dipelli’s Blog

There were two poems that I was able to relate to Their Eyes Were Watching God that I thought made pretty strong connections.  First of all would be the words of Dorcas Gustine [p.21], a person who had always spoken their mind during their life and did not regret it a bit despite what the town had to say.  Like Dorcas Gustine who the other villagers disapproved of, was Janie’s running away with Tea Cake, a considerably younger man with not much to his name not long after Jody died.  Janie did not care what society thought of her, she ended up doing what her heart desired.  As Dorcas defends them self, “Berate me who will — I am content.”  Also, Janie always spoke her mind, whether it was of her dreams and disappointments with her first marriage, to verbally attacking her her first two husbands, etc.  When she was not speaking her mind was when she was married to Jody, who controlled what she could and could not do, how she wore her hair, who she could talk to, etc. without any objections from her.  This ate away at Janie, who was a strong character from the get-go, and took her strength away until she completely burst out in rage at Jody just before he died.  As Dorcas explains, “Silence poisons the soul.”

Then there was the story of Margaret Fuller Slack, a woman bitter in death with the lack of accomplishments she had made.  Instead of becoming a novelist dedicated to her profession/aspirations, she married and had eight children.  She did not want to be tied up by taking care of all of these children, she wanted to have the time to write as her husband had promised before they married.  Just as Margaret was forced to compromise herself by being sucked into the traditional “woman’s role,” Janie also was forced to compromise herself in her marriages.  Going into her first marriage, Janie had believed in true love and had great dreams — until she was forced into a marriage with an older man who she soon could not bear to be with.  She had to compromise her dreams of something larger to be a dutiful wife, and compromised herself again in her marriage to Jody by allowing herself to be pushed around and her dreams/inner-strength to be squandered.  Her marriage with Jody especially applies here, because Jody wooed Janie with dreams of a better life and happiness just as Margaret says that John Slack was “luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel.” [p.23]

For my last blog, I want to focus on the events of Chapters 17 and 18 because these two chapters were just filled with action.  To start with, I was very confused in Chapter 17 when Tea Cake beat Janie, but that Janie did not say anything or fight back in any way.  I understand that Tea Cake felt threatened by Mrs. Turner’s brother, and although I would never expect for him to physically beat Janie, it was really Janie letting Tea Cake whip and beat her throughout the week and still clinging to him that made me question previous thoughts I had had.  Of course it is out of her love for Tea Cake, but to me she does not seem as strong as she had in earlier chapters.  For example, she did not hesitate in standing up for herself when she thought that Tea Cake was having an affair with Nunkie, but here he is trying to show his power over her and she does not seem to protest.  Is she being submissive now that she is finally emotionally fulfilled — did she only used to try to over-exert her own strength because she felt that she was constantly in a struggle with something or other?

Chapter 18. Wow. So much happened and so much symbolism went on in this chapter that I need more time to really process its message.  The hurricane and the quote from which the novel got its title help make it obvious that the storm is supposed to represent a force that Janie and the rest of the characters in the Muck cannot control, and Janie, Tea Cake, and Motorboat all staying in the house seems like some sort of defiance to it.  I’m not so sure about the purpose of Motorboat in the house, because if my interpretation is correct then his presence only takes away from the potential oomph of their staying in the house, but it seems to me that the storm is outside society (all those who try to impart their opinions on values and life, and all of those who criticize Janie for leaving with tea Cake) and their staying in the house is a testament to them not caring what they all think and have to say.  If this is correct, I am afraid to see why it was that the storm got to be too much to handle and drove them from their home…

