Their Eyes Were Watching God 36-56

Pg. 57. “If dat mule is wuth somethin’ tuh you, Brother Mayor, he’s wuth mo’ tuh me. More special when Ah got uh job uh work tuhmorrow.”
The mule is what represents women throughout this novel – the ones under the white and black men. It’s a reoccurring motif throughout it. The mayor bought off Matt’s mule for $5 dollars when it had given Matt 23 years of service, a complete rip off. The quote above shows that people and things have more importance when they are useful. Mules like women do a lot of the hard work that others don’t want to do.

Pg.58. “Abraham Lincoln, he had de whole United States tuh rule so he freed de Negroes. You got uh town so you freed uh mule.”
It’s interesting that they compared what Joe did to a serious movement that Lincoln did. It’s even more interesting that Joe didn’t do it for the sake of the mule, but for his status among his people.

Pg. 72. “She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”
She realized that Joe wasn’t what she wanted. He made her feel less of a valuable person by the way he talked to her – talking down to her. She didn’t talk back to Joe because she knew it would only cause problems. He didn’t realize when he upset her so she kept silent. By doing this, she knew that there were things she wouldn’t be able to do and share with Joe. She didn’t want to mix her dreams any longer when it had to do with Joe, she wanted to save it for someone else.


Pg. 80. “There was nothing to do in life anymore. Ambition was useless. And the cruel deceit of Janie! Making all that show of humbleness and scorning him all the time! Laughing at him, and now putting the town up to do the same. Joe Starks didn’t know the words for all this, but he knew the feeling. So he stuck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store”
Janie was finally fed up with Joe so she told him off. He continued to make it seem like she was the one getting old and because of that she wasn’t allowed to do the things she was able to do at a younger age… when really Joe was just being insecure about himself. She didn’t laugh at him, but she told the truth. The town started to notice some of the unkind things he did to Janie so they understood where she was coming from. He felt deceived. The irony in this however is that he did this kind of thing to Janie all the time and she just accepted it. When Janie finally spoke up, his own option was to  punish and ignore her.

Pg. 87. “The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place.”
Janie told herself earlier in her life to look into the mirror, and when she really looked at herself, it had been 20 years later. The 20 years she had spent with a man who didn’t really please her or cure her lonesomeness. She was wiser, she was no longer a child, but a beautiful woman. She had grown.

Pg. 89. “Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal with scraps.”
This connects back to the beginning of the book when it was describing people’s aspirations. The men wanted to sail – see the world. This quote is saying that some people can make the best out of a bad situation, or see at least something good in something bad. However, Janie’s grandmother that she hated for ruining her dreams of love, wasn’t one of those people – she was the kind of person that would base her decisions off the bad, not necessarily the good.

Pg. 97. “…Vergible Woods. They call me Tea Cake for short.”
This is another important name in Their Eyes Were Watching God. There was the man that tried to KILL Janie, the man who was STARK towards his desires and not one of them being Janie, and then there was Vergible WOODS. Janie is connected to the pear tree which is a place where she felt calm and could think about her dreams. Woods is the man to finally make her dreams come true – he is connected to the tree. Tea Cake is sweet and not controlling– like a man should be.

Pg. 106. “He looked like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom – a pear tree blossom in the spring.”
Tea Cake is the man of Janie’s dreams. He taught her how to play chess and wanted to involve her in all the things he did. All he wanted was to be with her regardless of their age difference. The pear tree symbolizes their love growing.

Pg. 113. “Tea Cake don’t talk dat way. He’s aimin tuh make hisself permanent wid me. We done made up our mind to marry.”
Tea Cake doesn’t talk in a way of everyone else, he doesn’t involve himself with the drama that everyone else stirs up. He didn’t want to take Janie’s money, he didn’t want the store, he didn’t want her big house. He just wanted her. They decided to marry, which was the first marriage that Janie was actually happy about. He was the man to cure her loneliness.

Pg. 114. “Dis is a love game. Ah dun lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.”
Janie was tired of listening to everyone else’s advice. She hated her grandmother for making her marry Killings. She was disappointed that you couldn’t just make love, it would just have to find her. She lived with Joe, which was another man of money and power, and thought she was happy until she found Tea Cake. She wanted to live for just love, not the things love can bring (like maybe money or power). She was going to do things her way and not follow anyone else’s advice.

Pg. 124. “Janie, would you have come if I did?”
Janie was upset that Tea Cake didn’t take her with him. She wasn’t necessarily upset that he took $200 dollars and spent all most all of it, she was sad that she wasn’t invited. She was afraid that he left her like Phoebe had warned her. When he returned he told his story, and when she asked why she wasn’t involved, he said he was afraid that she wouldn’t like the class he hung around. She didn’t care about the different classes – all she wanted was to be with him. 

Pg. 131. “And the thing that got everybody was the way Janie caught on. She got to the place where she could shoot a hawk out of a pine tree and not tears him up. Shoot his head off. She got to be a better shot than Tea Cake.”
Foreshadow to Janie shooting Tea Cake. This is important because most women weren’t allowed to use guns. It was also important because Tea Cake allowed her to shoot and to also use his gun. Killings or Stark wouldn’t have allowed it. She caught on quick to aiming, and eventually could shoot better than Tea Cake.

Pg. 136. “Janie learned what it felt like to be jealous.”
Janie had never felt jealous before, it was usually just her other husbands of her. This shows how much she truly cares about Tea Cake. If she weren’t jealous, she wouldn’t care what other women did around him. She was afraid that their age difference would move them apart and so she didn’t like when other women flirted with him.

Pg. 141. “Don’t bring me no nigger doctor tuh hang over mah sick-bed. Ah done had six chillun- wuzn’t lucky enough to raise but one – and ain’t never had uh nigger tuh even feel mah pulse. White doctors gits mah money. Ah don’t go in no nigger store tuh buy nothin’ neither. Colored folks don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no business.”
Pg. 155. “Indians are dumb anyhow, always were.”
It’s kind of ironic that the woman won’t allow a colored doctor to help her or her family when she says that when she only pays white doctors to help her she only has 1 child left out of 6. I wouldn’t have been much different when it came to the color of the doctor’s skin. She won’t even buy things from a store owned by black people – because they know nothing about business.
Indians are another race that is discriminated later. They’re the ones that warned everyone that a tornado was coming and that they should move east to the high land. People thought they were stupid however, and then when the hurricane hit, the people who didn’t believe them were proven wrong.

Pg. 160. “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
This quote summarizes the central conflict of the novel – humans against god and nature. In the house that Janie, Tea Cake, and Motorboat are taking shelter in, they’re all together, going through the same thing. They were able to bond over this struggle, and Tea Cake and Janie were able to talk of their love for one another to keep them calm. They were staring at the dark, but were waiting to see what God was going to do next.

Pg. 171. “They’s mighty particular how dese dead folks goes tuh judgement.”
It was frustrating to the people burring the bodies after the hurricane. The blacks were thrown into holes, when the white people were put into their own coffins and buried separately. The blacks and whites weren’t even allowed to be buried at the same burial ground. It’s believed that when you die you all face the same judgment when it came to the color of your skin – it was sad to some people watching the difference in how they were buried – it should have been equal.

Pg. 177. “But it looks too late.”
A dog that had rabies bit Tea Cake that made him sick. Like Joe, she was too late again to save her husband. This time it was different though, she loved Tea Cake in a very different way than she did Joe. She would do anything to save Tea Cake, but something had taken over his body. This time it wasn’t really a sickness, it was something inside him.

