Characters
"...citified, stylish dressed man with his hat set at an angle that didn't belong in these parts...seal-brown color but he acted like Mr. Washburn...a big voice"
Joe "Jody" Starks
"Night was striding across nothingness with the whole round world in his hands" is an example of which literary technique?
Personification
What do animals in the text symbolize?
brute strength and hard work
"Listen, Sam, if it was nature, nobody wouldn't have tuh look out for babies touchin' stoves, would they? 'Cause dey just naturally wouldn't touch it. But dey sho will. So it's caution." "Naw it ain't, it's nature makes caution. It's de strongest thing dat God ever made, now. Fact is it's de onliest thing God
In modern terms, it is a discussion of nature versus nurture, a fundamental antagonism between humanity and the natural world.
How does rabies impact Tea Cake's personality?
He becomes the polar opposite of what he used to be (more like Jody)
"...seemed to have known him all her life...he looked too young for her...played an imaginary instrument..."
Tea Cake
"[They] sat around stuffing courage into each other's ears" is an example of which literary technique?
What does the horizon symbolize?
sense of personal fulfillment
dreams that are just out of reach
"It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."
Janie’s trip to the horizon requires her to suffer at the hands of two husbands, shoot her third, and brave a ferocious hurricane. Yet for Janie, suffering is not an end in itself. She endures it so that she may experience the fullness of life and the good that comes with the bad.
The genre of the novel is mainly
bildungsroman
"He look like some ole skullhead in de graveyard...His belly is too big too...and his toenails look lak mule foots"
Logan Killicks
"[She had] firm buttocks like she had grapefruits in her hip pockets" is an example of which literary technique?
simile
What does the pear tree symbolize?
blossoming womanhood
a "drug" and hope for love
"The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. 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. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."
The struggle at the heart of the novel is set forth in the starkest terms: humans against God, Janie and the others against nature. It is significant that Motor Boat joins Janie and Tea Cake in their house and that the narrator notes that everybody is united in the same struggle. We see here that the bonds of human interaction and intimacy provide refuge against the forces of nature.
The climax of the novel is
the confrontation between Janie and rabid Tea Cake
"Have some sympathy on me...Put me down easy...Ah'm a cracked plate"
Nanny
"She was wind on the ocean...she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop" is an example of which literary technique?
hyperbole
What does the hurricane symbolize?
destructive power of nature
"[Janie] was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze 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. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid."
The passage relates to an even deeper desire, which is the ultimate goal of the love that Janie seeks; a sense of enlightenment, of oneness with the world around her. Hurston’s prose here finds divinity and spirituality in the fertile lushness of the natural world. Janie sees nature as she wants it to be: a world full of beauty and fulfillment; to serve as her vision of ideal love, of a perfect union with another person – a sexual and spiritual awakening.
Name 2 motifs in the novel
mules and skins
head rags and hair
porches and conversations
blooming, bees, and horizon
"...the men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to bore holes in her shirt"
Janie
"Like a pack of chessy cats"
allusion
What does Janie's hair symbolize?
Jody's dominance and jealousy
"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."
An unusual perspective on gender difference – a fundamental difference between men and women, the passage foreshadows the novel’s thematic concerns: the statement about women is proud and defiant, saying that while men never really reach for their dreams, women can control their wills and chase their dreams. As the novel unfolds, Janie acts according to this notion, battling and struggling in the direction of her dreams.
Name 3 important locations in the novel. Why are they important?
West Florida - Janie grew up here
Eatonville - Jody becomes the mayor of the 1st Black town incorporated into the U.S.
Jacksonville - where Tea Cake and Janie get married
The Muck - where Tea Cake and Janie live and work together.