So the first book I'd like to talk to about is Their Eyes Were Watching God. I just read it with my Mom's book club. I actually read in my highschool AP Literature class, but, being in highschool, I'd didn't really pay attention to what I was reading. So this second time was actually like a first for me.
Anyway, I loved it! I thought it was such an interesting story of strength and weakness. Janie finding the strength within herself to be herself and to live the way that she was happy. And then the people like Joe Starks trying to prove their "manhood" and "strength" by beating Janie physically, metally, and emotionally, and actaully just ended up prove how weak he was inside. All he was able to care about was himself and how he appeared. He had to look like a Man and a powerful one to the towns people. He had to show Janie that he was the boss. He had to show the townspeople that he was in control of his woman. Everything in his life was for show and it ended up ruining anything that could have amounted to any true happiness for him or Janie. It takes real strength to be able to look beyond yourself and put others first. Even with all of the building up of the town Jody did, the whole 20 years he was there he tore down everyone around him (like Janie and Matt Bonner) to get to the top.
I thought it was really interesting how Zora Neale Hurston wrote the story in three parts, divided by Janies three marriages. Interesting form for a story.
I loved Tea Cake! He wasn't your usual romatic love interest. But he was so sweet to Janie and helped her pull out her true self. I would say he saw her true self before she completly knew it existed anymore. Joe had trampled all over her. "The years took all the fight out of Janie's face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul." (First page of chapter 7). But when Tea Cake came along, he encouarged her to do things that Jody had never "allowed" her to do, like checkers, and talking to people, and buying her sodas, and laughing. Tea Cake and Janie truely loved one another. I think the fact that he was 12 years younger than her proves that even more. Not that if that wasn't the case they wouldn't have truely been in love, but I think it's just one more thing that showed they really were looking at the person inside the body. Beyond the face and the soul. It seems to me that that is the purest kind of love, inside love. Even though I do think that being attracted to someone is part of love. And they were, so that was good too.
I hated that Tea Cake smacked Janie around at one point. I mean I understand his reasoning -that he wanted to show the town she was his and couldn't be taken by Mrs. Turner's brother (so basically he was jealous), I don't agree with it in the slightest! I was very surprised, but I guess thats how things were in those days. ("Just because it is, doesn't mean it should be" Australia the movie) And it was sweet how he reacted. If i remember correctly he right afterwards he grabbed her and hugged her and stroked her face and stuff. He was all worried and sad he had hurt her. Well HELLO! don't hit her!!
So at the end it was so sad how Tea Cake dies! It made it so much worse that he was not himself and tried to hurt Janie. That was so sad. But I think in the sense of the story, it was a good thing that he died (that sounded extremly insensitive, but thats not how I mean it). Janie had been through a lot. Three husbands, all completely different kind of men. Her grandmother, because of her own upbringing, had taught her the only way of life that she could see as being the best, that is that a woman gets married for security no matter what the emotional cost. That a woman relies on and is there for a man. I think Janie talked about hating her grandmother because she knew inside of her that the life she had forced her into, even though it was with the best of intentions, Janie wasn't able to see that. All she could see was the continual chain of hurt and degradation that had been put upon her since she was sixteen years old that all started with Logan Killicks, who her grandmother and had had her marry. After her life full of experiences, the strength that was inside of her all along was able to find it's way out and the secure, self relient, capable Janie surfaced. When Tea Cake died, she was able to go home to the town where she had belongings, and start this part of her life. The part where she was alone in her house, but was perfectly fine being that way. She had figured out who she was happy with that. "So Ah'm back home agin and Ah'm satisfied tuh be heah. Ah done been tuh de horizon and back and now Ah kin set heah in mah house and live by comparisons. Dis house ain't so absent of things lak it used tuh be befo' Tea Cake come along. It's full uh thougts" Chapter 20.
On thing that I was really curious about and never was able to quite figure out was on page 61 and 62, chapter six, when Matt Bonner's donkey dies it seemed very symbolic. With how it had become like the town mascott and they gave a big funeral and everything and then that whole strange scene that seemed to go on and on with the buzzards. They even had dialogue. I didn't get that whole scene.
Also, I noticed, she never divorced Logan Killicks did she? Would that have been something that would have caused a problem back then or no? No one said word one about it so I'm thinking maybe not. Or maybe it was just that it's a story and that part was left out. It makes me think of Jane Eyre.
Anyways theres a whole heck of a lot more to talk about in that story, but those are some of my thoughts for now. Anyone else read it? :)