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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.