Throughout Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie’s pursuit of true love remains crucial in her life. A summer-time fantasy, a pear blossom and a bee, imprint within her mind a vision beyond the futility of riches and reality. This natural beauty becomes her lifelong quest – to find within her life true love. Two men leave her fruitless, having not given to her that which is her heart’s pursuit. However, one man, poor and unknown, actually bestows upon her the beauty that remained shrouded in mystery so long. Janie does find true love, and it is not only a detail in her life.
True love’s significance in Janie’s life begins when she is sixteen. Young Janie is in her grandmother’s backyard, admiring the pear tree above her,
…show more content…
the bees buzzing, and the leaves rustling. “She was stretched on her back… when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom… So this was a marriage!” (Hurston, 13). Janie discovers marriage is when two people perfectly merge to form a bond that is so incredible, no other pursuit in life is equal. This sacred bond is true love. “Janie translates the remarkable love she feels for and through the natural world into a metaphor for a traditional, heterosexual ‘marriage’” (Bealer). Finding true love becomes an objective in her life, even-though her grandmother forced her to marry. She convinces herself that marriage requires love, and, therefore, when she married Pastor Logan Killicks, she would love him. At peace with this, she marries him on a Saturday evening and strives to love him over the next few months. However, “the new moon had been up and down three times… she got worried.” She immediately asks her grandmother about why she does not love him. “Nanny [(Her grandmother)] is the first in a series of enemies and allies in this romance; she acts out of love, but her opinion which has been shaped by societal situations and attitudes only serves to impede Janie's happiness” (Daniel). Harshly, she answers Janie on how foolish it is for her to care about love, that it is “just whut’s got us uh pullin’ and uh haulin’ and sweatin’ and doin’ from can’t see in de mornin’ till can’t see at night” (Hurston, 27). This criticism does not reassure her, rather it sows a seed of hate in Janie’s heart towards her grandmother. “She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love” (Hurston, 106). Despite her grandmother’s deterrence, she meets a man named Joe Starks who captivates her. When Logan assumes her grandmother’s prophesy – that he will stop getting everything for her – she left with Joe, and began a new step in her pursuit of true love. In the hope of finding true love, she marries him. This marriage requires her to leave home, but nothing is holding her back, for her grandmother died a couple of seasons ago. They make their way to a town called Eatonville. She hopes that this man, with all of his charm and grace, will give her what she really wanted. However, providing Janie with opportunities is not his priority. He becomes the mayor of Eatonville and builds a store. This is where Janie is condemned to work for the rest of her life. She has to believe he was something more than just a mayor. “He’s got tuh be else Ah ain’t got nothin’ tuh live for… life won’t be nothin’ but uh store and uh house” (Hurston, 90). Eventually, Janie loses the love she has for him when Joe slaps her, but she realizes that “it was never the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over” (Hurston, 84). It is in that moment she realizes she does not love Joe completely. She keeps emotions hidden for “some man she had never seen” (Hurston, 84). Eventually, Joe dies and Janie becomes a widow. Condemned in her heart to never know love, she goes on through life, hopeless. While despair attempts to become her, a man not known, one who was unlike every other before approaches her.
He makes his name known to her as Vergible Woods but requests she call him Tea Cake. After that first visit, she is shaken by something about him. “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life” (Hurston, 117). He does not treat her like the other men she knew. Fishing, checkers, shooting – all sports she was forbidden from enjoying – were encouraged by Tea Cake. “But every hour or two the battle had to be fought all over again” (Hurston, 125). The battle being fought is to not care about him, but no matter what she tries “she couldn’t make him look just like any other man to her” (Hurston, 125). She begins to think to herself, “He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring” (Hurston, 125). Through the course of time, Tea Cake convinces her of one truth – he is the one she is waiting for. “With Tea Cake, she finds a spiritual sense of love that had been absent in her first two marriages” (“Their Eyes…”). They marry and enjoy an amazing life until he dies a tragic death. She buries him in the place that he had loved so dearly and returns to Eatonville. After telling this story to her friend, she goes inside and realizes one amazing truth, “[Tea Cake] could never be dead… the kiss of memory made pictures of love… here was peace” (Hurston, 227). “Finally, she finds true love when she at forty years old and learns a value of …show more content…
true love when she marries Tea Cake, her third husband” (Sutirah). She has found her blossom and bee; she has found her true love. From summer afternoon until solitary night, true love’s impacts exist beyond the surface in Janie’s life.
