Zora Neale Hurston uses symbols throughout the novel to explain events, rather than sating them. She interprets many important aspects of life and turns these events into symbols throughout Their Eyes Were Watching God. The important aspects of life being symbolized include faith, the maturation process, and emotion. These are symbolized with trees, animals, and God. Trees, however, is the symbol that predominates throughout the novel. The trees follow Janie through the traumatic path from a young girl to a woman. Hurston uses trees to symbolize Janie's maturation process throughout the novel, as well emotion.
             The main symbolism of the tree is to represent Janie's maturation process from a girl to a woman. Her maturation process is something Janie struggles with during the novel. At the beginning of the novel, she starts off as an innocent girl, who is forced to grow up after kissing Johnny Taylor. After the kiss, she is a confused, but curious child, wishing to know when she will find love. "She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid" (Hurston 11). As a young girl, Janie went to the pear tree to contemplate on her life. While sitting under the pear tree is where she first discovers that she is changing from a girl to a woman. Since Janie had first discovered that she was maturing, Hurston uses this sight of her revelation as the symbol for the maturation process through the whole novel. Janie has finally realized what love really is and this discovery leaves her with the harsh realization that she must now become a woman.
             Also, under the pear tree, she realizes what marriage is and what the perfect relationship for her is. "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 ...