For this blog I’d like to respond to each chapter as I read — so Chapter 14 first, then 15.  Chapter 14: This chapter really demonstrated for me that for the moment, Tea Cake is to and should be trusted.  Everything to criticize about Janie’s previous marriages are all contradicted here: she is truly in happy with Tea Cake, he is treating her as an equal, she is able to sit on the front porch/stoop with her neighbors and just talk and have a good time, and she is also working voluntarily for the first time.  All of this seems wonderful and I am very happy for Janie’s character at the moment, but I have to admit that it troubles me that there are still six chapters left.  And I’m sure that Hurston won’t have six more chapters of just bliss and good times.  Also worth noting is the presence of fertility [of the land] and wealth/richness associated with the Everglades.  For example on page 124: “The people who were pouring in were broke.  They didn’t come bringing money, they were coming to make some.”  I find it interesting that this is the place where Janie has been the happiest we’ve seen her throughout the novel, yet wealth is not the reason she moved there.  She was living in the muck yet it is physically described as a place of fertile, rich lands and potential wealth to be made.  Janie moved to the Everglades out of love and adventure, and these being fulfilled she is truly happy and spiritually wealthy — not economically wealthy, as they are in the muck surrounded by some of the poorest people living a very modest existence.

Chapter 15: Nunkie is as pleasant a woman as her name would insinuate, and I do not like her coming in to intrude on Tea Cake and Janie’s relationship like the “chunky” little home-wrecker she is.  In this brief chapter I found it interesting how possessive and almost needy Janie got of Tea Cake — she even tries to physically fight him out of frustration/jealousy of the Nunkie situation.  Also, Janie seems to not be trusting Tea Cake as much as she had in previous chapters, as she asks Tea Cake again after their, well, reconciliation through physical means, whether or not he has feelings for Nunkie.  She really needs to hear Tea Cake say that he isn’t attracted to Nunkie for her to be satisfied, it does not matter the passion they had the night before.

During tonight’s reading, I could not help but think about personal and class reactions to The Great Gatsby where we began to question Gatsby’s character as the novel progressed.  In the same way, this reading made me question Tea Cake and his motives — yet, just like how I was with Gatsby, I do believe that Tea Cake has pure intentions despite speculations that could prove otherwise.  I honestly do not believe that Hurston would build Janie up as a character raised to believe that status and material things are most important but then learns that there is more than just material things, and then have the man she trusted because of her deeper understanding of the important things in life steal her money and leave her with virtually nothing to have or to believe in.  It would be much too complicated, and I also do not believe that Hurston would do this to Janie because it would reverse the moral already instilled in the reader to follow your heart and not strive for only wealth in life, and to reverse a moral such as that would truly be a crime on the author’s part.  I also believe that Tea Cake has good intentions from his promises to reimburse Janie for her money that he has used and for wanting to be the provider in the household despite her wealth.  Symbolically, another example in Tea Cake’s defense that caught my eye was when Janie woke up in Chapter 11 to find Tea Cake brushing her hair.  Throughout the novel, her hair has represented her freedom and inner-strength and how beautiful those two qualities are, and for Tea Cake to be brushing that hair can definitely be read as him nurturing those qualities Janie has instead of denying them like Logan and Jody had.

Whether you like Janie or not, you have to admit that she is probably the strongest female character in American literature.  In Chapter 8, even as she knows Jody is dying, she puts up her final strike against his repressive ways by exposing his tight-fisted control over her and everything he wanted to change about her.  Jody, on his deathbed, finally breaks down and shows his own weakness in the face of Janie’s inner strength, which he can no longer deny, and dies.  With great symbolism, when Jody dies, Janie rips the cloth off of her head and lets her hair go free before any mourners come.  Janie spends the next six months on her own (despite the advances made by men in the town) and reflects on the values Nanny had raised her with — these values not including Janie persevering to fulfill her dreams.  These six months were necessary for Janie, as they let her recapture any inner strength she may have lost while with Jody through her new-found independence.  This alone also makes me think about her strength, because she has always been so head-strong and is not afraid to question the values of others/society: Nanny had had Janie married off to Logan at the young age of 16, and it was not uncommon for girls to get tied down this young.  Here is Janie years later, however, reveling her independence and lack of commitment to any man — or, as Hurston puts it, Janie “was just basking in freedom.” [P.88]

It is only natural to have predicted at this point that if Janie did settle down with another man, it would be out of love and mutual respect for each other (unlike her loveless marriage with Logan and her repressive marriage with Jody).  She has just spent the past six months regaining her strength and freedom, so she would not settle for anything less.  Enter Tea Cakes. (I never thought I’d ever say that in my life. Anyways…)  The first major thing to note about Tea Cake is that he respects Janie enough to ask her to play checkers with him.  That immediately sent up a flag for me because even if Wass hadn’t spoiled that she has three relationships throughout the novel, I would have guessed from this point on that this relationship with Tea Cake would be the one that lasted.

