Paired Text Essay: Their Eyes Were Watching God and A Farewell to Arms.

Novels: Zora Neale Hurston's, Their Eyes Were Watching God & Ernest Hemingway's, A Farewell to Arms.

Prompt: Compare and Contrast the journey of each protagonist (or another literary device or aspect of each novel).

Literary device being explored through prompt: Theme.

Theme: All's fair in love and war (interpreted NOT as "anything goes," but moreso as "love and war are made up of the same elements: wins and losses, loyalty and abandonment, undecided fate (one decision could change everything/end the whole thing since neither love nor war can last forever)." (Or is that too loosely based since I know most people interpret the saying as "there are no rules in love or war.")

My main question is this: Will it work to use this theme for Their Eyes Were Watching God even though the book doesn't literally deal with war like Farewell to Arms does?

I mean, I noticed this theme while reading Farewell (after I had already read Their Eyes) and then since I had to compare the two, I noticed how the elements of "all's fair in love an war" were also present in Their Eyes, despite the absense of there being a war to compare love to in that novel. Is this a bad thing? Or will it just be better since it will then show that love really is like war since it's just love on its own and not love and war together?

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GAhhh, I'm really frustrated. D: Help please. I don't even know if I'm explaining this the way I wanted to/ would be best to. Any comments, suggestions, or critiques on anything I've asked or something else you've noticed? I can post more information or some of my outline/planning if it'd help.

Thanks in advance!

It sounds like a promising topic to me. You have a clear thesis. I don't know if you want to go with the adage, though, as it doesn't really seem to mean what you want it to mean. But the overall idea that war and love share many elements is solid. That there is no explicit war in one of the books isn't necessarily a great problem. Maybe you could simply rephrase your thesis to say that love is always a type of conflict, and as such can be compared to conflicts such as war . . .

Thank you! I definately think I'll drop the "all's fair" bit and go more along the lines of what you've suggested.

Or you could use the phrase, just being sure to explain your interpretation of it as clearly and concisely as you do here.