Zora Hurston Themes

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First, Zora Hurston’s novel is more fulfilling to be read as both a universal story and particularly a black one because the author includes a reoccurring universal theme of love throughout her novel that revolves around an African American woman in the 20th century in the United States. Hurston portrays the theme of love through her main character, Janie Crawford, that seeks for true love all throughout her life through three different marriages with three different men. For example, in the very beginning of the novel, Janie used a pear tree as a symbol of her ideal love when the narrator stated “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 …show more content…
Nanny forced Janie into marrying a wealthy farmer, Logan Killicks, for Janie to have protection as she did not want her to go through the same experiences. Furthermore, Janie was seeking for the love that she had desired from the bee and the blossom so she was convinced to marrying Killicks thinking that marriage would make love “She made a sort of comfort for herself…she would love Logan after they were married…Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant” (21). Assuming that “she would love Logan after they were married” and find the love that she had desired with him, Janie came to notice that her marriage with Killicks was not what she had hoped and dreamed for as stated by narrator, “She knew now that marriage did not make love” (25). Here Hurston uses marriage and loves as a universal theme where “husband and wives always loved each other” regardless of color or race but for Janie, her marriage had killed her dream “Janie’s first dream was dead…” (25). The author uses Janie’s marriages to three different men to portray her search of an ideal love that reflects on Janie’s character and the plot of the
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