Pg. 178. “he didn’t want her to see him fail.”
Even though Tea Cake was sick, he didn’t want to scare Janie and make her think any less of him. He started to lose control of himself, but he had to be strong for Janie even if he couldn’t be for himself. 

Pg 184. “It was the meanest moment of eternity.”
Janie shot Tea Cake to defend herself. He was no longer himself – he thought that Janie was sleeping around with another man. He didn’t want to be without her so he tried to kill her. Luckily, she put three empty bullet shells in his pistol to warn her. After the third went off, she had to shoot him – there was no way to save him anymore, he was already gone.

Pg. 189. “No expensive veils and robes for Janie this time. She went on in her overalls. She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief.”
When Joe died, Janie had to dress for everyone else in the town – she had to make herself look as if she was mourning. When Tea Cake died she was too busy feeling depressed to dress up like she did when she wasn’t too worried about Joe dying. She wore her overalls as a symbol of love for Tea Cake – he loved when she wore overalls.

Pg. 191. “The seeds reminded Janie of Tea Cake more than anything else because he was always planting things.”
Tea Cake was the seed in Janie’s life – he was the one to provide her with real love. He was connected to the pear tree of Janie’s dreams. He showed her a different side of the world besides power and money. He showed her a way to live with adventure with new experiences. He was the see for her life – he made it grow into something beautiful.

35. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 50. “They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.” 

People talked about Joe’s positions and possessions, and even though they all had their own opinions, they wouldn’t do anything about their bad ones. If someone were to stand up to him though, he may not have all the things that people are jealous or upset about. If you treat a person like a king, they’re going to act like one – if you treat a person like crap, they’re going to feel like it and eventually believe it.

34. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 50 “De way he rears and pitches in de store sometimes when she make uh mistake is sort of ungodly, but she don’t seem to mind at all. Reckon dey understand one ‘nother.”

  He always has to criticize her even when she makes the smallest mistakes. Janie understands Joe’s aspirations, but he doesn’t understand Janie or her feelings at all. It’s not that she doesn’t mind him yelling at her, it’s just that she’d rather accept it to not start anything more. She’s a woman, and she’s staying in her place.

33. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 49 “What make her keep her head tied up lak some old ‘oman round de store? Nobody couldn’t git me tuh tie no rag on mah head if Ah had hair lak dat.” 

 

Joe treats her like an old woman. She works in the store because he tells her too, but because she’s in the store she has to wear a rag around her head to hide her hair so no men try to approach her. He has to control what she does to benefit him and prevent him from getting jealous. He’s selfish.

32. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 49. “Ah often wonder how dat lil wife uh hisn makes out wid him, ‘cause he’s uh man dat changes everything, but nothin’ don’t change him.”

People through their own experiences with Joe are starting to learn the person that he is. By acknowledging his faults, they start to wonder how hard Janie has it- the person who has to live with him. The quote is a foreshadow to Joe – no one can change him, and the power he continues to gain is going to be his downfall.

31. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 49. “ He talks tuh unlettered folks wid books in his jaws.”

Another way people resent Joe is that he’s so much smarter than all of them. They’re jealous that he has so much power and that he has the ability to get things done – but they also know that if it wasn’t for him, the town wouldn’t be anything. People think that Joe is showing off his education.

30. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 48. “When one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder.”

People started talking about Joe – they thought he had too much power and he was abusing it. Most colored people didn’t have much power, they were used to being told what to do by white people, not their own race. It wasn’t surprising that people started to question Joe and his motives.

29. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 47. “The rest of the town looked like servants’ quarters surrounding the ‘big house’”.

Joe made him and Janie and big two store house with porches and banisters. He waited to move into it until after it had been completely painted. Joe had the house painted white – a color that the people thought was ‘gloaty’. The people of the town were colored and they didn’t have much money. Before Jody, they didn’t have street lights, a post office, a store, or a mayor. Joe is one of the only people who have money around the town, and people thought it was rude to have him flaunt his cash by building a big house for everyone to see and drool over. People felt like they were slaves again.

28. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 46. “She slept with authority and so she was part of it in the town mind.” 

Because she was “Mrs. Mayor Starks”, she was part of the leading of the town. People saw her with authority, but Joe took all of it. Janie didn’t want to have any part of mayoring the town anyways - she just wanted to have Joe around to love her.

27. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 46. “A feeling of coldness and fear took hold of her. She felt far away from things and lonely.”

Earlier, Joe and Janie were talking about how Joe is always trying to fix things or make them better, and Janie feels like she’s just standing around watching and ‘marking time’. He tries to assure her that he told her this before she ran away with him – he wanted to be a big voice. The worst part was that he told her that she should be proud because since he was a big voice, that made her a ‘big woman’. No one likes to be praised walking under someone else’s spotlight.
She felt cold – almost resentment towards Joe because he wouldn’t listen or understand her. She became afraid that Joe wasn’t what she wanted, what she hoped. She had possibly made a mistake. She was lonely, like she was with Killicks.

26. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 43. “Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no speech makin’. Ah never married her for nothin’ like dat. She’s uh woman and her place is in de home.”

The people asked for words of encouragement from Janie, and when the town started to applaud for the upcoming speech, Joe interrupted and wouldn’t let her. She was upset that he wouldn’t even give her the chance to try, even if she didn’t know how. He took the ‘bloom off of things’. He acknowledges that she’s a woman and that her only job is to do things around the house – and the man being the ruler of the house, she has to listen to him. He felt proud with his new gained dignity but was unconscious of her feelings.

25. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 41. “Jody told her to dress up and stand in the store all that evening” – “Janie dipped up the lemonade like her told her.”

This is just the beginning of what he tells her to do. He starts to gain respect of the people, and by building the things he does he starts to gain more and more power over the town. He starts to show that he wants to not just love Janie but to have her be his Mrs. “MAYOR STARKS” who symbolizes what the women should be of the town.

24. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 39. “Us colored folks is too envious of one ‘nother. Dat’s how come us don’t git no further than us do. Us talk about de white man keepin’ is down! Shucks! He don’t have tuh. Us keeps out own selves down.”

Hicks and Joe argue about whether or not having a post office or a store is relevant. Hicks make it out to be only a white people thing. Joe says that colored people get too jealous of each other to try and work together or make something for themselves. It isn’t the white people that keep them from allowing their lives to progress and get better, it’s themselves. Joe wants to see the people make something out their town and people. He believes that because white people have something the colored people should too.

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 33. “Green Cove Springs”

The place where Joe told the driver to take him and Janie. Green is a color of nature, where things grow, and there’s life. Spring is supposed to be the season of blossoming and creating new. It’s known as the ‘Saratoga of the south’. There people enjoy the river breeze, parks, beautiful old trees, and the smell of fresh spring water. It’s a place for Janie to rebuild her life, to try again with someone new.

22. Their Eyes Were Watching God

The names in Their Eyes Were Watching God has great importance to the storyline.
Logan Killicks, Janie's first husband, threatened to kill her. Pg. 31 "Ah'll take holt uh dat ax and come in dere and kill yuh!" That threat ultimately kills their marriage.
Jody Starks, the next man to show up in Janies life comes strolling down the street nicely dressed in clothes with silk. He walked with a stride as if he knew where he was heading. He was from Georgy(ia). He wanted to go to the place he heard was made out of only black folks. Him and Janie sat under a tree and talked, a sign that could be good - her dreams could be coming true. He wanted to make a wife out of her, not a dog.
Pg. 32. "With him on it, it sat like some high, ruling chair. From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything. A bee for her bloom. Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them." We see that Janie wants to start over, and the 'flower dust and springtime' is a sign of her inocence that she still has when it comes to love. Joe seems to only wants to love her, exactly what she wants. However, his name Starks has a not so great definition. Stark: unpleasantly or sharply clear; impossible to avoid. He knows what he wants.

21. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 25. “She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.” 

Her question was answered - marriage did not mean love, and it couldn’t and didn’t make it. Janie’s dream, the one where she sat under pear trees and dreamt about was dead. She was forced to marry a man out of guilt and pressure. He didn’t make her happy and he didn’t cure her lonesomeness. She’s no longer a girl that will be spoiled and so ‘becoming a woman’ refers to the stereotypical type of women - she’ll live to clean, cook, and help the man with whatever is needed. 

20. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 25 “...the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, “Ah hope you fall on soft ground,” because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed.” 

The seeds can refer to the women, or Nanny, who believed they needed to marry for protection. Landing on soft ground would be finding a suitable person to marry and be able to fall back on. Nanny, before she dies, wants Janie to land on soft ground and marry someone that she believes will give her a good life. The ground however, being Logan Killicks, wasn’t so soft and didn’t end up being what she wanted or expected. Janie ‘knew things that nobody had ever told her’, meaning that she found a year of answers to her questions - she learned it on her own. She often spoke to people, women, and told them to be careful and think about what they do before they make decisions - fall on soft ground that will be comfortable to live with. She had heard her grandmother say it (more preach it), but Janie spoke it in a way that love and marriage was as a whole without the benefits that a man could give a woman. 

19. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 24 “Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think. Ah...” 

She is referring back to her dream. She wants things sweet, like a pear from a pear tree. She wants a man who is easy to love because it is what it is. She wants things perfect, she doesn’t want a man with too big of a belly or a head too long and flat like Logan’s. She doesn’t want to have someone and still be lonely. She wants her dream to come true. 

18. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 22. “He’s kissin’ yo’ foot and ‘taint in uh man tuh kiss foot long.” 

Nanny is telling Janie that Logan is the one giving in his and Janie’s relationship and Janie is just taking. He is spoiling her but it won’t last long. Janie however tells Nanny that she was going to end up loving Logan, but she doesn’t - she doesn’t know how. Janie is confused and doesn’t know what to do, so asks Nanny when all she does is tell her she’s being foolish. Without help, she doesn’t know how to give back to Logan and be in a good relationship. Janie feels bad. 

17. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 21/22. “...on the way to his house. It was a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody had ever been.” 

Janie was hoping that when she was married it would end her ‘cosmic loneliness’ but all did was make her more lonely because she was out in the woods away from other people. She ‘went on inside to wait for love to begin’ but she should never have had to ‘wait’ for love to begin - it should have began before she was married. She started to finally question her marriage after three months when she was still lonely and felt nothing different for Logan.

16. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 21. “She was back and forth to the pear tree continuously wondering and thinking.” 

Janie continues to go back to the pear tree like she is consulting her dreams. Is marrying out of force worth it? She needs a calm place to go to, a solid place that doesn’t change. She knows what she wants, but she needs to comfort her grandmother before she passes. Janie believes that she will love Logan after they are married because the elders said so. She was still too young to know how to love someone - or how to be capable of love. 

15. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 21 “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” 

In this paragraph Janie realizes that she won’t be able to live the years for answers so instead she was forced to ask the questions that she would have felt better learning for herself. She doesn’t know the way love works. She asks if marriage ‘ends the cosmic loneliness of the unmated’, or if it even ‘compels love like the sun of the day’.  Using COMPEL however would be like forcing love - exactly what she is being forced to do. 

14. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 19 “...by dat time we knowed you was on de way.” 

Nanny talking about, Leaf (Janie’s mother), says that she was raped by a school teacher. Nanny knew that Leaf was pregnant after awhile, and after she was born, Leaf became an alcoholic and ran away. Nanny raised her after that. 

13. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 16 “You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways.” 

Janie and Nanny don’t really have a background or solid family, slavery interfered. Nanny tells Janie that she should marry because they don’t have much money and they have a low status. Nanny prides herself in the fact that she gave Janie that opportunity to live like an average white person. Even though Nanny worked to form some freedom for Janie, she insists that Janie marry for protection, against what she actually wants.

12. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 14. “Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” 

Nanny is going through the different classes: White men give work to the black men who take the white mens work who then give it to the black women who are the ‘mules’ of the world. The black women are really the ones who do everyones work. Mules are known as the ‘beast of burden’ which corresponds with women. 

11. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 14. “The vision of Logan Killicks was desecrating the pear tree, but Janie didn’t know how to tell Nanny that.” 

Janie didn’t necessarily not know how to tell her grandmother that she was crushing her dreams, but it was more that she didn’t want to. The pear tree, seen as Janie’s dreams of loving someone, were being destroyed because Nanny wanted to force her to marry and love someone. Janie kind of knew that wasn’t how love worked, but she thought that she would learn to love Logan.. or hoped at least. 

10. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 11. “She was sixteen. She had glossy leaves and bursting buds and she wanted to struggle with life but it seemed to elude her.” 

The sentence describes her as ‘glossy’ and ‘bursting’ as if she is shiny, gleaming, and exploding with life. Using sixteen means she is still young, and glossy and bursting buds is saying that she is just becoming a woman. She is blooming like growing, and glossy like new. She wants to struggle with life because she feels like it will allow her to live and be like others, but life ‘eludes’ her - it avoids her. However, it’s not really life that avoids her exactly, but it’s her grandmother that holds her back. Nanny changes and makes her decisions by guilt tripping her. She lives under her grandmother. 

9. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 11. “She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her.” 

The pear tree is a symbol of Janie herself. It’s the place where she feels the most serene. It’s a motif that symbolizes the development of Janie’s dream from her grandmothers to her own. It’s the transformation of love and how it is expressed and used.
An interesting theory to the pear tree is that it’s a metaphor for a woman’s sexuality because a pear is in the shape of a woman’s uterus. 

8. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 9. “Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!” 

Janie didn’t know her mother or father, and instead was raised by her grandmother and white folks named Washburn. When a man came to the house to take their picture, she didn’t really know that she was different until she saw it. She was with the white children for so long that she didn’t realize she was black until she was about six years old. 

7. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg 7. “...nine hundred dollars in de bank. Tea Cake got me into wearing ‘em...If he wasn’t gone...” 

Janie reveals the truth about resent past. She states that her husband, Tea Cake didn’t take any of her money, that she wears overalls like he did, and he didn’t leave her. She says that he gave her every ‘consolation’ in the world - he gave her comfort and compassion. “If he wasn’t gone,” Janie is home because Tea Cake passed away. This confirms that she isn’t in the best situation because he husband died, but dying is a part of life - she’s not in a bad predicament like the people on the deck were making it seem. 

6. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 7 “Janie full of that oldest human longing - self revelation.” 

Self revelation? Self surprising fact? Self report? This statement proves that Janie is different than other woman, Pg.1 “women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget.” - even though this is a contradicting statement, her dream is to have other people know her secret or story. She’s not going to be one to want to forget anything. She knows that you ‘remember everything you don’t want to forget.’ 

5. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 6 “...most of em goes to church so they’ll be sure to rise in Judgement. Dat’s de day dat every secret is s’posed to be made known. They wants to there and hear it all.” 

The people that sit around town and talk to people LIVE for scandals, gossip, and rumors. The thing that’s ironic about church is that church is supposed to be a safe place for you to confess your sins and have them be remorsed, judged, and hopefully forgiven by one person. Here instead, people confess, the confession spreads around the town like wildfire, and then are judged by everyone.

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 3. “...what you ever know her to do so bad as y’all make out?”


Pg. 3. “...what you ever know her to do so bad as y’all make out?” Pheoby, her best friend, argues for Janie. She asks why just because she didn’t stop to tell them all HER business, why would it be that it’s necessarily bad? They are making it out to be she looks all scraggly because her man left her and took her money. Just because Janie isn’t answering anyones gossip doesn’t mean that her situation is bad. 
Pg. 4 “...they hoped the answers were cruel and strange...” It proves that the people on the porch are just looking for something interesting to talk about, and if her story is ‘cruel and strange,’ it definitely would be. 
Pg. 5 “Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people...they done ‘heard’ ‘bout you just what they hope done happened...” Janie talks about people judging others just because they don’t know their story. She knows that if she doesn’t say what others want to hear, it will make no difference as to what she actually says. “They know mo bout yuh than do yo’ self,” is saying that others will say more about someone than that person will know about themselves - which is sarcastic saying that they’ll say things that really aren’t true. 
Pg. 5 “...they’s a lost ball in de high grass..” the people don’t bother her, she doesn’t notice them. Pg. 6 “...people like dem wastes up too much time puttin’ they mouf on things they know nothin about.”

3. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 3 “...she could stop and say a few words with us. She act like we done done something to her...” 

Janie, the woman that the people criticize, knows that the people are judging her. Ironically, Lulu Moss, the woman talking, thinks that gossiping over Janie’s life isn’t doing something to her. Janie probably doesn’t feel the need to stop and answer everyone’s gossip because it would simply give them more reasons to talk. 

2. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 2. “...why don’t she stay in her class?” 

This society that this woman lives in is very judgmental - they criticize her clothes and hair and question her money and man status. People can’t let her be, and yet when she approaches the people who are talking, they simply say ‘good evenin‘ because they can’t say anything to her face

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Pg. 1 “...dreams are mocked to death by time. That is the life of men.” 

The first paragraph described a dreams as a man - to sail aboard a ship. The ship can be seen figuratively as to just merely wanting to explore the world or to see what the world has to offer. However, in this sentence, it is told that men lose their dream as time comes and takes their lives. The last sentence can be a foreshadow.

Section 5: Summary: What the Thunder Said

     The final section of the Waste Land is about hope and resurrection. In the first paragraph there is an allusion to a Garden – Gethsemane – the garden that Jesus was in when the Roman soldiers took him away to be crucified.  This refers from the time before he was crucified to after it.      The next few paragraph backs up idea of wasteland and the title of the entire poem. “Here is no water but only rock, rock and no water and the sandy road…” there’s no water which means there’s no life. Where the ‘sweat is dry’  you won’t find water. The mountains are dead because nothing can grow, nothing can blossom or sustain without water. “If there were water and no rock if there were rock and also water and water a spring a pool among the rock…”  The idea if there was water there would be hope. Wanting to only wanting to hear the sound of water, they didn’t want to hear the ‘cicada’ or grasshopper or the ‘dry grass singing’. But if there were water, there would actually be grasshoppers to chirp and the grass would no longer be dry. However, “there is no water.”  
     “Who is the third who walks always beside you?....gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a mon or a woman…” this is an allusion to the bible, 2413 after crucification, burial, and resurrection. People are walking and when Jesus approaches he makes it so the people don’t recognize him. The people invite him into town, Emmaus, and sit down and eat and split bread. When the people finally realize that Jesus was present he disappears.
     Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna, London(/Unreal) are major cities in Europe that are morally sacked culture capitals. (SITE – see comment) “The list plots out the course of Western civilization, from its origins in classical and biblical cultures to its modern European efflorescence. As with so much of the poem, Eliot is being cryptic, particularly in his choice of the two modern cities. One can understand London: the cradle of democracy and the rule of law. But Vienna? Is there a hint in that choice of a civilization gone to seed, a place of elegance and opulence, yes, but a falling off from the human search for the order of the soul and the order of the common wealth? And does London, by its place on the sequence, also exist the downward slope of cultural history?”
     “The woman drew her long black hair out tight” - this woman refers to Cleopatra. Cleopatra relates to the failed relationships in section 2 which correlates with the countries relationships. After WWI a lot of valuable relationships and allies had been ruined, and Germany, the country that ended up basically fucked, was given the Treaty of Versailles. They had to accept the blame for all the loss and damage of the war.  
     “In this decayed hole among the mountains,” the grassy mountains obviously means had life, which means it had water! The grass sings because it’s revitalized and alive. The chapel is an allusion to King Arthur. One of king Arthurs knights went to find the Holy Grail in a chapel. The rooster cry is an allusion to the bible – it’s an allusion to Peter’s denial of Jesus – Jesus says that Peter will deny Jesus three times before the rooster cries. When Peter is asked if he knows of Jesus he says no three times, denying God. He later figures out what he did and is very remorseful. “Bringing rain” means BRINGING HOPE.
     Ganga refers to the Granges river in South India, and rivers mean water, and water means LIFE!  
      Datta means GIVE, Dayadhyam means SYMPATHIZE, and Damyata means CONTROL. The three D words refer to the creator of god in the Hindu religion, and they all make a sound that is similar to that which a thunder would make (thunder sometimes brings rain.) The creator of God says three things that instruct the lesser gods to (1) give things despite their nature cheapness, and (2) control their rowdy behaviors. The third is that he tells the demons to sympathize.
     “I have heard the key turn in the door once and turn only once,” refers to Dante’s inferno, which Count Ugolino starves to death after being locked in a tower for treason. “Broken Coriolanus” is a Roman character in a Shakespeare play who turned his back on his country. Both Count Ugolino and Coriolanus are examples of outcasts.
     The final stanza of the poem has Italian which alludes to Dante’s inferno. The Fisher King sat upon the shore and fished. We learn that he has the Holy Grail all along, but because he’s wounded, he can’t use the powers of it to revitalize the land. The purpose of the grail is to keep the land alive.  The allusion to the song London Bridge is all about WW1 where London was left in chaos and in a waste land. Shantih is an onomatopoeia that’s supposed to sound like rain. It’s supposed to bring hope. The poem ends in an uplifting way that is different than much of the poem. It ends with giving us hope that everything will work out.

Part 4: Summary: Death by Water

     The fourth section of the Waste Land is the Death by Water. The major theme throughout this section is the importance of water. This section, having the turn, moves from having a lack of water (Waste Land), to having possibly too much and having it be ‘death by water’. Quite frankly, I’d rather have too much water than none at all. Water provides life, without water, you have nothing.       
     Phlebes the Phoenician, starts to drown and starts to pass his age and youth. The poem hints that he could possibly be dead – “once handsome and as tall as you” but it doesn’t confirm it. It’s weird that earlier the people were so distraught over not having any water and the land being ‘waste’, but now we’re concerned over having too much, too much life, too much hope for life. There’s a connection between the death and life. Death, being the waste land above and life or living dead is more underwater. Without water, you are hopeless – you can’t create without it, you are stuck at a standstill of misery (kind of like Sybil, old but never dying). The irony in this section goes back to the very first line of the entire poem – SPRING. Spring, like water is a creation of life, but in this poem spring season is considered bad and water is deadly.