My next prediction is that as I’m out in the hallway talking about my essay with Senor Wass, you guys have been reading my blog. And I won’t be offended if the kissy-face does not work if you guys comment. I hope you liked it. Sorry that I didn’t mention anything about Matt Bonner or emancipating the slaves through an act of compassion like Stewart…

I want to spend most of this blog talking about Janie’s relationship with men, as she goes through two marriages within just tonight’s reading.  She first starts off with her marriage with Logan, an older, unattractive man that sparks no desire in Janie, who has big dreams of what love and marriage should mean.  Eventually, Logan thinks that Janie is acting spoiled and tries to put her to work in the fields, which ultimately results in her meeting/falling in love with Jody, a wealthy man from Georgia with dreams as big as Janie’s.  Janie’s desire is sparked and Jody brings her dreams of love back to life, and after two big fights, Janie leaves Logan and runs off to marry Jody.  What is ironic to me after comparing chapter4 to chapter 5 is the representation of Jody’s character.  At first, Jody was a big dreamer who inspired Janie and seemed to promise so much — both economically as well as emotionally and spiritually.  As we kept reading, however, Jody seems just as unattractive as Logan was: he does not let her speak on his behalf when he becomes the mayor of the new town of Eatonville, he makes Janie tie up her hair in rags, etc.  One of the people in town even remarked, “Nobody couldn’t git me tuh tie no rag on mah head if Ah had hair lak dat.” (Page 47)  Jody does do a lot for the town, but the way he flaunts his wealth and power (both over the town and over Janie) makes it seem more like quantity-over-quality, and I personally always associate that with a more repressive nature than anything — not a dreamer like I first thought him to be.  As Hurston concludes the chapter, “They [the people in town] seemed to bow down to him [Jody] rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down.” (Page 47)  Per haps Janie will stand up for herself next chapter and see what happens when Jody’s control/power is threatened?  Anyways, I’m curious to see how Hurston develops more of Janie’s relationship with men throughout the novel because none of the men so far with great influence on Janie’s life have really been good people.  Janie’s grandmother was raped, Janie herself is a product of her mother’s getting raped, Logan puts Janie down and essentially dulls out the spark within her, Jody is repressive and not a dreamer like he had first appeared to be, etc.

This blog is supposed to mainly reflect the dialogue and use of language of the first two chapters, so I’ll try my best to stick to that topic rather than react to the plot of our new book itself.  To start that off, I want to bring up a question that Senor W. told us to play around with: Is this, from what we’ve read so far, the most honest book we’ve read in class?  From the language and writing style Hurston uses alone I definitely believe so.  Some thought it was too controversial how Hurston depicted her characters and made them sound so uneducated by writing out dialogues how they actually spoke, but that just brings more honesty into the book.  That was how people were in the rural parts of Florida, and that was how they talked.  Simple as that.  If we were learning about the characters and their backgrounds in any other way, I do not think that the book would have the same oomph as it does — it would just be a piece of well-written literature.  Really, the way the characters talk is just as important as the book itself if it is to be taken seriously as a legitimate testament of how life was for some of the black people in rural Florida at the time.  It would just be as if, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain wrote the entire book in his own professional style and characters like Jim came off sounding much more educated than the readers.  The message that Twain was trying to get across about blacks and slavery in the South simply would not have gotten across, and the same applies for Hurston.  Honestly, if people find her novel too controversial in part because of the language used, they need to take a reality check.

