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Allusions In Their Eyes Were Watching God

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All people grow and develop at different rates, with factors such as heredity and environment strongly influencing one's development. The age-old debate of nature-vs-nurture is at the forefront, as always. The people one meets, and the experiences one goes through play vital roles in forming that person. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford grows as a woman with the men she was married to. Through the tides of life and relationships she realizes how a person is truly supposed to live their life. Janie's three marriages play crucial roles as elements in her development as a person and as a woman. Countless allusions and symbols crafted by Zora Neale Hurston flow fluidly throughout the novel and allow for the reader to understand Janie Crawford’s journey and extensive development. These recurrent patterns serve to better illustrate abstract concepts in the novel. Hurston's powerful use of symbols and allusions work to describe Janie’s relationships along with clarifying and intensifying the telling of Janie's story and growth.
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The unabridged novel uses symbols to depict Janie’s true self discovery and her journey through a past filled with racism, sexism, and tragedy to a blissful finale of self-realization. Janie started as a young, innocent-minded woman in the beginning of her story and ended the novel as a utterly established woman. Through symbols and allusions, both in biblical and emotional variety, Hurston allowed for the novel to be read in a fashion that shows Janie as a strong and independent woman commencing on the first pages. The preceding and final chapters allow for Hurston to devour into the cavernous years, revealing the fabricating events in which shaped Janie Crawford into the woman she

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