In Their Eyes Were Watching God, there is a lot of symbolism, used especially to represent feelings, thoughts, points of view and even the own lives of the main characters. Janie's life was often related and compared to a mule's life, because she was a hard-working, oppressed and mistreated woman for much of her life. The first time Janie's life was related to a mule's, was when her grandmother, Nanny, explained to her: "De nigger woman is de mule uh the world so fur as Ah can see"(14). This meant Janie, as an African-American woman would have to obey everything she would be told, no matter what she thought or how she felt, because no one would really care; she would have to bear all the abuse and the insults coming especially
