Eyes Were Watching God Theme

Their Eyes Were Watching God Journal 3 Essay In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Hurston uses the idea of hope to represent the final destination for the main character, Janie. Janie uses her hopes and aspirations as motivation for achieving what she wants in life. Hurston uses the motifs of the Horizon and the road to symbolize hope or the lack of hope within the novel. Hurston uses the motifs of the road and the horizon to represent the hope and lack of hope as the novel progresses. Hurston uses the road to symbolize the path that one must take to achieve freedom or what it is that they are hoping for. Ever since Janie was a child her main aspirations in life were to find true love and happiness. Janie’s grandmother,

Janie believed that Joe was finally going to free her from the restraints placed on here by her grandmother and believed that “he spoke for far horizon. He spoke for change and chance” (29). At first, their relationship seemed perfect until they arrived at their destination and Joe was showing his true colors. Joe would make Janie tie her hair up and work all day in a shop where she felt helpless and hopeless. Janie 's broken relationship with Joe makes Janie realize how much she dissented her grandmother after what she had done to her. Nanny would always tell Janie that love comes later in a relationship and that love is not as important in a relationship as security. Nanny shrunk the horizon, which for Janie represented her hope for a loving relationship, and made Janie believe that it was going to be something accessible. Some people 's dreams come true easily while “for others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eye away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time” (1). This quote explains that although some people may

Hurston also uses the motifs of the road and the horizon to represent Janie 's character development throughout the novel. The motif of the road represents the journey that one takes in life. The road is sometimes bumpy and it has its ups and downs just as in life. After Janie abandoned the old relationships that stifled her she found someone who she truly loved, Tea Cake. Tea Cake and Janie traveled to a new place with“dirt roads so rich and black that a half mile of it would have fertilized a Kansas wheat field” (129). The roads that Janie describes as being “rich” represent how she is now happy with her life. Janie now has a man whom she truly loves and is in a place where she feels comforted. Janie is able to see her future ahead of her, the road, and with what she sees pleases her. Near the end of the novel before the hurricane came everyone was happy and they were able to see the horizon ahead of them. As the hurricane comes “the wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time” (160). Hurston uses the light in this quote represents the horizon, and how sometimes people or hard times such as the “wind” may try to blow out all lights and make it hard to see the horizon, but it is important to never lose hope and to never give up. In the beginning of the novel, Janie was young, naive, and scared of what was ahead of her. Janie wanted love and happiness which is not always easy to find. As the novel progresses Janie feels as though she is being