In Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses a lot of symbolism and references to nature through the story of the main character, Janie, in her lifetime. The use of tree symbolism is the most common in the first half of Hurston’s novel starting with how “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (8)
In the beginning of the book, we understand that Janie has just been on a journey full of wonderful and terrible things. When Janie arrives home from her journey, her friend Pheoby goes to Janie’s house and Janie begins telling her life story to her friend whom she hasn’t seen in a long time. She starts talking about …show more content…
Nanny goes on to tell Janie how she is now a woman, and that she needs to get married to someone who can take care of her. She tells Janie about a man whom has been asking for her named Logan Killicks. “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted at the floor.” (14) Nanny then begins to tell Janie about her mother and starts off with a reference to colored folks being like branches without roots. (16) Nanny become pregnant with a white man’s baby and named her Leafy. Nanny knew she would get a beating if she didn’t run away with her daughter, so she ran and hid in the woods with her little Leafy. One night she heard a huge roar of noise “So Ah wrapped Leafy up in moss and fixed her good in a tree and picked mah way down to de landin’” (18) Nanny found out the slaves were free from the men in blue and she went and found a place for her to raise Leafy. …show more content…
She did, however, walk back and forth to the pear tree multiple times thinking about marriage in the last few days she had of freedom. “Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun on the day?” (21) The continuous mentions of the pear tree resemble the young dreams Janie have, and the expectations that love is going to be as tremendous as the experiences she has outside with nature and that pear tree. When Janie marries Logan, she describes his home, now her home, as “a lonesome place in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been.” She quickly became discontent with her marriage to Logan. She wanted a “marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think” (24) She wanted to love Logan in a way the resembled a pear tree, but she couldn’t force an emotion that was nonexistent. “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman”
In the beginning of the book, we understand that Janie has just been on a journey full of wonderful and terrible things. When Janie arrives home from her journey, her friend Pheoby goes to Janie’s house and Janie begins telling her life story to her friend whom she hasn’t seen in a long time. She starts talking about …show more content…
Nanny goes on to tell Janie how she is now a woman, and that she needs to get married to someone who can take care of her. She tells Janie about a man whom has been asking for her named Logan Killicks. “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that. She merely hunched over and pouted at the floor.” (14) Nanny then begins to tell Janie about her mother and starts off with a reference to colored folks being like branches without roots. (16) Nanny become pregnant with a white man’s baby and named her Leafy. Nanny knew she would get a beating if she didn’t run away with her daughter, so she ran and hid in the woods with her little Leafy. One night she heard a huge roar of noise “So Ah wrapped Leafy up in moss and fixed her good in a tree and picked mah way down to de landin’” (18) Nanny found out the slaves were free from the men in blue and she went and found a place for her to raise Leafy. …show more content…
She did, however, walk back and forth to the pear tree multiple times thinking about marriage in the last few days she had of freedom. “Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun on the day?” (21) The continuous mentions of the pear tree resemble the young dreams Janie have, and the expectations that love is going to be as tremendous as the experiences she has outside with nature and that pear tree. When Janie marries Logan, she describes his home, now her home, as “a lonesome place in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been.” She quickly became discontent with her marriage to Logan. She wanted a “marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think” (24) She wanted to love Logan in a way the resembled a pear tree, but she couldn’t force an emotion that was nonexistent. “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman”