CHARACTERS & VOICES
This character believes Janie’s spirit is killed by hard work and advises her to seek her horizon.
Phoeby Watson
The majority of the novel is a flashback framed by Janie telling her story on this location.
The porch of her house in Eatonville
Janie’s first marriage is arranged to this much older farmer, symbolizing a life of duty.
Logan Killicks
Emerson's central doctrine that urges individuals to trust their own intuition and inner voice.
Self-Reliance
Janie’s hair, a symbol of her unique sensuality and power, is forced to be wrapped in one of these by Jody.
Head rag
This Transcendentalist author lived for two years at Walden Pond to "live deliberately."
Henry David Thoreau
The Transcendentalist movement was centered in this state during the 1830s and 1840s.
Massachusetts
This natural disaster in the Everglades serves as the novel's climax and a test of the characters' relationship with God/nature.
hurricane
Janie’s lifelong quest, symbolized by the horizon, for this ideal of partnership, passion, and mutual respect.
True love
Thoreau uses this body of water as a symbol for the transcendental soul and the depth of nature.
Walden Pond
Janie’s third husband, who represents love, play, and equality, but is also flawed by possessiveness.
Vergible "Tea Cake" Woods
What is the Everglades (or the Muck)?
The "Muck" is the fertile farmland near Lake Okeechobee where Janie finds true love and community.
What is "Civil Disobedience
Thoreau was briefly jailed for refusing to pay a tax, an event that inspired his essay "Resistance to This."
What is Nature to transcendentalists?
The Transcendentalist belief that God, or the divine, is present in every aspect of this, not just in churches.
This tree under which young Janie has her erotic awakening symbolizes organic, natural love.
Pear tree
This influential friend and mentor to Thoreau edited The Dial and wrote the essay "Self-Reliance."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is Brook Farm?
This utopian commune, founded by Transcendentalists, famously failed after a devastating fire.
What was the event where Janie is forced to publicly shame Joe Starks, leading to the final rupture in their marriage
The storefront argument over her aging appearance
Hurston explores this theme through Janie’s three marriages, showing her struggle to own her story and speak freely
voice/self-discovery
For Transcendentalists, this season often symbolizes rebirth, intuition, and spiritual growth.
Spring
Janie’s second husband, the ambitious mayor of Eatonville who values power and status over emotion.
Joe "Jody" Starks
The novel begins and ends in this town, a real-life all-Black municipality in Florida.
Eatonville
What was the tragic event that forces Janie to make a terrible, loving choice at the very end of the novel. (Teacake)
Teacake is shot
What is individualism
Transcendentalism and Janie’s journey champion this, a radical focus on the individual’s experience over society’s rules.
The novel’s central symbol for Janie’s dreams and life’s possibilities, which she finally "pulled in" at the end.
The horizon