Part 3: Explication: The Fire Sermon

     The third section of The Waste Land is called the Fire Sermon, which is something a Buddhist councils his followers to conceive an aversion for the burning flames of passion and physical sensation, and thus live a holy life, attain freedom from earthly things, and finally leave the cycle of rebirth for Nirvans. This section is about LUST vs. LOVE.      In the beginning of the first sestina, the narrator talks about the river –“the river tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymhs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.” The song refers to a marriage song of nymphs that are described as ‘lovely daughters of the flood.’ The land is brown, deserted, marking the waste land. The nymphs are gone – the river gods have departed leaving it with a lack of life. “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends or other testimony summer nights,” all of these things would mean that there’s life still present at the river. There’s no garbage, nothing left forgotten, no sign of human life. The psalmist describes a weeping for their land – “by the water of Leman I sat down and wept…” The poem, To His Coy Mistress is alluded to from the line “but at my back in a cold blast I hear.”--- (poem) ‘but at my back I always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
     The ‘gashouse’ in London is their major source of power- it’s smutty and doesn’t help their ‘wasteland’. “While I was fishing in the dull canal” gives the narrator, or the Fisher King, more of a well-rounded atmosphere. “Missing upon the kind my brother’s wreck and on the king my father’s death before him. White bodies naked on the low damp ground and bones cast in a little low dry garret.” People are dead on the side of the trenches – the Tempest is referred to again.
     “Twit twit twit jug jug jug jug jug so rudely for’d Tereu” is the nightingale song that sets up the third part of this section. The nightingale song, like in The Fire Sermon, is hinting at a rape – “rudely forc’d”. A woman wouldn’t be singing to this however, but more yelling or screaming.
     In the Unreal City of London, a Smyrna merchant ‘with a pocket full of currents’ tries to seduce the narrator, the Fisher King by asking him to lunch and a weekend away in Metropole. The merchant doesn’t even know the narrator yet tries to seduce him anyways - theme of lust vs. love. Taro cards are present again; like in the first section of the Waste Lands it foresees something, and in this instance it’s the merchant. The merchant seducing the Fisher King alludes to Dante.
     The next speaker is Tiresias – he’s a blind seer like the fortune teller earlier on in the poem. He talks about his apartment – and then about a man who arrived at a woman’s house. After the meal ends, the man assaults her as she is not able to put up any defense – she was drugged making her weak and tired. He rapes her willingly and again refers back to the theme of lust vs. love where there is obviously no love present at all. The man is spiritually dead and the woman in a way is too – “Well now that’s done; and I’m glad it’s over.” She accepts it and doesn’t seem to feel…anything that a normal person would. Perhaps living in the Waste Land people were just okay with the things going wrong with and around them.
     The final part of the section has a setting of a lower class fisherman lounge probably sometime in the afternoon where music is being played. The song essentially sums up all of what was discussed throughout this section – the river that ‘sweats oil and tar’, the rape and the overall theme of lust vs. love. “Weilalala leia Wallala leialala” is used to show when someone is crying. Dante is referred to “Richmond and Kew undid me” – (Dante) ‘Siena made me, Maremma unmade me,’ a reference to her violent death in Maremma at her husband’s hands. “Burning burning burning burning” alludes back to section 2, the Buddha’s Fire Sermon (BUT the line isn’t quoted from it). The song is used to bring everything together.

Part 2: Summary: A Game of Chess

     Check mate. A game of chess is a power struggle over who can capture their opponents King first. Like in chess, this section is about the struggle of relationships. In the first stanza alone, there are three failed relationships. From the line “The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble” – “From satin cases poured in rich profusion” we start with the first one that the speaker narrates. A woman is sitting in her Chair, which is capitalized – possibly meaning that she is royalty? The man with her hides ‘his eyes behind his wing’ so she drinks wine or ‘fruited vines’ to ease her pain of being rich and alone.      The second failed relationship goes from “Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes” – “stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.” Unguent, used in the text is a soothing preparation spread on wounds, burns, rashes, abrasions, or other topical injuries. Synthetic means fake, and so her ‘fake’ and strange perfumes that are in the air, and are ‘fattening’ the candles that are lit means that the perfume is dangerous, flammable, and probably not perfume. The smoke goes into the ceiling tiles, meaning that the candles are probably high up – torches! This alludes to the banquet given by Dido, queen of Carthage, for Aeneas, with whom she fell in love. However, the love between Dido and Aeneaus was definitely a failure. When Aeneas is fooled by a man who he believes to be a God, he leaves Dido to create a new Troy on Latin soil. Dido is shocked that he disappeared, and when he returns, she makes rejects him because he had actually thought of leaving her. After Aeneas leaves, she says that “Death must come when he is gone.” Their relationship fails.
     The third failed relationship isn’t necessarily a failed relationship, but a stolen one. Starting from the line, “Huge sea-wood filled with copper” to “and other withered stumps of time,” we are able to understand the happenings of what a ‘barbarous king’ does to a woman. We can feel the tone of the poem by using things like “sad light.” The “sylvan scene” is an allusion to a scene from an epic poem, Paradise Lost, where we are given a description of Eden through the eyes of the Devil. “The change of Philomel,” is an allusion to another poem by Elliot, Sweeney Among the Nightingales, that focused on a brutish modern man named Sweeney, that was in the company of disreputable women (nightingales) in a café and perhaps a brothel at night. Between the tone of the lines, the allusions and what they allude to, and the line “so rudely forced, yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice and still she cried,” makes it obvious that she was raped.  Elliot, using ‘nightingale,’ like he would have in his older poem, would have made it seem like having sex with woman was perhaps something easy – because they were disreputable and worked in brothels. However, in this instance, it wasn’t okay, so the ‘nightingale’ cried for help, when the people living in the ‘desert’ or wasteland didn’t care and ‘the world pursued.’
     The second part of this section is kind of dull. The man doesn’t seem interested in the woman or what’s going on at all. Their lack of communication backs up the idea of the lack of their relationship. The woman is asking the man to stay with her, she says her ‘nerves are bad’ – she’s nervous. “Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.” The woman is asking the man to speak of what he’s feeling, and when he responds he avoids the question in a way that he starts to ask what the wind is doing, or what is going on outside. The man continues to ramble on, and in the end says that ‘we shall play a game of chess," the game that would continue to be their relationship struggle.
     The third and final part of section two is about an underclass woman struggling while her husband is away and when he returns from war. Demobbed was a term used for when someone got discharged from the army after the First World War.  A man named Albert was one that get demobbed after four years. His girl spent her time at the bar, “HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME” is a sign that the bar is closing – a sign that she’s there late. The woman’s friend, is telling her to smarten up and get herself together. Albert gave (his wife?) money to get new teeth, and while he was away she still hadn’t done so. She has a bad personal appearance that he ‘couldn’t bear to look at.’ Her friend, trying to convince her to get new teeth start to try to worry her – “he wants a good time, and if you don’t give it to him, there’s other will.” A good time meaning sex obviously, but if he thinks she’s hideous and is gross without teeth, than she’ll be left on her own. The woman however isn’t bothered by this and almost seems as if she’d be glad if someone else took him off her hands. She thinks to herself, that she’s only 31, has had 5 kids, and took pills to get rid of the last one. The ‘chemist’ or druggist told her it’d be alright, but she was never the same after. It seems as if she became bitter. When Albert returned home, they ate ham, which was a big thing because during WWI and the times after, it was hard to get and very expensive to buy – especially for underclass people.  The woman says goodnight to everyone she knows, and then kills herself due to her failed relationship.
     All of section two is about a lack of relationships or failed relationships. Most of the people in this section that end up having failed relations have a tragic end. Living in a wasteland, you’d need the people around you to survive. People without anyone felt that ending their lives were the easiest thing to do. Ironically, the couples and people throughout this section played minor chess games with each other, but in the end, they didn’t really want to play at all.

