Symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, a character by the name of Janie goes on a journey to find herself. She survives the loss of her parents, her grandmother, and 3 husbands while trying to find a way to live her life and search for the love that she had been longing for. Zora Neale Hurston uses symbolism to define Janie and other characters throughout the story to help the reader better understand and visualize the entire story of Their Eyes Were Watching God.

The first image that is used to symbolize meaning in the story is the pear tree that Janie lays under in Nanny’s backyard. Hurston writes that the tree “called her to come and gaze on a mystery” (10). The mystery was about love and marriage. “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! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (11). The revelation that she was seeing was her interpretation, at this point in time, of what a marriage should be. The bee pollinating the bloom corresponds with human sexual intercourse. Janie thought that marriage should be full of love and lust. Her youthfulness deceived her. Her opinion was sure to change as her marriages to Logan and Joe Starks were not full of love and lust.

The color ‘white’ is mentioned a few times throughout the story. I found it to be surprising given that the novel is about ‘black’ people in a ‘black’ town and Hurston uses so many references of the color white and its relation to domination or a higher power. During the time that Hurston wrote the novel, white people were still not favorable in the minds of many black individuals. As a matter of fact, Hurston received a lot of criticism for this novel. Richard Wright explained that he didn’t like the use of the southern dialect of the characters. Hurston was expected to “criticize segregation and the lack of identity for African Americans” (Brackett). The house that is built for Joe and Janie Starks is painted “a gloaty, sparkly white” (47). The story suggests that the house made all of the other homes seem like “servants’ quarters”. Why would the house be painted white in a black town when the whole reason the people moved to that town was to get away from the white dominance happening everywhere else? This symbolized that black people still feared white people in the mind of Hurston. Another example of this is when Hurston writes about the buzzards and their ceremonial routine of eating the carcass of the dead mule. “The flock had to wait the white-headed leader, but it was hard” (61). Again, Hurston represents the color white as a form of supremacy. When Hurston speaks of Daisy and her beauty, she mentions that “she is black and she knows that white clothes look good on her, so she wears them for dress up. She’s got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money…” (67). The white clothes are what she uses to “dress up” in and when Hurston refers to the “shiny white” of her eyes, she makes it equivalent to “new money”. The color of white is being used to describe beauty and riches, something that most African Americans at that time didn’t have. Hurston seems to hold the color white and/or white people to a high standard.

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