In life, there will be a lot of things that will fill you with joy, and tragic things that will scar you mentally and emotionally. In the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zara Neal Hurston, a young woman named Janie faces many challenges and follows her dream of finding true love. Her image of true love came to her as she was sitting down beneath a tree. But unfortunately, early in the beginning, her image of true love is destroyed when Nanny forces her to marry Logan. The tree itself represents more than a vision of true love, it is a symbol also for Janies life and how she sees it.
Janie had many different views and beliefs on her life and the actions that were forced upon her because of Nanny. The tree in the book is one of the most important symbols of Janies vision of life. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in lef with things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches” (8). Enjoyment and suffering are both parts of life, as is life and death. Janie saw in this tree her own life. She had suffered when Nanny forced her to marry Logan. That is when her dream of finding true love vanished. The tree, symbolizes what Janie saw her life and actions like.
The pear tree was another very important symbol in Janies life. The vision she had of true love was based on what happened when the bee sunk into the bloom of a flower:
She was stretched onto her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting reath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of the 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 marriage! (10-11)
Janie believed that romance, and sex was important in a healthy marriage. Her vision of love to her was that marriage is...