CRITICAL ESSAY: THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD It all begins with parents. However, although genetics play a key role in what kindof person one becomes, environment is the other major factor that influences a personsdevelopment. The people a person meets and the experiences one has are very importantelements affecting development. With the three marriages Janie has, she develops as awoman. In each marriage she learns valuable lessons, leading to progressively betterrelationships, realizing how a person is to live his/her life. In Their Eyes Were WatchingGod, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janies three marriages lead her to self-knowledge and thusto fulfillment.Janies marriage to Login Killicks provides her with the realization that marriagesdo not necessarily guarantee mutual love. Her pre-marital concept of love and marriage issymbolized in the natural union of bee and flower:She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of thevisiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudiblevoice 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 thetree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. Sothis was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. (p.11) In this dream, Janie conveys her idea of marriage being the culmination of love, of twoseparate entities becoming one and growing together. To the rest of society, asrepresented by Login Killicks and her grandmother, marriage is not about love, but israther a business deal that only includes protection and procreation. Her grandmothersays, Taint Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have, baby, its protection.(p.15) Thesebeliefs run contrary to everything that Janie has wished and hoped a marriage to be: Ahwants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree...
