chapters 1-2 journal

Ali Field

September 10^th, 2012

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Chapters 1-2 journal

 While Janie is talking to Pheoby about where she has been and what happened to the boy she ran off with, she used the expression, “Tea Cake is gone.” (7)  By using euphemism and saying ‘gone’ instead of ‘dead,’ it’s apparent that Tea Cake was more important to her than someone she wasn’t close with. This helps me understand her relationship level with him and see that she didn’t just run off to have a fling with a man that “she’s ‘way too old for.” (3) Maybe that was just the term used regularly then, as well as nowadays, but on the first page there is a whole paragraph of imagery of her burying “the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment” (1) which leads me to feel that her use of euphemism of ‘gone’ was carefully selected because the pain of ‘dead’ is too much for her because he meant a lot to her. Janie says he gave her “every consolation in de world” which may have been why she loved him and why she had the strength to come back and face the judgment of the town.

Janie’s grandmother used the metaphor “us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come around in queer ways.” (16) This metaphor lets us see the view of African-Americans from the guardian of Janie. She thinks that blacks are different from whites because they don’t have ‘roots,’ or a strong support system to “fulfill [the] dream of whut a women oughta be and to do.” (16) I feel that this metaphor contradicts her hopes for Janie because he wants her to marry decent, didn’t tell her she is colored until she finds out for herself at age six, and wants to “take a stand on high ground lak [she] dreamed.” If blacks have no strong support system, how does she expect Janie to accomplish these tasks? She must believe the Janie has strength even though she says that she, “in particular,” (16) is a branch without roots.