Their Eyes Were Watching God: Comprehension and Analysis Blog

Chapter 19 starts off with Tea Cake being forced to bury the dead after the hurricane. I think it is terrible that they(blacks) had to do this. Especially because they had to pull out the white men so that they could be buried in a coffin. When reading this part, it says that they threw quicklime onto the bodies, and I was interested in what this was, so I looked it up.

Quicklime:
    also called lump lime, caustic lime, or unslaked lime. This was the name given the lime (CaO) as it was removed from the kilns and packed into barrels. It was “quick” to stick to the skin. Handling the product is hazardous, as it is caustic, takes water from the flesh, and gives off heat. This heat is enough to char wood, and warehouses and schooners shipping lime were known to catch fire.

It sounds like it is something that will help breakdown the bodies faster because higher temperatures means faster bacteria growth, and from the definition it seems to burn the skin.

After this, Tea Cake gets sick, and Janie finds out that he has rabies from the dog that bit him on the cheek. While Janie goes to see the doctor Tea Cake thinks that she is sneaking off to see Mrs. Turner’s brother. Janie finds a pistol of Tea Cake’s and notices that there are 3 shots in it. She rotates the clip so that he will not shoot bullets the first 3 times he pulls the trigger. I think that this is dumb, and you can sense the suspense coming. If i was her, i would have taken the bullets out so that he could not use it at all. When Janie comes back from the doctors again, Tea Cake accuses her again, and has his pistol. Janie defends herself after Tea Cake tried to kill her. This must have been a very hard decision to do for her, but it shows that she is in control. Through out the novel, Janie has been a possession and a object of a male all because she is a women; “Through this gesture, the act of shooting Tea Cake, Janie allows her self as subject to emerge — not, this time, as a fully realized sell as a unified subject, but as a subject freed from its dependence on the Other”(McGowan). I think this is definitely true, and that she is in control of herself and is her own person. Choosing Tea Cake over other men was a step towards this, because she knew that she wanted a man who was not as dominating. Shooting Tea Cake has completely freed her of an reason to be a possession of someone else. Even though she did love him, “she is not at all paralyzed by his loss”(Reich). If anything it helped her by getting further away from her grandmother’s idea that materialism and wealth are all you need to be happy.

—Andrew

Chapter 12 opens up with the town gossiping about Janie and her new man, Tea Cake. “Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie to Orlando to the movies” (Hurston 105). Phoeby confronts Janie about her capers with Tea Cake, why she isn’t mourning anymore, and that she should marry the undertaker with he huge house. Janie says that she and Tea Cake are “as good as married already” (Hurston 109) and that she’s leaving Eatonville to go off to Jacksonville and marry him. Then in the next chapter, Tea Cake goes off with some of Jane’s hidden money and throws a huge party for some of the locals. He doesn’t tell Janie about it until later, though, because he “‘wuz skeered you might git all mad and quit me for takin’ you ‘mongst ‘em’” (Hurston 119). Janie tells Tea Cake that she “‘aims to partake wid everything…don’t keer what it is’” (Hurston 119).
The next few chapters include Tea Cake gambling and winning big but getting stabbed, both of them moving down to the Everglades, Janie working alongside Tea Cake in the bean fields, and Janie fighting Tea Cake over his suspicious relations with Nunkie.
What I found most interesting about this whole section of the book was how even though Janie still holds the belief that Tea Cake has set her free, the relationship still limits Janie. The earliest example of this is the fact that Tea Cake starts picking out Janie’s outfits, simply because he likes her in blue. Janie doesn’t seem to mind at all, and in fact seems to like it, but all the same it seems like evidence of the control Tea Cake has over Janie. Tea Cake still puts Janie on a bit of a pedestal, too, like when he doesn’t invite her to the huge get-together he organized. “‘Dem wuzn’t no high muckty mucks’” (Hurston 118), Tea Cake tells Janie.
Also, Janie doesn’t work alongside Tea Cake until he asks her to. “She is so in love with him that her place is wherever he wants it to be, that she is able to let him slap ‘her around a bit to show he was boss’, that she waits for him at home or goes with him to work, as he wishes” (Reich, “Phoeby’s Hungry Listening”). There seems to be an air of dependency in the relationship, that of Pheoby’s dependance on Tea Cake, despite Janie’s presumption that the relationship is completely mutual with her and Tea Cake sharing everything. For instance, when Janie can’t seem to function while Tea Cake goes off for the first time. She just sits around all day and worries, revealing her dependence on him.
I know I wrote in a comment on one of Leena’s posts that I believed Tea Cake completely sets Janie free, but after reading chapters 12-15, I changed my mind. What do you guys think chapters 12-15 reveal about Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship?
~Sarah-Claire

