Free Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God

One German poet metaphorically described love, â€Å"Love is a flower of life†. Can love be the most beautiful aspect in one’s life? Can anyone live a life without love? No one can actually give a lucid answer to this question since everyone gives a different value to love. However, at least, it is true that love is the most valuable sense that humans have as we can see the history of mankind began from Adam and Eve’s love. In that sense, a life without love, perhaps, would be valueless. Zora Neale Hurston stresses this necessity of love in a life as she looks back upon Janie’s life in the novel, â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God†. Taking this subject one step further, Hurston also throws out a question; â€Å"What would marriage be like without love?† Hurston provides an answer directly in Janie’s daydream, which is, ‘bees can not live without flowers’. In â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God†, Janie, a main character, goes through her life with three different husbands. Her first husband, Logan Killicks, is a man who, with his wealth, provides her food, shelter, and etc. The second husband, Joe Starks, is a man who does not only have wealth but also has great aspirations in his life. With these two perfect-seeming husbands, Janie, ironically, spends most of her married life with repentance and tears. It was not because Janie is not satisfied with their wealth but because these marriages do not contain love. Consequently, as Janie redefines the concept of marriage during her unpleasant married life with these two husbands, she starts to see marriage from a different point of view; â€Å"A marriage needs love†. With this new point of view toward marriage, she meets a man, Tea Cake and falls in love. Surely, her third marriage with Tea Cake is full of flowers since it contains love. â€Å" ’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. Ah ain’t gittin’ ole, honey. Ah’m done ole.†... Free Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God Free Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is a young girl with dreams who matures into a woman as she lives through three different marriages. Her first marriage is arranged to Logan by her grandmother, who thinks more practically than her. However, she does not love Logan and runs off with Jody. This marriage also turns stale and after Logan’s death she marries once more to Tea Cake which eventually ends with his own tragic death. These three marriages are quite similar in ways, yet Janie gains different experiences from each in her long journey to find herself. Throughout her life, Janie struggles to live life on her own terms as she goes through three periods of her life that are similar, yet definitely vary as Janie ages. The three steps of Janie’s life, which are characterized by each of her three husbands, are very similar in the distinction of Janie’s characteristics and the difficulties in each marriage. Janie wishes for true love and is not content with Logan, her chosen husband. When she visits Nanny, she says, â€Å"Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think.†(23) Throughout her life, Janie wants a real, true, unconditional love. In each marriage, she faced certain uphill battles. For example, as Janie is asked to make a speech at the committee meeting, Jody says, â€Å"Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech-makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ lak dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.†(40) This shows the sort of space she was limited to in her relationships and she faced one form or another of it throughout her marria ges. In addition, as Tea Cake spoke about beating Janie to Sop-de-Bottom, he said, â€Å"Ah beat her tuh show dem Turners who is boss.†(141) Tea Cake even whips Janie to express his possession of her to Ms. Turner’s brother. Even though Tea Cake just whi... Free Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God Stages of a Hero Every morning you wake up, early. Think of the reason why, it’s because you have to get to work or you have to get to school. You have to leave your nice warm house, for a cold car so frozen that it won’t even start, the community coffee maker hell that has a life of its own and don’t even get me started on the boss. After a long hard day at work or school you return to your nice, comforting house, only to find that Mr. Tinkles decided to pop a squat in the middle of your white carpet. But finally, after cleaning up the present donated by the lovely Mr. Tinkles, you can relax. But your day has not been a complete waste, you have obtained knowledge that will someday help change the world; and you thought that work was just some evil invention meant to torture you... shame. We all go through these stages of a hero everyday, but does that necessarily make each one of us a hero? In Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neal Hursten, the main character, Janie, goes through stages of life that follow those of a traditional hero. She has a call to adventure, a journey, and then returns to a familiar place. Other heroes like Odysseus and even Superman follow these stages in there adventures. Much like Odysseus is called away from his homeland to war, Janie is call to begin her journey into womanhood. She receives numerous calls to adventure, the first of which occurs while she lays under the pear tree. Janie has a sexual awakening while she watches the bees pollinating the flowering buds. She believes that the bees and the tree have a marriage of sorts, and thinks to herself, â€Å"So this is marriage!† and she is â€Å"summoned to behold a revelation† (11). Her revelation is that she wants to have what that pear tree is experiencing. She wants to get married and become a woman. She is young, only sixteen and has â€Å"glossy leaves and bursting buds† (11), and she wants to be married. She marries Logan, w... Free Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God One German poet metaphorically described love, â€Å"Love is a flower of life†. Can love be the most beautiful aspect in one’s life? Can anyone live a life without love? No one can actually give a lucid answer to this question since everyone gives a different value to love. However, at least, it is true that love is the most valuable sense that humans have as we can see the history of mankind began from Adam and Eve’s love. In that sense, a life without love, perhaps, would be valueless. Zora Neale Hurston stresses this necessity of love in a life as she looks back upon Janie’s life in the novel, â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God†. Taking this subject one step further, Hurston also throws out a question; â€Å"What would marriage be like without love?† Hurston provides an answer directly in Janie’s daydream, which is, ‘bees can not live without flowers’. In â€Å"Their Eyes Were Watching God†, Janie, a main character, goes through her life with three different husbands. Her first husband, Logan Killicks, is a man who, with his wealth, provides her food, shelter, and etc. The second husband, Joe Starks, is a man who does not only have wealth but also has great aspirations in his life. With these two perfect-seeming husbands, Janie, ironically, spends most of her married life with repentance and tears. It was not because Janie is not satisfied with their wealth but because these marriages do not contain love. Consequently, as Janie redefines the concept of marriage during her unpleasant married life with these two husbands, she starts to see marriage from a different point of view; â€Å"A marriage needs love†. With this new point of view toward marriage, she meets a man, Tea Cake and falls in love. Surely, her third marriage with Tea Cake is full of flowers since it contains love. â€Å" ’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. Ah ain’t gittin’ ole, honey. Ah’m done ole.†...