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Their Eyes Were Watching God Symbols

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Symbolism has the power to transform ordinary objects, actions, or words into profound representations of complex ideas and emotions, captivating the imagination and deepening the emotional connection between the audience and the novel. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God is a novel brimming with symbolism, illuminating the story's deeper meaning beyond its surface-level plot. The novel follows the story of Janie Crawford, a young African American woman who embarks on a journey of love, relationships, and self-discovery. Hurston uses various symbols throughout the novel to represent different aspects of Janie's life. Five symbols are essential to understanding the novel's plot, themes, and characters. These symbols are the Pear …show more content…

The Everglades is a symbol of freedom and self-discovery. After Jody's death, Janie longs to forge her own path and escape from the suffocating society. One day, she falls in love with a stranger in town named Tea Cake. She agrees to move to the Everglades with him. There, Tea Cake teaches her to hunt, fish, and live off the land. The Everglades represent a place where Janie can be herself and discover her identity. The landscape is also a metaphor for life, with its twists and turns and unpredictable nature. Janie learns to navigate the Everglades and her life, discovering her true strength and resilience. The Everglades symbolizes a space where Janie can be free and discover herself outside of societal norms and expectations. Janie was inspired to pursue this freedom by another recurring …show more content…

This symbol is the foundation for the rest of the novel as Janie embarks on her journey to find love and discover herself. The pear tree is extraordinarily creative and effective in displaying its meaning. The Mule and the Everglades are close seconds to the Pear Tree, as they creatively represent society's limitations and the promise of freedom. These two are complementary opposites that build each other up, making the symbolic value all the more strong. The Hurricane and the Horizon fall to the final ranking. These symbols are creative, but they are very blunt and cliche. This is not necessarily bad, as it allows a broader audience to understand Hurston's meaning, but they fall victim to narrow interpretation. Part of what makes symbolism so powerful is that any symbol can have a different meaning to different groups of people. However, these symbols are limited to a very narrow

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