Their Eyes Were Watching God

5 Pages 1253 Words

One German poet metaphorically described love, “Love is a flower of life”. Can love be the most beautiful aspect in one’s life? Can anyone live a life without love? No one can actually give a lucid answer to this question since everyone gives a different value to love. However, at least, it is true that love is the most valuable sense that humans have as we can see the history of mankind began from Adam and Eve’s love. In that sense, a life without love, perhaps, would be valueless. Zora Neale Hurston stresses this necessity of love in a life as she looks back upon Janie’s life in the novel, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Taking this subject one step further, Hurston also throws out a question; “What would marriage be like without love?” Hurston provides an answer directly in Janie’s daydream, which is, ‘bees can not live without flowers’.
In “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Janie, a main character, goes through her life with three different husbands. Her first husband, Logan Killicks, is a man who, with his wealth, provides her food, shelter, and etc. The second husband, Joe Starks, is a man who does not only have wealth but also has great aspirations in his life. With these two perfect-seeming husbands, Janie, ironically, spends most of her married life with repentance and tears. It was not because Janie is not satisfied with their wealth but because these marriages do not contain love. Consequently, as Janie redefines the concept of marriage during her unpleasant married life with these two husbands, she starts to see marriage from a different point of view; “A marriage needs love”. With this new point of view toward marriage, she meets a man, Tea Cake and falls in love. Surely, her third marriage with Tea Cake is full of flowers since it contains love.
“ ’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, it’s protection. Ah ain’t gittin’ ole, honey. Ah’m done ole.”...