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.