Also worth pointing out about the language is the fact that the reader can trust what Hurston is saying more than the narrarators of the other novels we’ve read.  Their Eyes Were Watching God is a third-person narrative, and in a third-person narrative the reader generally gets the impression of an unbiased, unintrusive invisible character looking down upon the characters and the plot and recording what they see.  In first-person narrative, it obviously is told from the perspective of one character so their view on what is taking places is ought to be skewed — for instance, Nick Carraway thought he was the only honest person he knew, and Ishmael kept making himself out to be this important part of the Pequod when he was really just an amateur first-timer on a whaling ship.

When I first started reading The Great Gatsby, I never would have guessed that anything like this would happen.  I never would have guessed that the one who lent the novel its name would end up being shot, and as I got more into the story I did not expect that I would dislike Daisy as much as I do.  When I read on Page 164, “I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation.  But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them,” I got furious.  I just could not believe that after all Gatsby had went through for years (yes, he put himself through that but still) and then getting his hopes up during the time they had together, that she would leave the man who she once loved/loved her/is willing to go to jail for her without a word.  She probably could have even guessed while she was packing when Wilson came with the gun that he would go to Gatsby’s house next, but she still left without word or leaving contact information.  What a female dog.

“The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour.  But it wasn’s any use.  Nobody came.” [Page 174]

The quote above is what made this one of the saddest chapters in a novel for me.  Gatsby had had hundreds of people over at his house at a time on many occassions, but they were just using him to fulfill their responsibilities of having a good time.  Many of the guests did not even know Gatsby, but there definitely were those who did.  Perhaps Gatsby was such an artificial character that his death did not come across as being real. I honestly don’t know, but either way it broke my heart that all he did was try to make people happy through his parties, but none of them could even send flowers to his funeral.  Nick’s description of Daisy and Tom after running into Tom one day certainly describes these people well:

“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” [P.179]

The irony of this is that Gatsby had always been the one to clean up their messes.

Once again, my mind is so frazzled from some of the events in this chapter that, in order to process, I will cover sections that caught my eyes in the order in which they happened, not by importance necessarily.  To start with is a quote from Page 153, where Nick observes that “there was an autumn flavor in the air.”  This immediately made me think back to Page 118, one focus point of my previous point, where Jordan says: “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”  Knowing Fitzgerald and his writing style, I knew these two were supposed to be linked in order for the reader to make a conclusion about their predictions.  My prediction had been that something was to happen to the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby, based off of this quote and how Daisy showed she that had no intentions of exposing her affair with Gatsby, and this was confirmed by this chapter’s quote and how it continues with the butler warning Gatsby that fall is coming, and the summer pool should be drained.

Note to self: on a separate topic, remember to go back into the earlier chapters in the novel where Nick first describes the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg’s advertisement.  I am not sure if this has literary symbolism or not, but it did strike me when Wilson told Michaelis on Page 160 that “God sees everything,” and looking out the window into the large eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg.

Back to the more analytical part of my blog, another Gatsby-Ahab connection could be made on Page 161:

“…he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.”

This quote basically addresses the dangers of monomania (Moby Dick for Ahab, Daisy and what she represented for Gatsby), and both men fell victim to this.  Gatsby had gone too long waiting for Daisy, a now-married woman, and staring across at the green lantern at the end of her dock.  And when after years he finally was able to get her within his reach, he became dependent on her and brought all of his old feelings to the surface just as if Time had been paused for him those years they were apart.  Of course it is romantic in a slightly sketchy way, but now Gatsby will be taking the blame for her running over Myrtle Wilson, and Daisy has left him alone.

And then I turned the page.  It actually took me one regular-paced reading, and then a full chapter skim-over for me to understand what had happened.  I understood that Wilson was dead, but it took me forever to comprehend that he had shot Gatsby first before shooting himself. Oh My God…  Well, now Daisy and Tom’s extramarital affairs have both come to a rather drastic end, right?  Now they are forced to be together, and Gatsby never fully got Daisy — which would symbolically mean the same thing as saying that Gatsby died trying to reach the “ungraspable” American dream, and did not completely succeed. I have to say, Gatsby is the saddest character that I have ever come across in literature.  I think I feel for him more than I did for his polar opposite, Boo Radley, who had previously held that title for me.