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Dis Love In making dreams become realities there is always a struggle between what happens and what you want to happen. More often than not, it seems like what happens has prevalence over your wishes. In Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, the main character, Janie, goes through life in pursuit of her dream. Hurston uses reoccurring motifs to show the progression of Janie's dreams and wish to achieve the love.
People she turns to for this love are Nanny, Logan, Joe, and Tea Cake, all of which give her a different feeling of love. One reoccurring motif used by Hurston is blossoms and pollen to not only show Janie's progression as a person from an ignorant adolescent to a self thinking woman, but to also show what stage her dream is at different point in her life. Janie's first encounter with love is under a pear tree where her sexuality is awakened. Janie sees the bees pollinating blossoms and it is here she makes a transition into young womanhood. However, at this stage in her life, her idea of love is limited. Hurston uses the phrase, Oh to be a pear tree- any tree in bloom!
With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! , which creates an idea for Janie that love is all sweet, romantic, and perfect, and that sex is always a happy part of it. Hurston then continues on, She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her? Janie wants this grand love and is under the illusion that love is perfect and she will be happy when she finds it. When Janie tells Nanny she only gets unwanted answers.
Nanny, rootless as a result of her slave experience, seeks to ground Janie in order to keep her safe and away from the lack of foundation Nanny had. Nanny creates a vision that love isnt grand, and that de white man throw down the load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he dont tote it. He hands it to his womenfolks.
De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as I can see. Nanny is trying to create a feeling in Janie that black women are the lowest on the pecking order and the only reason men want them is to do the chores. Nanny's experience with slavery gave her no time for romanticism and fantasy, thus her plan for Janie is to get her a solid home and a stable future. Because of this, Janie's fantasies of love are replaced by Nanny's voice of cold reality. That was the end of her childhood. Next, Janie follows Nanny's voice to Logan Killicks, where the motif changed from happy, innocent unknowing to the harsh realities of a broken dream.
Although Logan brings financial security to Janie, the emotional security of love is not there. She talks of the tree being a stump, and the trees fading away in the fall, which reinforces the fact she is disappointed and was illusion to a false knowledge of love. Nanny tells Janie, Dis love! Dats just what got us uh public and uh hauling and sweating and doin from cant see in de mornin to cant see at night. This voice from Nanny reinforces that the love between Janie and Logan isnt about being there for each other. Its about Janie doing the chores and being the mule for Logan.
Logan objectifies Janie and his idea of marriage is based on making Janie submissive to him. This is in now way part of Janie's dream and when Logan dies, Janie learns that marriage did not make love. If any good, however, came out of the marriage with Logan, it would be how Janie became a woman. Later, Janie meets the charismatic Joe Starks whose voice bring reassurance to the awakened Janie. When Joe meets Janie, Janie is impressed with the voice Joe has and his ambition to make something out of life and get someplace.
Joe is a bee for her bloom, which reveals a new hope Janie has that Joe will be the one to bring her true love and emotional security. Janie is romanticizing that Joe will be everything she always wanted, the love she first visioned under the pear tree. This quickly fades though as Joe starts treating Janie like a trophy. He always makes Janie tend the store isolating her from the events of the town. He also makes her wear head rags to hide her beautiful hair to try to force her into obeying his every command. Hurston also has Joe take on white tendencies.
He is power hungry and forces the black community to bow down to him. Janie knows Joe doesnt represent pollen and blooming trees, but he is so far from Logan she assumes it will be better. In her experiences with Joe, until he dies, Janie separated her inside from her outside, and knew her second chance to fulfill her dream wasnt a reality. Finally, we get to Tea Cake, who is everything Janie envisioned in a man. From the get go Hurston portrays Tea Cake as the man who will provide the emotional support and love for Janie, and in doing so, fulfill the bee in her bloom. Everything in the muck reinforces the love Janie has now achieved.
Dirt roads so rich and black that a half mile of it would have fertilized a Kansas wheat field. The reason Janie and Tea Cake are in the muck is to plant and fertilize and harvest just as the love between Tea Cake and Janie grows onward. Hurston use Tea Cake to bring a closure to Janie's dream which is again left in question when Janie kills Tea Cake. The fertile ground allows things to grow just as Tea Cake has allowed Janie to achieve complete womanhood and grow into her dreams.
In conclusion, the journey of Janie's dreams is successfully portrayed using the pollen and blossoms motif. Janie, after three tries, reaches the horizon of her dreams, becomes a real woman, and knows what love is. When blossoming into adulthood are failed chances at love are a must to know what love is, just as bees pollinating flowers to bring new life arent always successful? Our dreams change and face the sometimes bitter consequences of failed love. Obviously, want of succeeding at first love is always hopeful, it doesnt always happen, as exhibited by Hurston's novel. However, are failed chances required to know what love is?
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