Janie’s entire life is one of a journey. She lives through a grandmother, three husbands, and innumerable friends. Throughout is all, she grows closer and closer to her ideals about love and how to live one’s life. Zora Neale Hurston chooses to define Janie not by what is wrong in her life, but by what is good in it. Janie changes a lot from the beginning to the end of Their Eyes Were Watching God, but the imagery in her life always conjures positive ideas in the mind of the reader. Janie’s life begins under the watchful eye of her grandmother.

Her grandmother has given up her own happiness to raise Janie and her mother. Right away, it is obvious that Janie’s life is going to be different than her grandmother’s. For starters, Janie has very different ideas about love than any other character. She may not be able to clearly define her thoughts, but the reader still sees that Janie’s ideas are romantic and full of sensuality. The first glimpse into the past that the reader sees involves Janie underneath a pear tree, watching the flowers bloom.

The descriptive language (“From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom” [10]) beautifully juxtaposed with complex thought (“The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It . . . followed her. . . and caressed her . . . ” [10]) lets the reader experience the same feelings that Janie does, even though she is not yet old enough to fully describe them herself. Janie’s grandmother is old and weak. She never had a person in her life who cared for her and truly wanted to look out for her well-being.

As a result, she is frightened by Janie’s refusal to follow the mold, her refusal to marry for convenience instead of love. Janie’s grandmother describes herself as “a cracked plate” [19], showing that not even she has confidence in her own ability to be strong and weather adversity. Janie learns a very important lesson from her grandmother. Not a lesson to emulate, but one to avoid. She does not want to be a cracked plate, she is tall and blossoming and can see what she wants in her life. She does not get what she wants with Logan Killicks, her first husband.

Janie married Logan because her grandmother wanted her to. Her grandmother could not understand why she did not love him, as he had sixty acres of land. Janie did not love him, and describes him as “. . . some ole skullhead in de grave yard” [13] and his house as “a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods . . . absent of flavor” [20]. Janie’s eyes are still full of pollen dust, and she cannot get her perfect vision of love out of her mind. Logan makes her do menial chores around the house, and treats her like a beast of burden.

She prays for the day when she will be delivered from the life of tedium that she lives. She thinks that her prayers are answered when she first sees Joe Starks. In fact, she first sees him through a veil of her hair, and it is her long, luxurious hair that he is first attracted to. She thinks that he is “a bee for her blossom” [31]. The initial description of him, “. . . a cityfied, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn’t belong in [those] parts” [26] immediately sets a firm image in the reader’s mind, so no one is surprised when Janie leaves “ole skullhead” and decides to marry Joe instead.

She thinks that he represents the romantic ideal that she has been searching for. Soon, however, Janie sees that while Joe loves her beauty, he does not even see anything else that she has to offer. When people ask her to make a speech, he cuts her off, “[taking] the bloom off things” [41]. He views her as an ornament, nothing else, and he makes her bind her hair so that other men won’t look at it.

She never realized just how tied down she was by him until he dies. As soon as he takes his last breath, “she . . . t down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there” [83]. With the releasing of her hair, Janie lets her soul out from behind the iron smile she has kept on her face to keep Joe happy. At this point in her life, Janie has decided that she no longer needs to please another person. She is still looking for her perfect pear-blossom world, however. She finds it in one of the most unlikely places. Tea Cake is younger than she, poorer than she, and can offer her nothing but love. Fortunately, all Janie needs is love.

He doesn’t want to use her as a mule, or as an ornament, or as anything but a person to love. This is not to say that their life together is completely without its share of fights and arguments, but they are both willing to sacrifice everything for each other. Janie is “thankful fuh anything [they came] through together” [158], and Tea Cake calls Janie “mah wife and mah woman and everything else in de world Ah needs” [119]. When she’s with Tea Cake, Janie allows her “soul to [crawl] out from its hiding place” [112], which is all she wants.

Tea Cake’s death reveals as much about his relationship with Janie as his life did. When he dies, Janie mourns in her overalls, because “she was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief” [180]. Janie allows her friend to share her story, because she feels that she cannot tell it again. She doesn’t need to. Janie has lived her life and survived her journey. Zora Neale Hurston closes off Their Eyes Were Watching God with one final, poignant image; Janie “[calling] in her soul to come and see” [184] the splendor of her life.

