Essay On Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of a women Janie, who arrives at Eatonville Florida lonely after two years; she tells her story about finding happiness. Janie’s story especially the ending where she comes to conclusion about her happiness, suggesting that happiness is a trial and error of never knowing what happiness is like until it has been experienced. Janie wants to be happy and to be loved by someone that will make Janie happy; although her nanny thinks that a man will make Janie happy but not supply her with the essentials. “A whole lot of mens will grim in yo’ face, but dey ain’t gwine to work and feel yuh” (11) Nanny suggests that Janie should find a man with money and smarts. She tries what her Nanny has suggested and Janie wasn't happy. Janie compares herself to a tree to explain that her dream of being happy isn’t coming true, “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered…” (8) In order for Janie to find happiness she had to experience it but instead she
Comparing Tea Cake to Janie’s symbol of the pear tree; symbolizes Janie’s finding of complete happiness. Earlier in the book Janie compares herself to the tree that is bare, however now that she has met Tea Cake “He could be a bee to a blossom a pear tree blossom in the spring” (101), which suggests that the blossom on Janie’s tree is a piece of happiness and the bee, which is Tea Cake, is spreading and contributing to that happiness of Janie’s. Hurston makes another comparison when Janie was feeling blue about Tea Cake’s death, that “Tea Cake, the son, of the Evening Sun, had to die for loving her.” (183) The symbol of sunsets is used a lot and in this context comparing Tea Cake to the evening sun, suggests that Tea Cake was the happiness to Janie, but she didn’t know till she had lost him and experienced