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Part 2: "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

© Nichel Anderson

My part-two review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, I found so many unique passages that beg for center stage. The story provides the reader with so much emotion. I begin my final analysis of this classic literature where Janie meets her third but final love interest: Tea Cake. By now Janie is in her late thirties while Tea Cake is many years younger, however, Tea Cake will become her true love.

As the town gossip of a possible union of the two continues to boil over, Janie is secretly hiding her deep feelings from Tea Cake and the townspeople. She is enjoying every moment of their beginning courtship as Tea Cake keeps her on edge and makes her laugh from down under. Janie realized the freedom she never knew was there since being buried by doing what her grandmother wanted.

In this passage, you sense Janie being a colored woman in love, surrendering herself to feel Tea Cake's affection toward her:

“Janie awoke next morning by feeling Tea Cake almost kissing her breath away. Holding her and caressing her as if he feared she might escape his grasp and fly away. Then he must dress hurriedly and get to his job on time. He wouldn’t let her get him any breakfast at all. He wanted her to get her rest. He made her stay where she was. In her heart she wanted to get his breakfast for him. But she stayed in bed long after he was gone.

So much had been breathed out by the pores that Tea Cake still was there. She could feel him and almost see him bucking around the room in the upper air. After a long time of passive happiness, she got up and opened the window and let Tea Cake leap forth and mount to the sky on a wind. That was the beginning of things.”

As the story continues, Zora shows through her selection of words how the townspeople are jealous of Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake. For instance, in this wonderfully woven excerpt, Zora uses all of the voices of the nosy townspeople of Eatonville to express their jealousy and envy:

“It was after the picnic that the town began to notice things and got mad. Tea Cake and Mrs. Mayor Starks! All the men that she could get, and fooling with somebody like Tea Cake! Another thing, Joe Starks hadn’t been dead but nine months and here she goes sashaying off to a picnic in pink linen.

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