Their Eyes Were Watching God Group
Question:
knwilliams
Student
High School - 12th Grade
What is the significance of the pear tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston?
Answers:
-
sagetrieb Teacher
DoctoratePosted by sagetrieb on Saturday July 21, 2007 at 6:09 AMBecause a pear is a fruit that resembles the shape of a woman’s uterus, it frequently appears in literature as a metaphor for a woman’s sexuality and fecundity. This is true in Hurston’s novel as well. In her Nanny's back yard, Janie lies beneath the pear tree when “the inaudible voice of it all came to her. 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). Janie's youthful idealism leads her to believe that this intense sensuality must be similar to the intimacy between lovers, and she wishes "to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom!” (11). The image suggests a wholeness - as bees pollinate blossoms paralleling human sexual intercourse - which Janie finds missing in her marriages to both Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, but finally discovers in her relationship with Tea Cake. She also discovers, however (“to go there is to know there”) that sex can bring a trouble all its own, but that trouble is part of living a life.
-
mvmaurno Teacher
High School - 12th GradePosted by mvmaurno on Thursday November 1, 2007 at 12:14 PMThe pear tree is also a motif that symbolizes the evolution of Janie's dream from that of her grandmother's early on (to get married to a prominent, wealthy man) to her entry into her third and final marriage to Teacake, the man who shows her the meaning of true love while allowing her to be herself. Whenever she is in need of inspiration or contemplation (usually after a failed marriage), she returns to the pear tree to reflect on where she is at in her life and where she is going. She never loses site of her optimism in spite of a her many trials and tribulations. The constant rebirth of the tree mirrors her constant springing back from the wrong path and return to her quest for true love, no matter what physical or emotional abuse she may have endured along the way.