Blog Post #20: Their Eyes Were Watching God Socratic Discussion #2 "Three Tasks"

Hamlet plans revenge
Claudius confesses murder
Fortinbras attacks kingdom

English literature has a funny and ironic way of repeating itself through many different pieces of work. In two completely unrelated pieces of work Their Eyes were Watching God and and The Black walnut Tree  seem to find great importance around the idea of nature, and more specifically, trees. Through these trees the idea of identity is relayed to the audience. The two women in The Black walnut Tree know that the tree is a piece of their heritage and therefore, and extension of themselves as who they are. if they were to get rid of the tree, "What my mother and I both know  is that we'd crawl with shame   in the emptiness we'd made  in our own and our fathers' backyard" (Oliver,1). In Their Eyes Were Watching God Janie sees the pear tree as who she wants to become, who she feels she is in her young teenage years, "Janie saw her life like a great tree in  leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn  and doom was in the branches. (Hurston, 11)." 

Though written hundreds of years apart, we, as readers, find ourselves once again discovering the similarities of two supporting characters of two pieces of English literature. Polonius is Claudius's left hand man, a brute force to be reckoned with. Nanny is Janie's grandmother, the one who raised her for her entire life.  The two characters treat their dependents like children, not as if they are literally their own, but they are trying to control their lives and command them to do what they expect without any argument. Polonius tells his daughter, Ophelia, that she "speaks like a green girl" (1.3.4) and won't allow her to marry Hamlet. And Nanny wants to marry Janie off because she believes, "you ain't no everyday chile like most of 'em...neither can you stand alone by yo'self" (Hurston, 15).