Monday, May 25, 2020

Their Eyes Were Watching God - 2014 Words

In the opening paragraphs of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, the narrator writes, â€Å"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.† For Men, these wishes â€Å"sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time.† For women, â€Å"the dream is the truth† (Houston 1), then they act and do things accordingly. Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Janie Crawford in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God both have a cherished aspiration unfulfilled that caused a void in their life when that dream was not realized. Indeed, despite the strong human yearning to fulfill a dream, not everyone can achieve†¦show more content†¦Janie refuses to believe that love does not accompany marriage. After two unhappy unions, she remains committed to the idea that she will find true love in the future. She realizes after Joe’s death that she will go off down the road in search of people, not materialistic possessions. â€Å"Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love† (Hurston 89). Janie blames Nanny for planting a distorted view of love in her mind. Nanny was nearly successful in taking Janie’s dream for love from her, forcing Janie to separate herself from Nanny in order to reach her dream. The journey to achieve what one wants to become will at times be suspended due to others attempting to persuade another to take a different course in direction. Unlike others, Janie is not influenced by Nanny and remains persistent on what she wants. Jay Gatsby also has a distorted view of love and how to achieve it. This distorted view leads him to accumulate wealth and woo Daisy with materialistic possessions, hoping it would win her over from Tom Buchanan. Gatsby’s car is representative of his success. â€Å"It was a rich cream color, bright and there in its monstrous length...† (Fitzgerald 64). Nick continues to describe Gatsby’s car as being extravagant and grandeur. Gatsby attempts to flaunt his riches in an effort to appeal to Daisy’s desire for a

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