Erick Huerta
Ms.Reid
English 2
23 March 2023
Janie’s Search for Love The topic of love can never truly be determined in one category as we as individuals have different preferences. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God experiments with several topics in one unique novel, one of which is love. This topic is portrayed through Jaine, the main character of the book as she marries three men all with different ways of showing their affection toward Janie and how well they connect with each other. It is through these marriages Jaine learns that love doesn’t happen after marriage, inner strength, and nothing last forever. Logan Killicks, Janie’s first husband where she learns that love is not something that happens when you get married.
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She felt that Joe would be the love that she was looking for as he fit her Nanny’s description of love(Hurston 130). This marriage would last 20 years as Janie tries her best to improve their relationship between them, as Joe oppresses Janie to assert his authority in and out of their relationship as “Mayor Starks”. As Hurston states, “The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again”(110). The relationship between them faded as their marriage went on and it is only after Joe’s death that Jaine expresses her inner strength as a new confidence she had not had …show more content…
Tea Cake was Jaine's first relationship where the connection between both individuals indeed did click despite the countless people who disapproved of the relationship. Hurston states, “She had wanted him to live so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. Janie held his head tightly to her breast and wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service. She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to tell him for the last time.”(233). Jaine had lost Tea Cake but felt grief as this was her lover she hoped to die in her old age with but taken away by her hands she now knew what it meant to lose something you love