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Their Eyes Were Watching God Literary Analysis

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For centuries, love has always been seen as a mystery, pure human instinct, or even a poison to some. When someone spends their whole life blindly looking for a partner, they miss out on things such as careers, friends, and just an appreciation for life, in general. A constant obsession of searching love and intimacy can cause distraction from the other good things in life. In the classic novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the main characters, Jay Gatsby, fell into a deep distraction called love. He dropped everything to possibly get Daisy back, even going as far to exhaust himself with hosting a party every single night. His love for her is sweet, but it could also be seen as psychologically harmful. Whether it be true …show more content…

This theme of an endless search for true love is also very prominent within the novel of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Although Janie’s view on love is greatly impacted by Nanny, these views slowly are integrated into her own, even though she realizes her mistake later on within the novel. “Youse got yo’ womanhood on yuh. So Ah mout ez well tell yuh what Ah been savin’ up for uh spell. Ah wants to see you married right away,” said Nanny on page 29. From a younger age, Janie is immediately pressured into a relationship, specifically with somebody who has plenty of money by Nanny’s standards. However, as much as the grandma could be blamed for this, she also enabled herself to fall into the trap of desperation. The first occurrence seems to be on page 28, when “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. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.” She let herself experience an intense level of fascination towards relationships, and because her grandma was encouraging this, it seemed justified. In her eyes, it’s completely normal for somebody to chase after another person for the sake of just being in a relationship, which can be distracting and overwhelming to

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