The Burial of the Dead

Part 1: Explication:
    
     Part one of the poem, The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot, is symbolic to a book of prayer known as The Order for the Burial of the Dead that contains different parts of the bible. At the start of the poem we are immediately placed in London where “April is the cruelest month.” April, usually known as a lively month is in the season of spring where everything grows and blooms.  It’s ironic that they use April instead of a winter month that would usually represent dying or death. In this poem however, the winter months “kept them warm”.  The first four lines of the poem allude to the first few lines of the Canterbury Tales, ‘when April with his showers sweet with fruit the drought of March has pierced unto the root, and bathed each vein with liquor that has power to generate their inn and sire the flower.’ The poem, alluding to the tales, alludes to it in more of an opposite way. Instead of spring bringing showers and rain that would help the land, spring is known as the cruelest month probably hinting that there is little or no rain. The land that is now a ‘wasteland’ wouldn’t grow or want thing to grow there.
     Speaker 1 is an old German woman who starts talking in line 8 of part one that reads, “summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee”. When talking to her friend in the ‘Hofgarten’ she tells him/her that she is not a Russian woman at all, but is in fact a true German from Lithuania. The rest of the stanza from there is about the old lady reminiscing over past times. She talks about sledding with her cousin as a child, and from that we learn that her name is Marie. The old woman talks about her and her cousin sledding in the mountains because she felt ‘free’ in her youth. This is important because youth doesn’t last forever – when you are young you have the freedom to do almost anything because your body allows you to, but as you age your body starts to refrain yourself from doing some of these things – you start to lose your freedom. She connects sledding in the mountains to her freedom and youth.  The last line of the stanza represents her age and the death of the day at night. Reading and going south in the winter are general things people do as they get older – she has lost her youth, and has become a stereotypical aged woman.
     The second stanza starts out asking “what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” when oddly enough their parts are technically in the wrong order – roots shouldn’t clutch what branches grow, but branches should clutch what roots grow because branches grow from roots. The ‘son of man’ is an allusion to Ezekiel chapter 2 which is presented by, ‘ in the valley of dry bones, God asks Ezekiel, “ Son of man, can these bones live?” and is answered, “O lord god, thou knowest.”’ This connects to the death above ground – the valley of dry bones. The connotations of bones can perhaps be meant in a literal sense of people dying or that are dead. It could also be meant in a way that bones are the bones of the earth – and that the earth will persevere no matter what. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” is an allusion to Sibyl because she asked for a long life, but forgot to ask for long youth. She would no longer be able to do anything because she’d be a shriveled up woman who continued to live miserably.
      The second speaker, also a woman, starts talking midway through the second stanza in German, which translates into, “ fresh blows the wind to the homeland, my Irish darling where do you linger.” It alludes to Tristan and Isolde, a man that was sent to escort the princess back to his homeland for his king. However, they fell in love with each other on their way back, and because she was meant for Tristan’s king, their love was forbidden. They lacked a true relationship that they could have given each other, and because they could not be together, they committed suicide. The Speaker of this part, called hyacinth, is flower that grows in the spring between April and May, which are known as the cruelest months. The hyacinth that grows in what is insinuated to be the deadliest months are flowers for the mourning (because West Wind killed Hyacinthus with a discus because of all the attention he was getting from Apollon and Zephyrus. Apollon then transformed the dying youth into the flower, the hyacinth, which from there became the mourning flower). Both situations between Tristan and Isolde and Apollon and Hyacinthus are examples of the fail or lack of love.
     The third speaker, Madame Sosostris, is fortune teller in Europe, “the wisest woman in Europe, with a wicked pack of cards,” (tarot cards). “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!” is a reference to the Temptest, a play from Shakespeare. In a ship wreck, two lovers die, another example of failed love. Belladonna refers to nightshade that is a deadly poison that is usually put into drinks, or put on the ‘rocks’. “Fear death by water” is a very dull phrase because we’re not sure if Sosostris is saying be afraid of too much or too little water – she’s foretelling something.
    The unreal city, London, has an interesting phenomenon that some likes to acknowledge that people cross the London Bridge and pass St. Mary Woolnoth on their way to the city. “I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,” this is an allusion to Dante’s inferno. Dante describes the people in limbo because they lived without praise or blame or didn’t know the faith. The people, who did know the faith or did live in praise or with blame, didn’t live in limbo so they were able to sigh and exhale in relief. “That corpse you planted last year in our garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” This is hinting that a year ago, a body was buried probably in the spring, because that’s the time that things bloom – also die.
     If the poem was to have a fourth speaker, it would start with, “There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, ‘Stenson!’ and then would continue to the end of the last stanza of the section. Here we are not sure whether or not this is the narrator of the poem or a whole other speaker. We aren’t given specific characteristics or names so we are left to question.

Things that will reappear: The Waste Land – Holy Grail, lack of: Water, spirituality, war, history (repeating itself), water, tarot cards, failed/lack of relationships.

Question: Second Stanza: “Son of man – and the dry stone no sound of water,” is that people questioning whether or not God is there? The land is a waste land, and so maybe they would believe that God would fix it, and because they haven’t, they question his existence. Lack of spirituality?

The Wasteland

The Waste Land

T.S Eliot

       The Waste Land as a title is symbolic to death above ground, and how after WW1 London was left to be a lifeless “wasteland”. The main theme throughout the poem is life/death/people that lose purpose of their lives that may as well be dead.

       The Greek text underneath the title translates to, “I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage and when the boy said to her, “Sibyl what do you want?” that one replied, “I want to die.”” Sibyl was an ancient Greek prophetess who asked Apollo for a long life (measured in grains of sand), but Sibyl forgot to ask for long youth as well, which would have saved her from aging and later on dying. She continued to live forever but as a very old lady, and later when asked what she wanted in life, she asked to die. It sets up the entire poem – people living in the “Wasteland” wanted to escape it by any means possible.   

Nani Explication

 

     The poem Nani, by Alberto Rios, is a very personal poem about the author himself. In 1952, Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. As a child he spoke both the English and Spanish language, and the poem shows his multicultural upbringing. Because he was punished in school for speaking Spanish, he slowly started to lose his ability to speak Spanish. His poem Nani describes an encounter with his Spanish speaking grandmother and his inability to communicate with her. Through body language, food, and culture, they find ways to understand each other without the use of words.

     Nani is written as a sestina. A sestina usually consists of six stanzas for the body of the poem, with each line ending in one of six chosen end words. The poem ends with three lines called an envoi, which includes the same repeated end words. The peculiar thing about Nani is the fact that it instead of six stanza’s, it only has three (two stanzas and one envoi). By only using three stanza’s it backs up the theme of the poem – the lack of communication between the boy and grandmother. The form of the poem is in a way dominated by the lack of communication between the two characters - the stanzas shrink. The poem has two stanzas, which could be one for each character, and because they are separate or split, it shows the lonesomeness between them.