Love is a emotion hard to describe in word’s. love can take is shape in many different forms and have different meanings to every person. Love is a emotion felt from the day of birth, a infant to its mother or a child’s first crush in elementary school. The theme of love is addressed in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , a story about a girl’s journey to find her ideal love. Janie goes through two bad relationships and third times the charm, and with each relationship Janie matures more and more in to a wise women.

Janie at age 16 got curious about love and exactly what it was she ound it to be some what like nature, comparing it to the spring season or a bud of a tree…. ( Oh to be a pare tree- any tree in bloom! ) (with kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! ) (She had glossy leaves and bursting buds. )pg11. Janie’s dreams of this natural love were soon crushed by her grandmother Nanny. Nanny believed that it was silly for Janie to have all these ideas about love, nanny thought it doesn’t matter how much a man loves you, what matters is if he is rich and can provide protection.

Nanny arranges a marriage with a older man named Logan killicks he has many acers of land and his own house. Janie goes along with the marriage Janie thinks that it doesn’t matter if she loves him now she thinks the love will come in time,…. (did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? ) (Did marriage compel love like the sun the day? ) (Husbands and wives loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. )pg20. Janie soon find’s out this is not true she finds herself just as lonely if not more than she did before.

Janie relationship with Logan is loveless and Logan has to many exceptions for Janie, Around the house she is obligated to cook the meals and clean the house chop the wood and help plow the fields. She doesn’t love this man why would she be motivated to work for him.. (” if ah kin haul de wood heah and chop it fuh yuh, look lak you oughta tote it inside”)(” mah fust wife never bothered me bout chopin no wood nohow…… shed grab the ax and sling chips lak uh man you done and been spoilt rotten”)pg25. there is absolutely no romantic spark between them.

Janie is still waiting on love. Janie is married and alone still dreaming of her perfect love and along comes smooth talking joe starks. Janie finds him quite attractive and romantic . He sweet talks her telling her that she is to good to be working he plow she should be pampered like some sort of queen….. (“you behind a plow a pretty doll baby lak you is made to sit onde front porch and rock and fan yoself and eat pataters dat outher folks plant just special for you”)pg38 Janie thinks finley love has arrived she will now have a bee for her bloom.

Janie still young still naive runs off with joe and marries. Joe’s and Janie’s relationship seems so absolute at first, than Janie started to get treated like that baby doll Joe referred to her as just a doll tucked away on a shelf hidden away form the world around her. Once again working for another man in the house around the store…. Janie was a good cook, joe had looked forward to his dinners as a refuge from other things so when the bred didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done at the bone ,and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie. pg67 Janie was marred to joe for years once again unhappy and loveless, she devotes her everything to joe they grew old and grew apart.

Joe gets sick and dies once more Janie is alone and loveless. Janie continues on with her life taking care of joe’s business, and things around her home not expecting to find love now at her old age. Much to her surprise she get’s swept off her feet by a young man that goes by he name of tea cake. He opens her up to a new world that she has never experienced before, a relationship full of equity and laughter.

He treated her like no man had ever treated her before. Tea cake taught her how to play checkers and fish, he was so fun so romantic Janie once agin took off for this new love. Janie and tea cake have struggle’s like any couple but Janie stuck it out she was in for the long run, she had never felt this way towards a man in all her years… (“well, he said humbly, ” I reckon you never ‘spected tuh come to dis when you took up with me, didja? )pg158 (” once upon a time, ah never ‘spected nothin ,’tea cake, but being dead from standin’ still and tryin’ to laugh.

But you come’ long and made somthin’ outa me. So ah’m thankful fuh anything we come through together. “)pg185. They are so naturally perfect for each other, this is the natural love that Janie has dreamed of her whole life and now she is living it . Janie learned a lot of things along her journey for love, she learned that love is not money, love is not outward appearance, love is not conditional Janie now a wise old women has found the real bee for her bloom.