carry the men's dreams and ambitions. Some "come in with the tide," or come true for the wisher; others remain distant, like "the horizon." The men's hopes could be dashed as they look into the distance, waiting for something to happen. Women, on the other hand, are drawn as more action-oriented and practical. If they want a dream to come true, they pursue it: "they act and do things accordingly." The depiction of nature here indicates that men rely on signs in nature, which stand for things out of their control. Women take control of their lives. This contrast at the start of the novel sets up thecharacterization of Janie, our protagonist, and we are prepared to see how she takes control and decides her own fate.

A natural image is also important to Janie as she develops from a child to a young woman. The pear tree described in chapter 2 symbolizes Janie's sexual awakening, which immediately leads Nanny to marry her off to Logan. To contrast the opening paragraphs of the novel, Hurston here depicts Janie as first not in control of her own life; she will later grab the reigns for herself, though. In chapter 2, the narrator describes how "Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches." This simile indicates that Janie, as a young person, looks at the tree as an account of her life and almost like an oracle. She can read the truth of her experiences there. At this point, she does not yet feel that she can write that truth for herself. For some time, she goes back to this image of the pear tree in bloom as the symbol of ideal love and romance, measuring her husbands against that ideal. As she matures, however, Janie must learn to make her own happiness instead of waiting for it to come along, like Joe Starks does on the road outside Janie's town.

Eventually, once Janie is happily married to Tea Cake, her third husband, they work the land in the Everglades. This represents both Janie's most "pear-tree-like" relationship and her closest physical connection with nature since that early moment of her adolescence. When she and Tea Cake are "on the muck," a hurricane hits. The hurricane, obviously a natural disaster out of their control, leads Tea Cake to contract rabies while saving Janie from a dog. After the hurricane, Janie must take her fate into her own hands and shoot her beloved when he threatens her life. The hurricane itself is a natural event but it spurs the final development of Janie's character; it forces her to become self-sufficient and move past the idea that she is defined by whomever she is married to or loves.

The previous poster's comments are good. If you are indeed focusing specifically on Their Eyes Were Watching God and follow spottedslinky's very good suggestion to focus on the connections between plant life and the novel's main character, you absolutely must (I write this with a smile!) talk about the connections between Janie and the blossoming pear tree in Chapter 2.

Janie is experiencing a sexual awakening, I think it's fair to say, and that awakening is represented through the symbols of the bee and the pear tree in blossom. Read the passage out loud, slowly, and you're very likely to pick up on the erotic imagery. Of course, it's important to understand, too, that Janie is thinking here not just about sex but also about marriage. Throughout the novel she will be looking for this very thing, a deep and passionate and lasting relationship with someone whom she loves. She finds that relationship with Teacake, and at a later point in the novel, she even likens him to a bee visiting a flower.