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The symbolism essay in their eyes were watching god
Their eyes were watching god symbolism
The symbolism essay in their eyes were watching god
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A character whom I admire and can relate to is Tea Cake from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. After Janie experiences years of suffering, Tea Cake enters her broken life to begin the healing process. Although Tea Cake's madness caused by rabies tragically forces Janie to kill him to save her life, its significance is that Tea Cake's love transformed her enough to make her learn to love and value her own life. Like me, I believe that Tea Cake wanted to love and show kindness to someone who needed healing without reserve. It was an imperfect journey, but with sincerity and genuine care, Tea Cake closed the wounds in Janie's life.
A kiss of a memory and a great tree is all Hurston needed to illustrate a picture of Janie’s feelings. The novel is about a woman named Janie, who 's had many different types of emotions, through her ups and downs. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston uses symbolism to interpret Janie’s emotions.
Janie's "tree" gets cut down and strangled and destroyed throughout the book in several different events until the day someone walks in and takes the time to repair it. c. THESIS STATEMENT: Janie experiences love in harsh words and beaten down sprit. Never in her marriages has she experienced the unconditional love she desperately craves, until Tea Cake walks in and shows her true love. II. FIRST POINT- MARRIAGE TO LOGAN a. The marriage to Logan began sweet but ended with bitterness.
Thought out a persons ever changing life, the one thing that is always consistent is their name. However, sometimes a persons identity will change so much that their own name seems foreign when speaking it out loud. This creates the need for a new name to match a new identity. Kingsolvers The Bean Trees and Lena Coakley’s Mirror Image both apply characterization, conflict, and symbolism to show how identity changes with names and labels.
This device is explaining that her life was forgotten then remembered again. Later, the author shifts to simile were thousands bee’s, met love, from the tree to the root in every blossom. As the author made this a simile to represent what she thought love was. Which led her to feel week or faint from marriage.
We then see the farmer’s unrequited ‘love’ throughout the poem where his bride is neglecting the idea of a husband “Not near, not near!’ her eyes beseech” the only words we hear from the bride show begging and trepidation, he notices her androphobia and it seems to impact his emotions when we reach the fourth stanza which stands out as a sensual, admiring description of the wife by the farmer. The poet uses sibilance (‘Shy…swift…/Straight…slight/Sweet…She/…Self.’) to convey the farmer’s whispered appreciation and leads on to compare her to nature ‘ Sweet as the first wild violets,’ strengthening the farmer’s positive opinion of his wife, however, she does not show him the affection he desires, contrasting the predator-prey relationship I discussed in the first paragraph where only the farmer benefited. She is ‘Sweet.../To
Hurston vividly describes the scene to emphasize the beauty the tree has. She romanticizes about the marriage she believes she will have some day. Throughout the course of Janie’s life she has not had the best of luck with romantic relationships.
Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston used three different husbands to show how Janie’s definition of love and marriage evolved. With her first marriage, she learned that love doesn’t automatically grow after marriage. In the second marriage, Janie learned that love could be confining and eventually ruin a relationship. The third and final marriage taught Janie that she needed to depend on herself rather than someone else for contentment.
Janie thought that she would get the type of love that she had dreamed of for years. She thought she’d have “a bee for her bloom”. Unfortunately, this is not what she had gotten when she married Joe. She found change, and chance, and maybe a little adventure, but still she didn’t find the love she was hoping to have found. What Jody had with Janie was more of a type of lust than a type of love.
In the story, a Judas tree lingers outside of Laura’s balcony, which is ironically synonymous with the biblical character, Judas, who hanged himself in the aroma of purple flowers. The flowers represent the danger of love; Laura gives a young suitor a flower from her Judas tree hoping he will leave her alone, but instead he’s proud of the gift as he displays it in the brim of his hat long after its beauty has withered away(Page 315). Her actions signify a lie. Moreover, flowers from the children she teaches do the opposite reciprocal of her ways as “they make her desk a fresh garden of flowers every day” (Porter). Laura cannot love these children either, even though they too, crave affection from her.
So throughout this paper the symbolism of nature and its effects on the characters will be discussed. Janie mesmerized by the beautiful tree growing in Nanny’s backyard. Climbs the tree to sit in the branches soon realizes what true love means when witnessing of the bees to the blossoms of the pear tree. “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. 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
The moment Janie had spend under a blossoming pear tree is when she comes to the realization of the meaning of love and marriage. The tree is a female that waits for bees, the male, to come and “sink into the sanctum of a bloom” (10). She becomes acknowledged with the
With bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” In this first symbol Zora uses a pear tree for Janie’s yearning of self-realization and personal freedom.
On page 11 of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston writes, “Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.” This quote represents how Janie sees herself; she sees herself as a young tree in bloom.
Janie’s continuous interactions and experiences with nature prove its influential role in Janie’s life throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Nature is Janie’s pathway into womanhood and played a big role in starting her journey through life as a woman. Janie’s experience with the pear tree provokes this shift from childhood to womanhood for Janie. “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom [...] the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. [...] Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid” (11).
