Ali Field

Foreword Journal #5

            The author of the foreword, Edwidge Danticat, had discussed, like our class, why Janie allowed Tea Cake to beat her. A view that I never realized came to my attention and helped me further understand the book. Danticat discussed that Hurston may not have wanted characters who were “too holy nor too evil.” If he were too nice to her, she would praise him, but if he were too mean, then there would not have been a love story. Danticat also mentions that Tea Cake’s sins toward Janie are repented when he risked his life, and eventually died, in order to save hers.

            Hurston often used places and events that she had been to in Their Eyes Were Watching God. She also debatably wrote this book in seven weeks. Using her own experiences could have helped her write the book in such a short amount of time. Her writing the book in a mere seven weeks could also attribute to pieces of the book that were not as well written, such as Tea Cake getting rabies from a dog riding a swimming cow. It is amazing that an author could find time to write a book in seven weeks while on an anthropology trip in Haiti, but it reflects negatively in pieces of her writing.

             Danticat also brought to my attention that it has been debated whether Janie Crawford is “a good role model for women or was she solely defined by the men in her life.” Throughout the book, I, like other people mentioned in the foreword, do not think of Janie as a role model. This makes me curious if Hurston intended Janie to be a role model. At the end Hurston makes me feel like Janie is supposed to be a role model because Pheoby wants her husband, “Sam [to] take [her] fishin’ wid him after this” to spent more time with him like how Janie spent time with Tea Cake. I don’t feel like Janie became a role model until you lost her love and learned lessons throughout her life, but I still wonder what Hurston intended.