Tea Cake And Janie example essay topic

Theme Analysis Alice Walker depicts Zora Neale Hurston's work as providing the African-American literary community with its prime symbol of "racial health - a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings" (190). Appropriately, Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, provides an enlightening look at the journey of one of these undiminished human beings, Janie Crawford. Janie's story - based on principles of self-exploration, self-empowerment, and self-liberation - details her loss and subsequent attainment of her innocence, as she constantly learns and grows from her difficult experiences with gender issues and racism in Their Eyes Were Watching God. After joyfully discovering an archetype for sensuality and love under the pear tree at age sixteen, Janie quickly comes to understand the reality of marriage when she marries Logan Killicks, then Joe Starks. Both men attempt to coerce Janie into submission to them by treating her like a possession: where Killicks works Janie like a mule, Joe objectifies her like a medal around his neck.

In addition, Janie learns that passion and love are tied to violence, as Killicks threatens to kill her, and both Joe and Tea Cake beat her to assert their dominance. Yet Janie continually struggles to keep her inner Self intact and strong, remaining resilient in spite of her husbands' physical, verbal, and mental abuse. Janie's resilience is rewarded when she finally meets and marries Tea Cake, who represents the closest semblance to her youthful idealism regarding love and marriage. Another male figure playing prominently in Janie's life is the white man who raped her grandmother; her lineage determines, therefore, that Jani will look whiter than other black women.

This fair complexion eventually attracts the ambitious Joe Starks, yet also contributes to Joe's objectification of Janie. Yet, outward appearances aside, Janie's identity takes shape in response to the white male tyranny that made her own birth possible. For example, Janie's husband Jody paints his house "a gloat y, sparkly white", (44) humiliates the citizens of Eatonville in similar ways as the white man would, and forces Janie into the slavish servitude reflected by the identity-confining head rag he makes her wear (51). Yet, Janie fights Joe's tyranny by telling him off just before he dies in Chapter Eight, then reclaims her own identity by burning up "every one of her head rags" (85).

Similarly, Janie encounters Mrs. Turner, Hurston's symbol of internalized racism, who doesn't "blame de white folks from hating [African-Americans] 'cause Ah can't stand 'em mah self" (135). Again, however, Janie remains true to herself as she continues to form her own identity by refusing to leave Tea Cake and class off as Mrs. Turner suggests. Rather than self-destruct under the constant realities of racism and misogyny she receives throughout her life, Janie Crawford does the opposite at the close of Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel's final image states what Janie does throughout the story - taking her difficult past in and growing stronger and wiser as a result of it. Author Zora Neale Hurston believed that freedom "was something internal.

The man himself must make his own emancipation" (189). Likewise, in her defining moment of identity formation, Janie "pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see" (184). At the end of a novel focusing on self-revelation and self-formation, Janie survives with her soul - made resilient by continual struggle - intact.

Metaphor Analysis Pear tree: In her Nanny's back yard, Janie lies beneath the pear tree when, "the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation" (11). Janie's youthful idealism leads her to believe that this intense sensuality must be similar to the intimacy between lovers, and she wishes "to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom!" (11). The image suggests a wholeness - as bees pollinate blossoms paralleling human sexual intercourse - which Janie finds missing in her marriages to both Logan Killicks and Joe Starks, but finally discovers in her relationship with Tea Cake.

Mules: Janie's grandmother initiates comparison between black women and mules, declaring "De [African-American] woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see" (14). In addition, both of Janie's first two husbands own mules, and the way they respectively treat them parallels the way they treat Janie. Logan Killicks works his mule demandingly; Joe Starks, having bought Matt Bonner's mule from him, puts it out to pasture as a status symbol rather than using it. Janie's hair: Forced by Joe Starks (who refuses to allow other men to lust after his wife's hair) to be worn up under a head rag throughout their marriage, Janie's hair functions as a symbol of the submission Joe demanded of her. Janie surrenders to Joe's will externally by wearing the head rag, yet remains steadfast internally against Joe's abuse.

Thus, her hair suggests that Janie "had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them" (68). After Joe's death, Janie burns all of her head rags in a symbolic act of liberation. Their Eyes Were Watching God: The novel's title is taken from Chapter 18, as the hurricane strikes the Everglades. Tea Cake and Janie "sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if he meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God" (151). This passage, taken in conjunction with other occurrences in Their Eyes Were Watching God, signifies God's arbitrary will, which provides Janie and her companions with a sense of fate and destiny.

Janie recognizes that people have to be watching because life comes down hard on them, as evidenced in the case of many characters throughout the novel. Top Ten Quotes 1) Janie, on her gossiping neighbors, stressing the importance of storytelling and oral tradition: "Ah don't mean to bother wid tellin' 'em nothin', Pheoby. 'Tain't worth de trouble. You can tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf" (6). 2) Janie, to the men of Eatonville: "Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business.

He told me how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think yo do. It's so easy to make yo " self out God Almighty when you ain't got nothin' tuh strain against but women and chickens" (70-71). 3) On Janie: "She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels" (72). 4) Janie, after Joe's death: "To my thinkin' mourning oughtn't tuh last no longer'n grief" (89). 5) Eatonville habitats, on Janie: "It was hard to love a woman that always made you feel so wishful" (111).

6) On Tea Cake: "Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place" (122). 7) On waiting for the mighty hurricane: "They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. 8) Tea Cake, on Janie: "don't say you " se ole. You " se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo' ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo' young girl days to spend wid me" (172).

9) Janie, on love: "love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore" (182). 10) Janie: "It's uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin' fuh theyselves" (183)..