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Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eye Were Watching God Analysis Paper

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie leaves home and discovers how life is very unfair, but through the relationships she makes, she is able to learn how to be an individual and make decisions that lead her to happiness. There are three very important meaningful themes in the novel, judgment, relationships, and sexism. All of these things are created into a metaphor that the author uses, which is the pear tree. The tree signifies the main character, Janie’s, life. For example, a new relationship could be a new blossom, which would grow as the marriage would. The blossom could die, once the marriage is divorced. Janie “saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone” (8). When Janie comes back to her hometown after Tea Cake dies, the pear tree would just start growing its leaves again, because her life is just starting. In Janie’s first marriage to Logan Killicks, she discovers how she should be careful about choosing her men. She realizes how she loves to be free. She also realizes how he never really loved her, because “long before the year was up, Janie noticed that her husband had stopped talking in rhymes to her. He had ceased to wonder at her long black hair and finger it” (26). Janie would do anything to get away from this marriage and she figured out how much she wanted to when she ran away with Joe. Being with Joe was very unfair, because of the way she treated her. He controlled her thoughts and made forced her to put her hair up so no other guy would look at it. He acted like Janie belonged to him. In the relationship Janie grows, and later back talks to Joe. When this leads to their emotional separation, that’s when her individualism grows. Janie became stronger after this relationship because of being held like a captive the whole time. This is the first time Janie was all alone. She “cried all night under the

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