In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author refers to the mouth a lot when describing Janie's return. When the people on the porch remember their envy of Janie they "chewed up the back of their minds and swallowed with relish". Hurston also says they "made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs". The reference to the mouth gives these people a rude and almost evil sense and make their gossip seem to be a terrible thing. After Janie walked by everybody started laughing and Mrs. Sumpkins "sucked her teeth". This makes Mrs. Sumpkins seem like some sort of beat that is cleaning her teeth of her evil gossip.
In this book animals and nature are often connected to love. When Janie was sitting under the tree as a young girl “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 the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage”. Hurston also says "In the air of the room flies were tumbling and singing, marrying and giving marriage in return”. This is foreshadowing that Janie will spend a majority of her time trying to find the right marriage for her.
The tree that Janie sits under symbolizes her innocence as a young girl. She "spent most of the days under a blossoming pear tree in her backyard". Janie connects the blossoming tree with her dreams of having a life filled with love and a wonderful marriage. When Nanny tells her that she wants Janie to marry Logan Killicks, Janie's dreams are killed right then and there: "Vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree but Janie didn't know how to tell Nanny that". The unexpected curveball in her dream made Janie grow up rather quickly thus losing her innocence. "She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a women".
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