     The six end words are crucial to the flow and meaning of a sestina, and in the poem Nani, it utilizes the words “serves, me, her, words, more, and speak”. The word SERVE can be seen as someone who serves someone else or someone who offers help. In the poem, the grandmother serves her grandson “sopa de arroz” showing her culture and her care she has for him. “ME” found him to be embarrassed and discomfited by the fact that he felt that he wasn’t able to give something back to his grandmother. “HER” is used throughout the poem as a form of communication and for the boy to simply watch his grandmother be, “I watch her,” “looks at me only with her back,” “I tell her I taste mint, and watch her speak smiles at the stove.” WORDS is one of the main parts of the theme – the idea that neither character has the words to speak or express the importance of one another to each other, “I own no words to stop her.” The word MORE is used in the poem to mainly provide us with an example of how the grandmother and grandson communicate – with food and culture. The grandmother, as most grandmothers would do, feeds and spoils her grandson. The boy feels so much love towards his grandmother that he wouldn’t dare to stop her. Finally, the word SPEAK. The importance of speak is the boys loss of his Spanish culture, he can no longer speak it or understand it, which provokes different unsettling feelings when he’s with his grandmother. 

     The poem Nani has a tone of love and sadness. The two characters love each other very much, but the boy feels like he’s allowing his grandmother to serve him in a way that he cannot return her favor. However, the boy understands that her serving (especially family) is the “tremendous string around her, holding her together.”  He’s upset that he cannot communicate with her especially with the age she is at, “I wonder how much of me will die with her, what were the words I could have been, was. Her insides speak through a hundred wrinkles, now, more than she can bear, steal around her, shouting.” He fears that he’s running out of time to rebuild his communication of words with her. He loves her so much that he questions how much of himself he will lose when she’s not around any longer.

Death, Be Not Proud Explication

    The poem, Death, Be Not Proud, by John Donne, is about death being no more than a short sleep. A short sleep? Who wants to go to sleep for a short while? Exactly. No one does. The poem is about so much more than the idea that dying is like resting. The Speaker in the poem is afraid.
    Through an extended metaphor and many personifications making death out to be a person, you can see that the Speaker is only trying to convince himself that death is nothing to fear. The Speaker interacts with Death as though it can respond, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee – Mighty and dreadful, for though art not so (Line1-2).”  People view death to be ‘mighty and dreadful’; something that Death isn’t actually able to be. However, death is frightening, which is a reason that death should not be proud. No one wants to die, and the good people Death takes are only their bodies, not their physical selves, “rest if their bones and soul’s delivery (Line8)”. The Speaker is so afraid that he has to talk down to Death and make Death seem inferior to him –  “poor death, nor yet canst kill me” (Line 4).
    In lines 5-6, “ From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, - much pleasure – then, from thee much more must flow;” The poet uses a metaphor to make rest and sleep be a ‘picture’ of death. He tries to make himself believe that if he pleasures sleep so much that death couldn’t be that different. FLOW as in follow or result, is like saying that you can get so much more from death than you can rest. You would have more time being dead than you would simply resting.
    The Speaker starts to link death to slavery in line 9. “Thou art salve to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and like being a slave, you would never know how things would end up, what would happen to you. The different reasons that death could occur would be by chance or maybe accidents, kings like the military system, or fate – the idea that maybe your life is decreed somewhere else (death in this case would be like an executioner).  “Dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell - and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well (Line 10- 11)” Poison, war, and sickness are reasons that kind of connect to those of the last line(9). It’s chance that you’d get poisoned, kings would be that of war, and then sickness would most likely be fated. The use of poppy and charms makes me think of the Wizard of Oz which was meant to make the characters sleep forever. In the poem however, it’s used in a way that poppies or charms would ‘make us sleep as well – and better than thy stroke” as in death. The Speaker was basically saying that he’d rather die by poppies than the executioner he believes death to be. The symbolic uses of poppies are quite interesting; one is that they are symbolic to both sleep and death: sleep because of the opium extracted from them, and death because of the common blood-red color of the red poppy in particular. The second is that they are sometimes used for remembering soldiers who died during wartime – like the example of how someone would die in the earlier lines. And finally, the third use is that the bright scarlet color signifies a promise of resurrection after death – something that the Speaker desperately needs.
    The poem has an Italian-Petrachan style octave-rhyming scheme - ABBA ABBA and the next two lines are alike with CDDC.  The last couplet is somewhat mysterious because it doesn’t really fit into the rhyme scheme like the rest of the poem. However, the couplet suggests that Death itself is going to die. That’s the turn in the poem. The turn fits into the Italian sonnet scheme because the answer to the Speakers problem would be that Death would die in the end instead of himself or people in general. If people were to live eternally forever, people wouldn’t actually be ‘dead’. The Speaker, when he says, ‘thou shalt die’, is saying that he’d much rather have Death die and have people live forever.
     “One short sleep passed, we wake eternally, - And dearth shall be no more; death, thou shalt die (Line 13-14)”. The Speaker’s extended metaphor continues and ends in the last few lines as he questions whether or not there is something more after death. He tries to believe that he’ll live eternally after death, and that ‘short sleep’ isn’t made out to be that simple and dull. As the Speaker continues to try to reassure himself that Death is nothing more than sleep, he reiterates that Death should not be proud, that it’s unworthy. The Speaker continues to make Death seem inadequate and inferior to himself until the very last stanza. He’s still afraid.

Death, Be Not Proud Questions

1.  The poem as a whole is an extended metaphor towards the idea that death is no more than a short sleep. “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, (Line 5)” “And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well (Line 11)” “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, though shalt die (Line 13-14)”. The speaker is afraid that death is it, that there is no afterlife, that it’s only a ‘short sleep’.
     John Donne uses personifications to give death human traits. Death is thought to be “mighty and dreadful (Line 2),” but mighty, especially as a connotation, would seem like strong, powerful, or even large – none of these things could really be like death in the literal sense it is used in. The Speaker in the poem addresses Death (Ex: “Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me” Line4) as if it’s a person who is capable of responding. The speaker even talks down to death when he uses the phrase ‘poor death’ – he’s making himself seem like a tough guy because that’s what he needed to feel comfortable.

2.  The speaker doesn’t believe that Death should be proud because people believe it to be frightening. The people that Death takes “rest if their bones and soul’s delivery (Line8)” are the best of men that ‘with thee do go’ but only die physically, not spiritually. The Speaker compares death to sleep and rest, and so he tries to make it seem that death is nothing more than sleep. (If you were to make Death a person and Sleep a person, it would mean that Death would basically be an imitator… nothing anyone would ever want to be. The Speaker is trying to make Death feel bad, and prove that it should not be proud).  The Speaker even tries to say that flowers and magic could kill people better than Death. Death should not be proud because “short sleep past, we wake eternally” – He tries to say that people live eternally after death. Death doesn’t really do it’s job (I guess) because the Speaker continues to compare it with sleep. Saying that after death, a person wakes makes Death almost unworthy because waking isn’t part of death. However, if waking was to happen, “death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”
    The Speakers arguments are consistent, being that he either tries to upset death by trying to show that it’s worthless, or that he compares death to sleep. It’s logical in the fact that you can tell he’s scared. He tries to reassure himself while making death a person to be able to make Death more uncomfortable than he is. It would be persuasive if it didn’t scream ‘afraid’.

