Use of Metaphors in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Hurston

In Zora Neal Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, she uses the metaphor “Does marriage compel love like the sun the day?”(somepage). She uses this metaphor, and many other literary devices to characterize, describe, and add a layer of depth to her story. The metaphors meaning is simple to understand, especially within the context of the chapter. It means that while she may not love him now, she hopes that marriage will help her fall in love with him eventually. This idea however, is strangled by reality as even after spending several years with him she still fails to love him.

The film Their Eyes Were Watching God, based off of the novel by author Zora Neale Hurston, is a story of a young woman named Janie who spends the film narrating her life story to a friend. Janie’s story is one of self-exploration, empowerment, and the ability to express her freedoms both as a maturing woman and African American, throughout her life experiences. As she navigates through sexism and racism to find herself it becomes more evident that it will be more difficult than she initially thought to reach a point of happiness.

Janie was no longer letting anything control her any longer. She was making her own decisions now by talking to Jordan and not listening to her grandmother, who told her to respect her husband. With the results of this, Janie ran from Killicks to marry Joe for numerous years while waiting for her hunger for love to be filled. However it never was with Joe. After the death of Joe, Janie soon found Tea Cake, who gave her the love she starved for: “after a long time of passive happiness, she got up and opened the window and let Tea Cake leap forth and mount to the sky on a wind” (Hurston 107). Hurston gave Janie Tea Cake to show that she was no longer going to wait around and wait for love. She was now going to find it herself. Proving that she was no longer the naive girl who sat under a tree and dreamed all day.

The imagery of the bees and the pear tree are the catalyst of Janie’s coming-of-age, representing her first “springtime” and the awakening of her sexuality. The moment Janie sees the bee pollinating the blossoms on the pear tree is when she becomes aware of her sexuality. She finds herself empathizing with the blossoms; both being young and undergoing the springtime of life. Contrastingly, however, Janie has no “bees singing for her” like the blossoms do (Hurston 11). In Janie’s eyes, the relationship between the bee

Zora Neale Hurston had an intriguing life, from surviving a hurricane in the Bahamas to having an affair with a man twenty years her junior. She used these experiences to write a bildungsroman novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, about the colorful life of Janie Mae Crawford. Though the book is guised as a quest for love, the dialogues between the characters demonstrate that it is actually about Janie’s journey to learn how to not adhere to societal expectation.

All through the novel Janie travels through valuable life experiences allowing her to grow as a woman. Janie at first has a difficult time understanding her needs rather than wants, but as she continues to experience new situations she realizes she values respect. Janie’s first two marriages turned out to be tragic mistakes, but with each marriage Janie gained something valuable. When Janie is disrespected in her second marriage with Joe Starks, he publicly humiliates her, disrespecting her as a wife and woman. This experience forced Janie to come out of her comfort zone and stand up for herself.

Love   Zora Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God follows main character Janie Crawford’s journey into womanhood and her ultimate search for self-discovery. Having to sudden transition from childhood to adulthood at the age of sixteen, the story shows Janie’s constant struggle to discover her own voice and fulfill her dreams through three marriages and a lifetime of suffering that come about from being a black woman in America in the early 20th century. Throughout the novel, Hurston gives strong metaphors helping to unify the novel’s themes and narrative; thus providing a greater understanding of Janie’s quest for selfhood. There are a couple significant metaphors in the novel that achieve this unity: the pear tree metaphor, the figure of the mule, metaphors representing nature personified and finally the use of visual imagery.

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston illustrates the life of a young girl named Janie Crawford; a beautiful mixed girl who was raised by her grandmother around a white family. The events that took place in Janie’s childhood affected who she believed she was. Janie was a stranger to herself and had trouble with her self-identity. The exposition of Janie’s love life started when Janie was sixteen years old and got caught kissing a boy by Nanny. Immediately Nanny married Janie off to an older man named Logan Killicks, he had money and plenty of land for him and Janie to live on.

Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God explains the journey of Janie Crawford’s life. Janie experiences abuse, sacrifice, and true love throughout different situations in the book. As she goes through each circumstance of life, Janie gains confidence and courage that she does not have in the beginning of the story. Janie’s chief accomplishments in the book are finding freedom and independence despite the situations in which she has to overcome loss and disaster, has to prove her worth to a man, and has to learn to value and accept herself.

Zora Neale Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God, is a novel about one young black woman’s journey to find her own self-worth in an unfriendly world. The story takes place in Eatonville, Florida, from Janie’s youth to adulthood. The author’s intentions was to explain how Janie Crawford after three marriages, finally achieves what she craved all of her life, independence and a strong self-worth.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, authored by Zora Neal Hurston, tells the story of an African American woman named Janie living in the 1900s who spends her life trying to find self-fulfillment through love. She marries two men before she finds her one true love. Hurston uses symbols such as the pear tree and the horizon, Janie’s hair, and the hurricane to define Janie. Judgment is also a reoccurring element used by Hurston to show Janie's quest for love and the independence that she gains in her journey. Throughout her life, Janie also has to fight the stereotypical role that is expected of her by other people.

Janie initially feared that she was too old for Tea Cake, but she could not help but to fall in love with his charm. To the town’s disapproval, Janie left behind everything that she had ever known to start a new life with Tea Cake. The townspeople believed that Tea Cake couldn’t “do nothin’ but help her spend whut she got” (Hurston 111). Janie loved Tea Cake and Tea Cake loved her. After moving to the Everglades with Tea Cake, Janie embraced her new life with Tea Cake and their newlyfound friends. After being in the Everglades for some time, a hurricane struck, causing Janie and Tea Cake to flee. While fleeing, Janie was almost attacked by a mad dog, but luckily Tea Cake was there to save her. After rescuing Janie, Tea Cake wanted Janie to know that “‘it’s uh man heah’” (Hurston 167). Hurston uses this diction to emphasize how much Tea Cake loved Janie and what it means to be a man and husband. Tea Cake loved Janie so much that he was willing to risk his life to save hers. Tea Cake gave Janie the same type of love that she gave and wanted back. By being with Tea Cake, Janie was finally able to obtain the type of love in which she always desired. She declared that Tea Cake could be a "bee to a blossom — a pear tree blossom in the spring" (Hurston 106). Hurston uses this symbolism to show that Tea Cake was Janie’s true love. He fulfilled both Janie’s emotional and physical

The oppression of blacks by whites is largely depicted in Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, however, through metaphors and allusions, the internal oppression perpetrated by blacks themselves into future generations is shown to be just as big of a challenge to overcome in the fight for racial equality. Nanny, Janie’s grandmother and surrogate mother, raised Janie with the goal of marrying her off into a wealthier family and be provided for, which was the only way Nanny believed a woman could better her life. Later in life Janie realized that “she hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love” (Huston, 89). Janie didn’t grow up during slavery, in which the only betterment for a slave was to be freed and the only

In Janie's early life, her grandmother, an ex slave, sets her up to marry a man named Logan Killicks in order to make sure is safe. This ends up causing Janie to feel trapped emotionally because she has no feelings for him. Before the two are married, Nanny tells Janie, "Mah daily prayer now is tuh let dese golden moments roll on a few days longer till I see you safe in life."(15) Janie sees that Nanny had good intentions and agrees to marry Logan, as she expects to fall in love with him after they are married because, "Husbands and wives always loved each other."(21) However, after a few months of marriage, Janie still has no feelings for Logan and when she speaks to Nanny about it, she tells Janie, "If you don't want him you sho oughta."(23) This makes Janie feel guilty for feeling trapped in an unwanted marriage so she

Their Eyes Were Watching God was a book that presented the world with a new look on writing novels. Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in what she has seen through research was embodies in this novel. She demonstrates what data she has collected and intertwined it into the culture within the novel. While being a folklorist/anthropologist, and inspired by her life experiences, she developed a character who dealt with the issues that were not yet uncovered, female empowerment was one of them. Zora Neale Hurston defined this topic of female empowerment throughout the character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God.