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Examples Of Idealism In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Thomas Lewis Dr. Frye AP Literature 09 February 2023 Their Eyes Were Watching God In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston presents contrasting views on the idea of love, metaphors about love, and characters that challenge Janie’s idealism in order to show the flaws in Jaine’s view of love by having her deal with different types of men inside marriages that express her idea at varying degrees, ultimately illustrating that the idea of love is confusing and is built on concepts made by the world and others that can influence one’s life. Hurston begins by presenting multiple contrasting views on the idea of love to demonstrate how Jaine's idealism of love is shaped by influences. Such as her belief that both sides of a relationship …show more content…

Love, according to Jaine, is the union of two things, such as a "dust-bearing bee" (10), sinking into "the sanctum of a bloom," (10) connecting the two as a pair working together for the betterment of each other.This evidence implies that Jaine understands the concept of love through the examples the world can show her. Consequently, since Janie’s view of love is based on nature and the world, she cannot fully understand the true meaning of love, which helps to explain why she has such an unrealistic perception of love, which then leads her and others in her life to be at odds, sinking the two as a pair working together for the betterment of each other. This evidence implies that Jaine understands the concept of love through the examples the world can show her. Consequently, since Janie's view of love is based on nature and the world, she cannot fully understand the true meaning of love, which serves to explain why she has such an unrealistic perception of love. This leads her and others in her life to be at odds. Furthermore, illustrating Jaine's idealism of love by seeing the world in such detail and viewing it differently than most people, especially when considering a pear tree coming into bloom, as Jaine sees it as "every blossom frothing with delight," (Page 11) which helps to paint a detailed picture of the

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Personal experiences often shape how people see the world. This can be said for people’s views of love and what love means to the individual. In Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character Janie searches for love and what true love is to her ever since she first got married. As Janie lives her life, she experiences marriage with three men: Logan Killicks, Jody starks, and Tea Cake, each of whom she initially believes she loves. However, as the story continues, she realizes that she does not truly love any of them except for Tea Cake.

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Literary Analysis The Quest for Independence Has one ever wonder what makes the world’s greatest novels so hard to put down? The ones that make one gasp aloud and bite one’s nails frantically; great novels that leave you on the edge of your seat, like, Romeo and Juliet, The Notebook, and even the Titanic. In each of these novels, they display a story of, the search for independence. In the novel, by Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God the protagonist, Janie Woods, begins her search for independence through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trails and purpose.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston acknowledges the idea of sexism when she addresses that Janie Starks, the protagonist, never got to fulfill her dreams. Janie’s grandmother, Nanny, wanted the best for her granddaughter so she married her off to a man named Logan Killicks, a man who had a small farm and good wealth “Janie and Logan got married in Nanny’s parlor of a Saturday evening with three cakes and big platters of fried rabbit and chicken,” (Hurston 3). Years has passed within the marriage and Janie never found love for Logan. Logan comparing her to his ex-wife, discriminated Janie’s place of position, “Mah fust wife never bothered me ‘bout choppin’ no wood nohow. She’d grab dat ax and sling chips lak

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In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford experiences many hardships that lead to her eventual satisfaction and fulfillment. As a young girl, Janie always felt she was missing a part of herself which could not be found through self advocated discovery alone, but by the presence of a companion that provided her with affection. As she sheds the majority of her innocence through various abusive marriages at an extremely young age, Janie’s dream may have been altered, but never ceased to exist. There was always hope in Janie’s mind that she would find a man that helped her complete herself, and allow her to become liberated from the tiring desire of discovering love for herself. As stated by Farah Mahmood Abbas,

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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.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses speech as a tool to show the progression of the story. Janie Crawford, the main character of the novel, finds her true identity and ability to control her voice through many hardships. When Janie’s grandmother dies she is married off, to be taken care of. In each marriage that follows, she learns what it is to be a woman with a will and a voice. Throughout the book, Janie finds herself struggling against intimidating men who attempt to victimize her into a powerless role.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie suffers from hardship in two relationships before she can find her true love. Janie explains to her best friend, Pheoby, how she searches for love. Therefore Pheoby wants to hear the true story, rather than listening to the porch sitters. Throughout the book Janie experiences different types of love with three different men; Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods. At 16 Janie marries Logan Killicks.

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Love and judgment can cause people to do things that they would never think that they would do. In the novel love and judgment causes Janie to think and make absurd decisions that she wouldn’t normally do. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses figurative language to develop the theme that love and judgment can cause people to make fanatical decisions. Hurtston uses a metaphor to show love can cloud your judgment sometimes. When Joe died, Janie said this about Tea Cake “He could be the bee to a blossom.

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Conclusion Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston’s document to explain the impact of the history which is represented by the legacy of slavery on the present dilemma of her female protagonist Janie. As Janie’s grandmother was abused physically and exploited sexually and her mother was also raped ,Janie develops her past history within the era of post- Emancipation and attempt to find the real concept of her identity and self-fulfilment. Janie tries to put an end to the African –American women’s thoughts which are influenced by the white culture.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of how one man, Tea Cake, changes how a grown woman named Janie views life, opportunity, and happiness. Zora Neale Hurston employs parallelism in order to reveal the dynamic of this relationship between Janie and Tea Cake and writes, “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston 128). At the very end of the book, Hurston writes again, “Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net.

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In Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston develops a contrast between the male and female genders of the time period of the story, and the male and female gender of today. Hurston wrote this novel in or about a time when women were considered simple-minded , women were disempowered by the empowered man in the relationship, and women can only gain power through marriage. But when Janie kisses Johnny Taylor, her view of men changes after seeing “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 a marriage!

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Zora Neale Hurston, an author during the Harlem Renaissance, wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, an amazing novel written about the losses and loves of a lady named Janie Crawford. The author describes the way Janie found out who she really was and what love was throughout her three marriages. Janie’s first two marriages were unfulfilling and not healthy for herself. Janie realized what true love was when she met Tea Cake. Janie’s first marriage was to a man named Logan Killicks, which was forced upon her by her grandmother.

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Reed Hickman 01/9/23 Ms. Allison English 3 Theme of Their Eyes Were Watching God In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston we are shown the hardships and difficulties of a black woman at this time. Janie, a strong black woman returns to the town where most of her life took place, and she tells us her story within a flashback. Throughout the book, Hurston exemplifies the amount of gender inequality for women in the early 1900s. This is shown through how poorly Janie is treated not only in her relationships, but within the whole town.

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Zora Neale Hurston’s writing in Their Eyes Were Watching God, reflects the Harlem Renaissance through Janie 's individuality, and departs from the Harlem Renaissance with the common recurrence of black woman empowerment. In the novel, Hurston reflects the ideas of the Harlem renaissance with the ways in which Janie rebels and goes against norms for women.

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983 Words | 4 Pages

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).

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