Motifs In Their Eyes Were Watching God

Literary elements such as symbolism are found in almost any piece of writing. Symbolism is used to portray the deeper meaning of something by representing it with anything the writer chooses. In the short story, ¨Cathedral,¨ Raymond Carver uses many forms of symbolism to portray the different events and their meanings within his writing.

The Pear tree symbolizes her initiation into womanhood whilst sitting under the tree. This was the feeling of initial inclination towards love and the sentiments of sexual yearning and affection.

To begin with, a motif I have noticed in the book is the townspeople. This is a possible motif because in chapters 5-7, the townspeople of the town Eatonville are constantly

Carver presents symbolism throughout his story to represent a darker side of the human heart when it is wounded. “Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said. I’m not hurting the baby, he said.” The baby represents the relationship of the man and woman. There is not an actual baby that is being hurt, but their relationship together. Once the “issue was decided” towards the end, it represents how the man and woman’s relationship was no more. In addition, snow is brought up in the beginning to start the mood of the relationship. “...The snow was melting into dirty water.” The snow represents the pure white relationship they had in the beginning. Once the snow melted into dirty water, that shows that their relationship is tainted, fading away, and can never be the same. This also leads into the light that is set towards the house. “The kitchen window gave no light.” The window showing both the darkness of the outside and the inside of the house, represents how darkness is taking over the relationship, and how there is no more light to shine on their love for each other. All three of these symbols connect back to how the man and woman have a codependent relationship.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston explores the life of a southern black woman, Janie Crawford, whose three marriages of domineering control of men make her acknowledge her independence and self-satisfaction as an African-American woman. Set in the early 1900s, Hurston reveals the dominant role of men in southern society and one woman’s journey toward finding herself and God.

Hurston’s first use of imagery in the book is seen with the pear tree representing young love, something that doesn’t last forever. Janie is telling her friend, Pheoby, about her time spent around the blossoming pear tree as a young girl. Hurston uses imagery in this section with the blossoming pear tree to represent young love. While Janie is

The recognition of patterns makes it much easier to read complicated literature because recognizing patterns will help you relate two or more pieces of literature together, therefore making it easier to understand and analyze the literature you are focused on. Patterns in literature can help the reader understand plots, settings, themes, and other literary elements. I greatly appreciated the novel, Brave New World because of how different the society in the novel was from the one I live in. Using the Signposts from Notice and Note, I was able to see contrast and contradictions that enhanced my understanding of the book. I noticed how I was expecting Bernard, in Brave New World to be just like everybody else in the novel but instead he was a “normal person” that felt normal human emotions, such as the longing for love, that the other characters just did not feel. He also felt isolated and alone. Bernard thinks in a way we were not expecting. Patterns such as this helped me, the reader, to better understand literary elements.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, love plays a pivotal role in the life of the protagonist, Janie. Janie is exposed early in life to all the facets of love. From an early point in the novel until the very end, Janie searches for a man to fulfill her childhood concept of love. It is through this search for love that Janie finds the confidence and security in herself to become independent. Therefore, Janie’s quest to find love is not only a fulfillment of a childhood dream, but also a journey to find who she really is.

Throughout many years in the early 19th century, people were forced to work in very poor environments. From working for long hours on fields and plantations, they did not have an opportunity to have a free and self-fulfilling life. Their lives were very similar to that of a mule where they had to perform very tiring and hard jobs for most of the day. In many instances, people lived their whole life working towards freeing themselves from the work but were never able to accomplish their goal. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, the mule is used as a symbol of the way Janie is treated in each of her relationships except when she is with Teacake, demonstrating that it is more worthy to work like a mule with a lover than live a leisurely life without one.

The theme is a recurring element throughout literature, movies, and art, which offers the reader/viewer a deeper meaning, a deeper understanding about fundamental ideas in life, and a moral or life lesson.

Throughout the novel, Hurston describes Janie as a young woman with a compelling desire for seeking unconditional love. As Janie searches for her inner self, she begins life not knowing who she is. Janie endures harsh judgment from many people throughout the novel, which help build the qualities of independence and strength. Throughout everything she has learned, she matured and transitioned from a defiant teenager, to a woman in complete possession of herself. Janie 's quest for the “horizon” of herself finally lead her to a place in which she is defined, despite the society who denies her power because of her black ethnicity. The “horizon” demonstrates the distance one must travel in order to distinguish between illusion and reality, dream and truth, role and

We see a lot of symbolism through the book, such as the gun used at the end of the book, and the pear tree. Towards the end of the chapter we see janie having to kill her only true love with a gun, it was a tough decision because in her eyes tea cake has shown her what true love really feels like. The gun symbolized how sometimes the tough decisions are the necessary ones. In the last chapter page 185 it states “It was the meanest moment of eternity. A minute before she was a scared human being fighting for its life. Now she was sacrificing self with Tea Cake’s head in her lap. 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”. This is talking about how she had to kill her own true love because her own

Captain Eaton - Captain Eaton was one of the donors of Eatonville's original fifty acres of land. When Jody first arrived in Eatonville, he made a big show paying cash to him for an additional two hundred acres.

Janie’s hair first acts as a symbol of defiance of trifling community values. Her defiance begins at the start of the novel, “What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her hair back lak some young gal?” (Hurston 2). This quote represents Janie’s defiance against the people of Eatonville. The inhabitants of Eatonville begrudge Janie for not fitting into a perceptible class. Since she is beautiful and defiant against the community standards, the porch gossips

The definition for a motif is essentially an important idea or subject that is repeated throughout a book (Merriam-Webster). A motif of fire and ice was present in this novel through a binary of love and hate. In Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, binaries were created using different elements within the novel, symbolism, imagery, etc. While profoundly reading Jane Eyre, I tracked the image/motif of fire and ice. The fire and ice are used throughout the story to thoroughly develop a binary between love and hate.