Love in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

Love in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

  • Submitted By: AQUAMAN
  • Date Submitted: 10/23/2008 5:20 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 777
  • Page: 4
  • Views: 1

Love plays a very important role in Zora Neale Hurston's “Their Eyes were watching God.” This is a statement that Bertrand Russell agrees with in her quote, “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” Love is the essence of life and everybody has the obligation to find their one true love or they haven’t lived their life.
In the novel, Janie spent her days looking for love. She thought of love just as she thought of the elements of springtime: Sunny days, bright skies, and bees pollinating pear tree blossoms. She searched far and wide for this kind of perfect love. This was especially hard for her due to the fact that she was a black woman in the early 1900s when racism was still an everyday issue. Janie tried many different times to find love, but only once did she find that everlasting love she had desired and that every woman needs.
Many of Janie’s struggles relate to women in modern civilization. The most prominent of these would in fact be the struggle to find love. However, according to Bertrand, no matter how many failed attempts you must go through at no point in time can you begin to fear love. Janie tried three times to find love, but only succeeded once. Even through all of the horrible husbands she had, not once did she fear love.
The first of her husbands was Logan Killicks. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t give the kind of love that she desired. He thought of her as just another set of work hands. The way he treated her was that of another man, not of his wife. He was inconsiderate of her feelings, her hopes, her aspirations. Even through this she had no fear of falling in love.
The next of her failed attempts was with a man by the name Jody Starks. This man whisked her away from Logan and she went with him thinking that he was the one she would fall in love with. With Jody, Janie thought that she would forever have "flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything." She thought she'd...

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