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Monsters in Literature ENG-215 Essay 2

The definition of love for Janie is very complicated as she did three marriages but unable

to get the completeness in her lover. Janie defines love as a feeling of joy and pain together. She

always wanted to have partner who love her feelings, respect him and make her life happy. To

fulfill her dream she married three times. In the early two marriages the Janie believe on love

was shattered when after few days of marriage both of the previous husbands treated like typical

men of man dominating society. Janie expectations were badly shattered until unless her third

marriage with Teacake who not only love her but also return voice and life back to her. When the

hope of fulfillment of love dream rise in Janie’s mind her third husband died and the Janie

unable to taste the completeness in her love. The Janie was sadly the reason behind her third

husband’s death and this thing makes Janie sadder.

The three marriages of Janie represent the failure in her love. The Teacake who loves her

dies and that proved a change in Janie’s life. She started to love Teacake memories and decided

to live rest of life loving him. She uses to say Teacake is a sun and “he could never be dead until

she herself had finished feeling and thinking” (193). This shows that some of the expectations of

Janie’s love have been completed though her third life partner has died. Janie learns a lot of

lessons from success and failures of her life. After the two unsuccessful marriages Janie become

extra conscious in choosing the life partner. She was internally broken but do not want to choose

a partner whom she always dreamed. She was able to find her voice back and learns the art of

living after the death of teacake. Janie struggle in finding the life partner teaches him the lesson

of how to face the difficult times of life and standup again. The success of love in the third

marriage actually gives her peace and internal happiness. Janie is no longer grieving the loss of her

true love. She pulls the horizon “from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder”

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(193). The journey of finding the true love though gave her sorrows but after the true love she finds a

way to give peace to her soul and live rest of the life in remembering teacake.

The definition of love bring both happiness and sorrow for the Janie but these sorrows and

success leads the Janie life from a chaos of searching true love to peace of mind and soul. After the

three marriages and losing the true love now Janie is no more in the search of the love and is happy with

what she has got in life. In the end it is concluded that love of Janie after many failures gave her success

which gave peace to her sol but her love always remain incomplete.

Work Cited

Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarperLuxe, 2000. Print.