Now that Jody has died, and has been dead for nine months, Janie has set her eyes on Tea Cake. At first all these two did was talk and laugh together, but then things seemed to become more involved. “Tea Cake and Janie gone hunting. Tea Cake and Janie gone fishing. Tea Cake and Janie gone to Orlando to the movies. Tea Cake and Janie…” (Hurston 105). By Tea Cake doing all of these activities with Janie, it shows her that she is not just a possession of his, which is the way she felt when she was with Logan and Jody. And by doing all of these activities, Janie starts to see that even though she is a women she doesn’t just have to sit on the porch of a house and do the chores, but she can do things that are fun and enjoyable. This is an area where is seems like Janie might have realized something about herself. She realizes that she does not want to live her life the way her grandma had wanted her to live it, but instead she wants to live her life the way she wants to live it. “Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine” (Hurston 108). With Janie’s new view of how she is going to live her life, it seems as though she is going to be willing to take more chances, and act differently then a women would be expected to act. By this I mean she is going to be taking on different activities then women of the time were doing, things other then tending to the house and kids.
So far throughout the novel it seems as if Janie has been on a journey to find the way she dreams of living and doing the things she wants to do. She was at first told who to marry, and then in her marriage told what chores to do. She escaped that marriage in hope to live a better life. Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way, and she was still stuck ordered to do things. Now it seems as if she might have caught a break with Tea Cake, because he his allowing her to do the things she wants. “Have de nerve tuh say whut you mean” (Hurston 104). So the question becomes do you think Tea Cake is going to turn out like the rest of the men Janie has married, or do you think he is going to be the man she has always been looking for?

- Hunter Woron

Janie, as was established from the beginning of the story, is a very strong female figure, but is treated horribly by the men in her life. Her first husband thought of her as a possession, and though she thought he was different, her second husband thinks of her in the same way. I believe that this wears Janie down over the years, and it is surprising that she actually stays with Joe Starks for such a long period of time. Throughout the length of their marriage, Janie does have thoughts of the degrading way she is being treated, and thinks about leaving. For instance, when the men of the town are baiting the mule, Janie tries to defend him, saying, “They oughta be shamed uh themselves! Teasin’ dat poor brute like they is! Done been worked tuh death; done had his disposition ruint wid mistreatment, and now they got tuh finish devilin’ ‘im tuh death. Wisht Ah had my way wid ‘em all” (Hurston 53). It seems that Janie draws a connection between herself and the mule. Like the mule, Janie is controlled by Joe Starks, and he makes her work in the store and the post office, and makes her do things just so that she will not be having fun or sharing her opinions. It is interesting that Janie draws this connection, because it shows that she realizes the injustice of Joe’s treatment, and is not just a helpless woman who doesn’t think she has any power in the world. Since these thoughts occur to Janie, it is surprising that it takes her so many years to actually stand up to Joe Starks. When Joe is trying to downplay his age by emphasizing her age, she finally says: “But Ah’m uh woman every inch of me, and Ah know it. Dat’s a whole lot more’n you kin say. You big-bellies round here and put out a lot of brag, but t’ain’t nothin’ to it but yo’ big voice. Humph! Talkin’ ’bout me lookin’ old! When you pull down yo’ britches, yuo look lak de change uh life” (Hurston 75). The fact that Janie has the courage to stand up to her overpowering husband shows great strength of character. Although it takes many years for her to do it, she finally does, which shows that over the years she has gained strength. This can only make way for Janie to further stand up for herself, and perhaps leave Joe Starks for a better life. -Lauren

I think the role of women in Their Eyes Were Watching God is an interesting interpretation of women’s rights during that time period.  It would seem that the women are caught half way between two worlds.  On one hand, they are African-Americans who have just earned their right to freedom.  Then they are also women, who are in fact not entitled to all the same rights as men.  Janie, as a black woman, manages to escape actual slavery, but finds in the real world that black men have assumed the position of slave holders.  Logan Killicks tells Janie that: “You ain’t got no particular place.  It’s wherever Ah need yuh.  Git uh move on yuh, and dat quick” (Hurston 30).  He sees her as a slave.  I think it is interesting that in this particular scene, Logan is discussing going to purchase a new mule, yet he is talking to Janie like she is a mule that he can load up with his chores and she will go out and make his work easier. 

            Contrary to the wishes of her Nanny, husband, and even the society she lives in, Janie lives her life the way she wishes.  She embraces both her womanhood and blackness.  Her Nanny marries her off to Logan which is: “frustrating and futile for Janie, as her desire is to explore the world, to take risks, and to savor life’s possibilities- all qualities of and reserved for men in western cultures” (Lester 81).  It is an interesting action coming from Nanny who is indeed the patriarch and matriarch of her family.  She is land owner and the sole provider for the household, so she herself has taken on the more masculine role of the family.  Yet she slaps Janie for her insistence on wanting to travel and find love, Nanny will not allow Janie to have the same patriarchal lifestyle that she now leads.

            As Nicole mentioned in her post, the story is about Janie’s search for her identity.  Can we conclude from Janie’s current taste for freedom that her identity quest will take her towards a more manly identity?  Is it Janie’s embracing the rights of men even though she is a woman that makes her the heroine that women across the country love her for?  Or is it her integration of male characteristics into her womanhood that make her the heroine?

                                                                                                   Kara Buchan