynamic symbol of change. Kendall declares, “The hurricane's devastation is beyond the control of the book's characters. Capricious but impersonal, it is a concrete example of the destructive power found in nature.” The hurricane is such a strong representation of how the characters are not ready for change in their lives and Kendall in Symbols and Metaphors supports this: “Janie, Tea Cake, and their friends can only look on in terror as the hurricane destroys the structure of their lives and leaves them to rebuild as best they can. A pivotal event in the novel, the hurricane marks an abrupt transition from Janie's idyllic life

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