Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

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Andrew Carpenter
Picetti
English, 1
9 April, 2014
Love Isn’t Perfect; Their Eyes Were Watching God Essay
“Cinderella finds the perfect man and lives in a castle the rest of her life, so why can’t I?” Society uses fairytales to make children think that love is perfect, but the sad reality is that true love has flaws. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Hurston, Janie’s experiences show that true love is not like a fairytale. Throughout the novel Janie has three separate relationships, trying to find true love. Only to realize that her version of love does not exist. Through the evolution of Janie's relationships in connection to the imagery of nature, Hurston depicts that love is imperfect.
Janie has a mutualistic and natural view of …show more content…

From a young age Janie is forced to marry a white man, much older than her, by the name of Logan Killicks. Right away, “the vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree” (14). Janie feels the relationship is unnatural because she was forced by Nanny, her grandmother, to marry Logan. However, she uses the term “desecrating” instead of using past tense to show that she still has some hope for this relationship. She wants Logan to be her knight in shining armor and experience the pear tree ideal relationship. But when Logan buys her a mule and commands her to start working on the farm next to him, she feels distraught. “[Her] first dream was dead so she became a women” (25). It was one thing that she was forced to marry Logan but after he tells her that she will work on the farm she finally gives up on Logan. Both feelings of natural and equality have been lost. Janie feels confident about a new man named Jody who lets Janie use her free will to decide to leave Logan for him. Unlike Logan, Jody does not offer Janie a chance for equality. He wants to put her on a pedestal and show her off as his wife. He wants her to work in the store with her hair up and only listen to him, giving up her free will. Janie finally feels her ideal relationship with Jody is hopeless when “he [slaps] Janie until she had a ringing sound in her

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