Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel written by Zora Neale Hurston. It tells the story of Janie Crawford. It is her coming of age story, following her life from childhood to when she is a grown woman. Janie goes through life looking for love. When she was sixteen she saw a bee pollinate a flower in a pear tree, and that image became her ideal version of love. As she looks at the pear tree in bloom she sees, “a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!”  Love to Janie is when both parties reach for each other in an equal partnership and help each other find pure ecstasy. But love does not find Janie when she is sixteen. Her grandmother marries her off to a wealthy man named Logan Killicks that Janie doesn’t know or love. She feels belittled and is miserable. He does not reach for her to give her that ecstasy of love Janie is looking for. Then Janie meets Joe Starks. He is a man with big dreams and big plans. He whisks Janie away from her life and promises to make her a queen. They run away to Eatonville, a new all-black town. As time goes by, Janie and Joe’s marriage begins to crumble. Joe does not allow Janie to interact with the people and treats her as a prop. Although Joe reached for her in his love for her, there was no equal partnership. Joe contained Jodie and tried to mold her into what he thought she should be. After almost twenty years, after Joe and Janie’s marriage has completely crumbled Joe dies. That is when Janie meets Tea Cake. He is a young man who shows her how to play checkers and shows her the world. They fall in love and it is with Tea Cake that Janie finally finds love. He reaches out to her and shows her the world not as a pack mule, not as a prop, but as a partner whom he loves. Janie finally finds love and her world is transformed.