In the beginning, she does not know of this mystic beauty. “She marveled when she saw a bee in the center of bloom to extract pollen in her grandmother’s backyard where she [found] the concept of love and marriage” (Sutirah). Even here, before she experiences true love, the idea of it impacts her as to create her ultimate pursuit. The worry and dissatisfaction she suffers through in her first marriage come as a result of her inability to love him. “Janie went on inside to wait for love begin. The new moon had been up and down three times before she got worried in her mind… Cause you told me Ah mus gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t” (Hurston, 25 & 27). In anticipation of finding love, she leaves him for her second husband Joe Starks. However, their marriage is one of image, not love. When Joe dies, she resists the temptations of other men pursuing her because she knows they cannot give her true love. However, from the moment she meets Tea Cake, her relationship with him is different than any other relationship she knew. Her reward is that mystic beauty she strives for her entire life. The impacts of her quest last from before she knew marriage to beyond her true love’s death. Her first two marriages prove fruitless, but fade away after she finds the man of her dreams. Tea Cake is her true love; he is the bee to her blossom; he is the man who changes her life. He
reveals to her how she is not condemned to live a life where she never achieves her dreams. He proves to Janie that even the most fantastical visions can come true. She does find true love, and it changes her life, forever. Works Cited Bealer, Tracy L. “‘The Kiss of Memory’: The Problem of Love in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.” African American Review, vol. 43, no.2-3, 2009, pp. 311. Gale Literary Sources. Daniel, Janice. “‘De understandin' to go 'long wid it’: realism and romance in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 24, no. 1, 1991, pp. 66. Gale Literary Resources. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. HarperCollins Publishers Inc., August 2013. Sutirah. “Janie’s Quest For A True Love.” Sebelas Maret University. Academia. Telgen, Diane and Hile, Kevin. "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Novels for Students, vol. 3, 1998, pp. 300-320. Gale Literary Resources.
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.
What is one’s idea of the perfect marriage? In Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie has a total of three marriages and her best marriage was to Tea Cake. Janie’s worst and longest marriage was to Joe Starks where she lost her dream and was never happy. The key to a strong marriage is equality between each other because in Janie’s marriage to Joe she was not treated equally, lost apart of herself and was emotionally abused, but her and Tea Cake's marriage was based on equality and she was able to fully be herself.
Though Janie had three marriages in total, each one drew her in for a different reason. She was married off to Logan Killicks by her Grandmother who wanted her to have protection and security. “Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have baby, its protection.” (Hurston 15) says Janie’s grandmother when Janie said she did not want to marry Logan. Though Janie did not agree with her grandmother, she knew that she just wanted what’s best for her. Next, she married Joe Starks, Janie was unsatisfied with her marriage to Logan so Joe came in and swept her off her feet. Janie did not like the fact that Logan was trying to make her work, so Joe’s proposition, “You ain’t never knowed what it was to be treated like a lady and ah want to be de one tuh show yuh.” (Hurston 29) was too good to pass up, so she left Logan and married Joe. Janie’s last marriage was to Tea Cake. Fed up after having been treated poorly by Joe, Janie finally found someone who liked her for who she was. “Naw, ...
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
“True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together.” This quote by Ricardo Montalban tells us that true love simply has to develop and it doesn’t happen right away. Janie is the main character from the book Their eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and she struggled on the concept of true love.This quote explains exactly why Janie never found true love. At least not until she met Tea Cake and went through a lot with him. Janie is a biracial woman from the early twentieth century in the novel and goes through many life changing experiences. One experience that has helped her grow was finding love. Janie was married three times in the span of the novel and only found love with one person, Tea Cake. Much of the reason is because her grandma, Nanny. Nanny taught her to look for someone who can provide for her rather than what her heart felt was right.This concept stuck
For a short time Janie shared her life with her betrothed husband Logan Killicks. She desperately tried to become her new pseudo identity, to conform to the perfect "housewife" persona. Trying to make a marriage work that couldn't survive without love, love that Janie didn't have for Logan. Time and again Janie referred to love and her life in reference to nature, "Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think... She often spoke to falling seeds and said Ah hope you fall on soft grounds... She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether"(24 - 25). Logan had blown out the hope in Janie's heart for any real love; she experienced the death of the childish imagery that life isn't a fairytale, her first dose of reality encountered and it tasted sour.