3.  The tone of the poem is a man desperately trying to convince himself that there is nothing to fear in death. One of the biggest factories in being able to tell that the tone of the poem is fearful is that the Speaker makes Death a person. He tries to make himself less tense by talking it out to Death.  The poem includes fluffy things like sleep, flowers, sprits, charms, and the ‘stroke’ that death could make to make Death to seem less scary.

4.   It has an Italian-Petrachan style octave-rhyming scheme - ABBA ABBA  and the next two lines are alike with CDDC.  The last couplet is somewhat mysterious because it doesn’t really fit into the rhyme scheme like the rest of the poem. The couplet though doesn’t really reinforce the idea of the poem, but it suggests that Death itself is going to die – the poem turns. The turn fits more into the Italian sonnet scheme because the answer to the Speakers problem would be that Death would die in the end.

4 Types of Sonnets

SONNETS: Are almost always written in iambic pentameter. The sonnet is usually used for the serious treatment of love, but has also been used to address questions of death, God (or religion), political situation and other related subjects. A sonnet almost always contains a turn, also known as a volta.

1. Italian Sonnet: rhyme scheme: ABBAABBACDCDCD or ABBAABBACDECDE. It is usually divided into eight lines called an octave and six lines called a sestet. Usually between the octave and the sestet there is a division of thought: the turn coming in line nine. The octave presents a situation and the sestet a comment, or the octave presents an idea and the sestet an example, or the octave presents a question and the sestet an answer. Thus form reinforces idea.

Example:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

2. English (Shakespearean) Sonnet: rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG

The English sonnet is composed of three quatrains and a couplet. There is often a correspondence between the units marked by the rhyme and the development of thought. The three quatrains may present three examples of an idea and the couplet a conclusion, or the quatrains may present three metaphorical statements of one idea and the couplet an application of the idea. Thus, again, form reinforces idea. The turn usually comes in line 13 or during the final couplet.

Example:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


3. Spencerian Sonnet- rhyme scheme: ABABBCBCCDCDEE

Like the Shakespearian sonnet you have 3 quatrains that seem to overlap with the rhyme, yet it develops up three distinct yet closely related ideas. The turn appears in the couplet. The couplet is used as commentary to the three quatrains or a conclusion to an argument formulated in the three quatrains.

The Spenserian Sonnet is based on a fusion of elements of both the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. It is similar to the Shakespearan sonnet in the sense that its set up is based more on the 3 quatrains and a couplet,a system set up by Shakespeare; however it is more like the Petrarchan tradition in the fact that the conclusion follows from the argument or issue set up in the earlier quatrains.

Spenser usually used a parody of the blazon. A blazon was the idealization or praise of a mistress (usually by singling out different parts of the woman’s body and finding appropriate corresponding metaphors, or by using Metonymy, a part of the woman, or her body to stand for the whole – SEE “My Mistress Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun”).

Example:

Happy ye leaves! whenas those lily hands,
Which hold my life in their dead doing might,
Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands,
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight.
And happy lines on which, with starry light,
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look,
And read the sorrows of my dying sprite,
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book.
And happy rhymes! bathed in the sacred brook
Of Helicon, whence she derived is,
When ye behold that angel's blessed look,
My soul's long lacked food, my heaven's bliss.
Leaves, lines, and rhymes seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.

4. Hybrid Sonnet- Is the combination of italian sonnet structure with the shakspearien rhyme scheme with minor differences. The rhyme scheme is

a b a b
c d c d
e f f e
g g

A hybrid or modern sonnet can take on any variety of sonnet forms (combing them or ignoring them altogether). Some modern sonnets have rhyme scheme (though not all use true rhyme) and others do not. Usually the all have a turn, though the turn can come anywhere from line 9 to line 13. Just note that if the poem has fourteen lines it is probably some form of sonnet. Look for the turn. 

Example:

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

     The poem, Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape, by John Ashbury, is about the cartoon Popeye. We’re never supposed to truly understand what is going on throughout it because it’s an “undecoded message”. In most of the original Popeye cartoons, Popeye tries to save Olive Oyl, his love, from different foes. When he was incapable of fighting enemies off, he would find himself a can of spinach that would give him amazing strength, and the power to save his lady.
    One of the main underlying themes to the poem is the lack of communication between the poet and the reader. Because it was written to not understand, we have a hard time making sense of why the characters do what they do. An interesting perspective to this idea is that it is written about a cartoon, which cartoons normally don’t make sense. You don’t necessarily have to look deeper into cartoons because they’re usually just meant to be entertaining, It often seems like characters do what they please, without reason or explanation.
    The Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape title is quite a peculiar one. The poem is set in a city, and the farm brings out the difference between a rural and country life. Even though there are no ‘rutabagas’ in the poem, there are other allusions to different vegetables and foods: Popeye with his spinach, and the names of Swee’Pea and Olive Oyl. Landscape, usually referring to a painting, is like looking at picture that’s worth a thousand words – you can come up with any perspective as to what’s going on in it (as long as it makes sense), which is just like the poem. You have to fill in the blanks by yourself.
    The poem, written as a sestina, has six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet. The fact that the form is complicated makes the poem even more interestingly complex by it being almost incapable of validating what actually goes on it. Throughout the poem there are six words that are repeated: thunder, apartment, country, pleasant, scratched, spinach. These words are used to give the poem thickness, to try to give us an idea to what the poem may be getting at (like apartment/country = city/rural or thunder/pleasant = unhappy/content or spinach, the love Popeye has). There’s no really any specific rhythm scheme in it, but it does use enjambment, for instance between the last final two stanzas, “Bumpkin, always burping like that. Minute at first, the thunder - Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,”. The enjambments used to simply allow the sentences to flow right over the line break. 

                     “The first of the undecoded messages read: "Popeye sits
                     in thunder,
                     Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,
                     From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges: a country."

     The slightly indecipherable poem, first talks about Popeye sitting in thunder. Thunder in a literal sense could mean a weather or storm, but in the more broad sense could mean other things like a big bang sound, anger (probably with loud noises), or even superiority. Popeye seems to not even be acknowledged – or he’s ignored. There are ‘livid’ colored or furiously angry colored curtains in his very small, shoebox-like apartment. “A tangram emerges: a country.” A tangram, or an ancient puzzle, probably shaped like a landscape is symbolic to the poem as a whole. Like puzzle pieces you would try to fit together, you do the same with this poem – try to solve it.
     Popeye was forced to leave the country because of his jealous father and wasn’t even living in his apartment in the poem. However, the Sea-Hag, one of his enemies was there ‘spending vacation on his green couch’. When Olive Oyl reaches the apartment with news of Popeye, she threatens to take Swee’pea out of the country because that’s where she believes he is. When they both leave the Sea-Hag in Popeye’s apartment by herself, the “Now the apartment - succumbed to a strange new hush - Actually it's quite pleasant - Here.". "If this is all we need fear from – spinach - Then I don't mind so much.” Sea-Hag enjoyed her peace. She realized that spinach she didn’t need to fear, even though she probably didn’t fear the spinach, but what the spinach did to Popeye.

                     “Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,
                     The color of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched
                     His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.”
   
    Domestic, or family, thunder filled the apartment. I find this funny because even though the Sea-Hag seemed to be in such solitude, the thought of Popeye seemed to disrupt that. The color of spinach, which is probably her saying that maybe she should fear it, and the possibility of Popeye returning home with Olive Oyl. The irony in this is that even though Popeye was technically exiled out of his own home, he’s still more relaxed and carefree than the Sea-Hag is.