Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale Hurston

Sanna Keith

English 474

Dr. Tim Caron

June 15, 2015

Symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a novel with a resilient theme of Janie’s quest to find an unequivocal and irrevocable love. It is a literary work that is rampant in the use of symbolism and metaphors. Perhaps the most compelling symbolism employed throughout the novel is the budding pear tree, which Janie explores during the peak of her adolescence. As she is lying under the pear tree, Janie experiences a blissful union beneath the blossoms. She watches the majestic interaction between the bees and the flowers and in this moment, is overcome by her feelings towards nature and thus aspires to give it meaning. She believes

what she is encountering must be marriage. This experience becomes a reoccurring representation in the novel for Janie’s struggle to find an equally blissful union for herself. The symbolism employed in this scene functions as a larger measure of Hurston’s theme throughout the novel.
The plot begins to develop at the initial mention of the tree when Janie Crawford first experiences her sexual awakening.

The passage is rife with erotic implications; “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. So this was marriage!” It is at this point that Janie recognizes her need to have a similar affair. Responding to her natural desire to experience the same ecstasy as flowers and the bees, she persuades a local boy into kissing her. This revelation of her sexuality quickly sparks a series of three marriages Janie pursues in order to find the perfect

union.
The pear tree encounter becomes an emblem to Janie of an idyllic union. It represents a union that is harmonious, peaceful and effortless rather than possessive and controlling. As the novel develops, the pear tree theme often repeats itself, exemplifying the progression of Janie's goal. Her first marriage and attempt to find such a union is with the much older Logan Killicks. Although she first is opposed to marrying him, she contemplates about the correlation between love and marriage, but persuades herself that she would learn to love him. A few short months after Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks, she grows frustrated and seeks her grandmother’s advice. She states, "Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage, lak when you sit under a pear tree and think." After another month of trying, Janie realizes that her marriage is nothing like the relationship between the blossoms and the bees. She feels unnatural and disconnected in her marriage, unlike how she feels when she was surrounded by nature of the pear tree. Janie accepts her first dream to be dead and moves on in her quest to find a natural and effortless love.
Due to the disappointments in her marriage with Logan Killicks, Janie becomes perceptive to the charms of Joe Starks.

She becomes blinded by Starks appeal, as she so desperately wants him to fit the ideals of her pear tree. However, Joe Starks does “not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees". Instead, he provides Janie with the chance of a new love; one that she again naively believes will blossom into perfection. Her second relationship stems into a jealous and controlling marriage. Starks suppress Janie as he becomes driven by his thirst for power and the need to acquire wealth, forcing her into his shadows. Janie grows dissatisfied and jaded. "She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be." She lives out the rest of her unhappy marriage with Stark until her chance for freedom to once again seek a fulfilling and blissful

union.
After the death of Joe Starks, Janie encounters what would be her third attempt at achieving her goal that she dreamt up under the pear tree with her marriage to Tea Cake. "He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom--a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps." Her new relationship finally allows her to explore her boundaries. Just like the bees moving amongst the flowers, Janie finally feels like she is free to interact and speak openly to those in her surroundings. It is only in her marriage with Tea Cake that Janie secures the desire and mutuality that she observed in the pear tree at the age of sixteen. It is during this union that she acquires true love finally prospers in her journey.
The deep analysis of the primary scene of the pear tree illuminates Janie’s life as the tree itself. She is a young budding teenager, on the verge of her sexuality. In describing the tree, Janie is in actuality depicting herself. The blossoming pear tree that is assimilated throughout the novel is symbolic of her innocence and the myriad of changes she assumes. When Janie sees the pear tree at the beginning of the novel, she recognizes her want for a fulfilling love. She also marvels at how the tree can transform itself throughout its lifespan. The pear tree alters from “barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds” and then again from “leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom”. Just as Janie is astonished by the changes that occur on the tree, she herself is growing with every relationship she has. At the conclusion of the novel, Janie has fulfilled her pursuit by finding a similar union with Tea Cake.