Interpretation of Symbols
There are many symbols in books that give greater insight to characters and events in a novel. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses symbols to convey certain meanings throughout the novel that are crucial to the story’s plot. The main five symbols are: Janie’s hair, the tree, the hurricane, the horizon, and the story of the mule.
Janie’s hair represents who she is, and where she finds her identity. It shows her independence apart from those around her. In the beginning of the novel, it is her way of rebelling against the town’s standards of how a woman of her stature should look. The townspeople thought it was improper of her to wear her hair down. Janie’s refusal shows that she doesn’t fit into the mold. She is her own person, and she doesn’t like to listen to what others tell her to do. Her hair is also described as being abnormally straight. This shows us her “whiteness”. It is what draws Mrs. Turner to her, because of her Caucasian characteristics. This blurs the racial lines that may or may not oppress Janie as a black woman. The qualities that give her power also intimidate men like Jody. The strength and power her hair has over Jody is overwhelming to him, and he makes her tie her hair up in order to keep his dominating masculinity over her. “’Whut make her keep her hair tied up lak some ole’ ‘oman round de store? Nobody couldn’t git me tuh tie no rag on mah head if Ah had hair lak dat.’ ‘Maybe he make her do it. Maybe he skeered some de rest of us mens might touch it round dat store.’” (50). It is symbolic when Jody later dies, and Janie lets her hair down. It was as if she were finally letting herself be who she really is. The hair is the most important symbol because it is mentioned throughout the novel, and is made in reference to many different things, which strengthen the character of Janie.
The tree represents Janie’s unrealistic views on nature. In the beginning of the novel, Janie sees the interaction of a bee with the flowers of a tree and finds it perfectly romantic. She gets this image of heavenly peace. “Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seems to elude her. Where were the singing bees for her?” (11). She strives for this peace throughout the novel with her marriages, and never finds anything quite like her experience watching the tree. When her grandmother marries her off early on in the story, her idealized version of perfect love is taken away. She understood that within the branches there was “dawn and doom”. This symbolizes Janie’s life—filled with dawn and doom. I believe in another sense, the tree represents life. It is a sign of budding hope, always with the promise of a future. This gives hope for Janie’s life. Even though there are dark times, a new time of life will bring joy.
The event of the hurricane is an important symbol to the novel, because it is also the climax of the book. Throughout the novel, Janie is always striving for this perfect peace that she witnessed as a child with the tree. However, whenever something good happens in Janie’s life, something bad counteracts it. The hurricane is a great symbol for Janie’s rollercoaster life. After two bad marriages, Janie finds Tea Cake. Tea Cake is the man that Janie had always dreamed of. “Once upon a time, Ah never ‘spected nothin’, Tea Cake, but bein’ dead from the standin’ still and tryin’ tuh laugh. But you come ‘long and made somethin’ outa me. So Ah’m thankful fuh anything we come through together.” (167). Unfortunately, Tea Cake was a good thing in her life—like her new tree, so the hurricane had to come in and destroy the goodness that Janie had going for her. The hurricane represents a destructive figure in the novel. It takes the perfect world that Tea Cake and Janie created together, and turns it on them to show that nature is in control and it is a chaotic, erratic thing. The event of the hurricane makes all of the characters wonder about the world they live in. It tests their faith and makes them question if God cares about them at all. It tests their strength and faith in a way that none of the characters had ever been tested.
The horizon is another example of nature’s beauty and Janie’s view of perfect harmony. The horizon to Janie represents a distant world that she wishes to be a part of. The horizon is like the perfect world that Janie had always dreamed about since her moment under the tree. I believe she finds this peace after she leaves the muck. She gets a new horizon to go after, and that is to one day being with Tea Cake again. “The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.” (193). I believe she finds her peace with who she was, and who she now is after all her life events. She is content with the fact that her old horizon, which was to find love, is done with and now she can go after a new horizon.
The story of the mule is symbolic for the townspeople and Jody. The mule represents the oppression of African American slaves. By Jody buying the mule to free it, he became a “savior” figure to the townspeople. They worshipped Jody for what he did for the mule’s freedom and for the town’s overall morale. “You got a town so you freed uh mule. You have tuh have power tuh free things and dat makes you lak uh kind uh something.” (58). This symbol is the least significant to the plot because it just refers to one part of Janie’s life. However the mule’s character is very important because it represents the time period and the situation that the freed African Americans were in. The fact that even though the mule no longer had an owner, but stayed with the town was very significant because it was like how Janie was to Jody. Janie no longer put up with the way Jody treated her, yet she stayed around because there really wasn’t anywhere for a single woman to go.
All of these symbols are in ranking from most crucial, to least significant in the novel, based on how much influence on the overall plot they made. Some symbols were mentioned throughout the story, while others were just in a moment of Janie’s life. Regardless of their rankings, each symbol is important in order to better understand the characters, the time period of the novel, and to help make connections from world events to the novel.
By: Aimee Clites
