Henry David Thoreau once said, “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” This excerpt of wisdom is prevalent in the journey of Janie Mae Crawford, the protagonist of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Janie spends the entire novel searching for love and companionship, and discovers her truest self along the way. When she finally determines her own identity, she realizes that she is a strong, independent black woman who can defy the stereotypical standards imposed on women in the early 1900s. Although she initially allowed others to place restrictions on her based on her gender and race, crossed these boundaries and understood that he did not have to conform to the expectations of others. The most obvious theme of this novel portrays that, to understand oneself in the most real and raw way, one must encounter a series of instances that shape who they are as individuals. The initial instance where Janie encounters the idea of ​​love and begins her journey to self-realization when, at sixteen, she lies under a pear tree in her nanny's backyard and receives her first kiss from a boy named Johnny Taylor. That afternoon, Janie lay on the ground observing the act of pollination between a bee and a flower on the pear tree, sparking her sexual curiosity. This sexual curiosity he feels is not vulgar, but rather intimate. The narrator displays Janie's sexual perception of pollination by describing the bee's acceptance of pollen as “the thousand sister calyxes that arch to meet the loving embrace and ecstatic thrill of the tree from root to smallest branch which opens at any moment. bloomed and frothed... middle of paper... got worse, eventually leading Janie to kill Tea Cake in self-defense. Janie felt real grief and guilt over Tea Cake's death, unlike the forced grief she showed everyone in Eatonville when Jody died. This pain, along with the disloyalty of her former friends during the trial, makes Janie realize that she can survive on her own; Tea Cake's death completes Janie's journey of self-discovery. Life experiences, whether positive or negative, shape the unfiltered and most genuine self. The more experience one gains in one's life, the more growth this inner self will undergo. The things Janie endured over the course of the novel are more than most people will experience in a lifetime. Even though Janie had many trials and tribulations in Their Eyes Were Watching God, they made her a stronger, more independent and self-aware woman.