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Their Eyes Analysis

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Janie Killicks/Stark/Woods: A Hero or A Failure?
In Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the most prevalent imagery consistent throughout the whole novel is of nature, both beautiful and powerful. Nature’s temperament gradually shifts from an innocent ideal into a destructive force in synchronization with Janie’s life. Janie’s wish is to be in a loving marriage, represented by the pear tree and blossoms; however, once she finally achieves this desire, the hopeful nature she had once longed for gradates into a damaging monster that ultimately kills Tea Cake and consequently, her dream. Though Kubitschek believes that her quest for the pear tree is obtained through her marriage to Tea Cake, the violent hurricane reveals Janie’s ultimate failure in attaining the one thing she wanted the most. The change in nature that occurs once Janie believes that she has achieved her fantasy of a blossoming marriage represents an epiphany, a coming of age moment in which Janie’s childhood dreams are realized as unrealistic and naïve, as the true, destructive disposition of nature is unleashed.
The most driving force in Janie’s early teenage years is the need for attainment of the ideal marriage filled with love and equality, which she was introduced to by a pear tree in full blossom filled with sexual images such as “dust-bearing bees sink[ing] into the sanctum of a bloom” (Hurston 11). She became obsessed with the spring and “attempts to harmonize her daily life with her ideal image derived from the pear tree” (Kubitschek 22). The first step in her search was her marriage to Logan Killicks, which happened after Nanny persuaded her that marriage grows into true love, which was all the Janie wanted. However, “the vision of Logan Killicks descrat[ed] the pear tree,” so when Joe (Jody) Stark appeared in her life, she took a chance and leapt into a new quest and a new marriage in hope that she would find the perfect marriage she longed for (Hurston 14). As Janie traveled to Eatonville with Jody and began to get to know him more, she realized that “he did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees,” but she was still one step closer to her dream through him because “he spoke for change and chance” (Hurston 29). So her search for the blossom to the pear tree continued. As Jody grew more and more powerful in the town, nature imagery almost altogether disappeared because Janie knew the only way to get out of her marriage and fulfill her search without ruining her reputation in Eatonville is through the death of her husband. Finally, after Jody’s death, “she went rollicking with the springtime across the world,” ecstatic that she could finally continue her quest. In both of these marriages, the imagery of nature described the light and optimistic springtime, which displayed Janie’s optimism that she would find a marriage filled with love and laughter.
Janie’s new found freedom almost made her forget about her search for the pear tree marriage she had given up her life to attain. Her new role in society as an independent widow appealed to her because she did not have to take orders from anyone, just like a tree blossoming in the springtime is not controlled by an outside force. Vergible Woods (Tea Cake), whose very name is representative of the nature Janie desired, reminds her of her quest when he shows up in her shop and treats her as an equal. Her overall attraction to him and his kind treatment towards her causes her to persuade herself that “he could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring” (Hurston 106). Janie and Kubitschek believe at this moment and through this marriage, she had fulfilled her destiny and her quest; however, once Janie settles into her “perfect” life in her “perfect” marriage, the nature that she had once seen as optimistic and positive gestates into a raging entity. The hurricane, “the monstropolous beast,” demolished every preconceived notion that Janie had about nature, her marriage to Tea Cake, and the ideal marriage that she had longed for (Hurston 161). Just like “death had found [the victims] watching, trying to see beyond seeing,” nature had found Janie trying to see her marriage in the same way she saw the pear tree in blossom (Hurston 170). Janie had expected flowers, spring, and happiness in this loving marriage, but what she found was death, destruction, and despair. The hurricane second-handedly killed the one person she thought was the “bee to her blossom,” and consequently revealed to her that her ultimate goal of a perfect marriage was a childhood girl’s dream, naïve and unattainable (Hurston 106).
Nature was the marriage that Janie had been chasing after her whole life, and nature was the thing that revealed her failure in achieving this flawless relationship. Kubitschek, in his critical analysis “‘Tuh de Horizon and Back’: The Female Quest in Their Eyes Were Watching God,” describes how “the quest motif structures the entire novel,” as Janie’s search for the pear tree includes many journeys, trials, and tribulations (Kubitschek 19). Kubitschek believes that Janie “carr[ies] out a successful quest” in which she, after many adversities, finally finds the perfect husband in Tea Cake (Kubitschek 22). Had she actually completed her quest, the novel, Janie’s story, and the imagery of nature would have ended happily ever after once she attained her prize. However, the last glimpse that the reader is given of Janie’s life is of her description of “her life like a giant tree in leaf with the things suffered, the things enjoyed, things done and undone,” which shows that she understands the duality of nature as an positive and monstrous force, and that any marriage was not going to be perfect (Hurston 8). “The things suffered” signifies the failures that Janie faced in her quest, including all three marriages s he had been in and her misunderstanding of nature as a solely delicate force (Hurston 8). “The things enjoyed” represents her ignorant bliss in which she believed that her quest to find the pear tree was over when she found Jody, which was ultimately destroyed by other side of nature, the evil hurricane (Hurston 8). Though Kubitschek believes that Janie attained the pear tree and achieved the goal of her quest, she actually failed, which is represented by the destruction of life as she knew and Tea Cake from the hurricane.
In this novel, Hurston writes extensively of nature and its sublime duality as both a beautiful and destructive being. Janie’s life reaches three stages in nature: the pear tree in full blossom as a model for the perfect marriage in her life before Tea Cake, the hurricane destroying her conception of her pear tree during her marriage to Tea Cake, and the tree representing both the pear tree and the hurricane and the unachievable goal of a perfect marriage or perfect life. The change in nature from an innocent to a destructive force represents the ultimate failure of Janie’s quest to find the perfect, loving marriage she had wanted ever since she was a teenager and her epiphany that led into her full understanding of her life as an imperfect, yet striking, tree.

Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1937. Print.
Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. “’Tuh de Horizon and Back’: The Female Quest in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: Modern Critical Interpretations. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 19-22. Print.

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