Their eyes were watching god (pear tree analysis/comparison of love) - Essay Example

Pear Tree Analysis in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” The pear tree and the horizon represent Janie’s idealized views of nature. In the bees’ interaction with the pear tree flowers, Janie witnesses a perfect moment in nature, full of erotic energy, passionate interaction, and blissful harmony. Janie’s sexual awakening is one of the cardinal subjects of Their Eyes were Watching God. For the most part, Hurston has used metaphors to mask Janie’s sexuality. She chases after this ideal throughout the rest of the book.

For Janie, the bee that blossoms the pear is a man she is sexually drawn toward. Janie thinks of herself as a blossoming pear. Her obsession with and inspiration by the interaction of the bee and the pear reflects Janie’s fantasy of having a loving, caring, and full of passion relationship in life where the lovers can depend on each other. This is totally unlike the sexual experiences of her Nanny who has been traumatized, threatened, and destabilized through forced sex with her master at the plantation.

From the very beginning of the story, Janie’s sexuality reflects an integral link with the nature. What makes her experience unique is the fact that Janie learns about sexual attraction and its wonders and charisma not from a human mentor, but from a bee. “She saw 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!

” (Hurtson). Likewise, the horizon is the natural world’s distant mystery that Janie longs to connect with. When she hauls in of her horizon “like a great fish-net” (Hurtson), it suggests that Janie has finally developed harmony with nature. Works Cited:Hurtson, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Starbooks Classics, 1976. Print.