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

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

Chapter 1 begins with a comparison of men’s and women’s dreams.  Hurston wrote: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.  For some they come in with the tide.  For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never leaving until the Watcher turns his eyes in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time.  That is the life of men” (Hurston 1).  Men’s dreams are always constant.  Throughout life men dream of the same things (”his dreams mocked to death by Time”), whether or not they come true (”come in with the tide”).  Unlike women who as Hurston wrote, “women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget.  The dream is the truth.  Then they act and do things accordingly” (Hurston 1).  Women focus on what is pleasurable to think about.  Their dreams control their lives when men’s dreams are “at a distance.” 

I think this is a very interesting way for Hurston to begin the novel.  It seems to have a large symbolic meaning to the story, but as readers we do not know yet how this exactly applys. Hurston also hints in the next paragraph, the reason for Janie’s homecoming: “she had come back from burying the dead. …the sudden dead” (Hurston 1).  Although, in the first two chapters we do not know who died.  Could the first two paragraphs of the story allude to the thematic implications of the entire novel?

The second chapter is more revealing than the first.  We learn of Janie’s childhood and part of her Nanny’s life.  A main theme in this chapter is the references made to the pear tree.  Hurston wrote that as a child, Janie desires ”to be a pear tree– any tree in bloom!  With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world!” (Hurston 11).  The pear tree is symbolic to Janie’s desire to expierence womanhood and adulthood: “she wanted to stuggle with life but it seemed to elude her”  (Hurston 11).  Literary critic Saunders states that “Janie envisions complete fulfillment;… she identifies not with another person, but with a part of nature. As a “tree” she will be in possession of great strength, awesome beauty, and communion with the natural world….” (Saunders).  Janie views a pear tree as strong, beautiful and a center structure of nature.  She wants to be a strong, powerful and beautiful woman.  Although, later in this chapter when Nanny tells her shes a woman Janie feels “the thought was too new and heavy… she fought it away” (Hurston 12).  It is interesting to see that now that Janie has what she wanted, she feels she is not ready.

Another interesting concept of the pear tree is it relates to the first two paragraphs in chapter 1.  Janie “had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree” (Hurston 10).  To be like the pear tree was Janie’s dream and Janie acted and did things accordingly.  She tried to live in her dream. 

If the concept of women’s dreams applys to the pear tree and Janie, will other concepts of dreams apply to Janie’s life?  And if so, can we rely on what Janie says if “women forget all those things they don’t want to remember” (Hurston 1)?