Janie gained this experience in love as she discovered that the promises of love are not always true. Janie was promised many things in her life and most of them were the promise of finding love and obtaining it. Janie’s grandmother promised her that even if she did not like Logan Killicks that she would find love in her marriage with him, but Janie discovered that no love was to be found in her marriage and that those more elderly than her would think she was wrong for her values (Hurston 21-25). Then after her marriage with Logan, her luck did not change with her next husband Joe who promised her nothing, but lies. Yet again promises persuaded her into another marriage where she was not happy as Joe went back on the words he promised her
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 love for nature and turbulent relationships comes from the myth of the Haitian Goddess of love, Ezili Freda. In the novel the main character, Janie, is deeply interested in love and sexual energy in nature. Such is shown when Janie is sitting under a pear tree and just examining the beauty before her eyes. Throughout most of the story Janie has less than perfect relationships with men. Janie’s loathed her first three husbands and had to eventually kill her fourth one. The Haitian Goddess of love, Ezili Freda, has these exact same characteristics (Collins). Freda was the Goddess of love and was very sexual and flirtatious, but as with the fate of Janie, Freda would always fail to find one man that would be able to spend life with. It’s clear, with the similarities presented, that Hurston based the character Janie on Ezili Freda. Even when Freda was able to find someone that was right for her it was destined to be tragic. This is just like when Janie finally met Tea Cake but in the end had to kill him. Both had finally found love but due to their unfortunate fates both were destined to lose them.
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.
True love is something that Janie, the main character in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, spends her entire life looking for. Ultimately her primary goal is to be happy and live her life how she wants to instead of how everyone else thinks that she should. Throughout her journey to find true happiness she meets three men, Logan, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake each of whom had a different effect on her as a person. When comparing these relationships, Janie was happiest when with her last husband Tea Cake. Although one could argue the opposite, given the way their relationship ended, it was actually a perfect representation of true love because of the freedom, security, and respect that Janie was given.
Her marriage to Logan Killicks initially taught her that not all marriages consist of love. Being married to Joe Starks taught her that people change and you shouldn’t suppress your feelings and Tea Cake taught her to finally love, truly and fully. Similarly to Janie, the reader takes from her experience that its better to love and lose than to never have loved at
There was evidence of Janie using his process as she thought about love and compared it to a pear tree; however, many of her relationships with men heavily influenced her journey to find her voice. Whether the relationship was healthy for her or not, Janie felt the oppression of men was weighing her down leading her to find Tea Cake and finally her own voice. Writing her most famous novel, Hurston’s use of these relationships, symbols, and personal life experiences are what led to Janie’s journey and also what ultimately helped Janie find that strength. Embarking on this journey, Janie ventures out of her small life to pursue her idea of love and happiness. She goes through many years of her life being oppressed by a number of men, even those who are not her husband. Ultimately, Janie uses that experience of male dominance in her life to breakout on her own and find the strong female voice she always searched
She encounters struggles that test who she really is and what her true worth is. Although the townspeople gossip about her, Janie's story is told throughout the novel about what has happened and how she had to deal with certain situations. In a way, the beginning foreshadows the event that is revealed near the end that changes Janie's perspective on life. A quote in chapter 2 marks the beginning of her spiritual awakening as it states that "she saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; 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). The work's argument is introduced to the reader, and he later finds out that Janie has always struggled with finding her perfect love, while experiencing societal judgement. The author then supports her argument by continuing to go back in time to tell about Janie's experiences with her first two marriages. They seemed to be quite satisfactory at first, but then they change into a different person and show their true intentions and wants towards
While sitting under the pear tree, Janie notices a bee and a flower and the loving and gentle embrace that occurs between the two. “So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (Hurston 11). The revelation that Janie experiences capitalizes upon her immaturity and innocence. Without knowing anything about love, Janie bases her ideals that she wishes to see in a marriage on an interaction between a bee and a flower. Because Janie wishes to find this love, her gullibility leads her to kiss Johnny Taylor, something that her Nanny, detests. Nanny, who does not share the same vision regarding love, believes that marriage should be one where practicality is the most important aspect. To her the thought of emotional based decision, what Janie values in a marriage, is seen as unsuitable to the lifestyle of happiness that she wishes for her granddaughter to have. This directly connects to society because Logan, the man with land and a stable living, is seen as the practical and wise choice for Janie. However, Janie wants a marriage where love is the key component, not practicality. For her a commitment to Logan Killicks is something that deprives her of what she veiws as paradise, and therefore