One day, an overweight girl named Nunkie attempts to make a play for Tea Cake, and Janie is instantly jealous. Tea Cake goes through the motions of trying to resist the young girl, and Janie chases her away. When Tea Cake tries to talk to Janie, she hits him. A furious fight ensues, and when the dust is settled, she extracts assertions of his devotion to her.
Janie becomes extremely jealous after she finds Nunkie flirting with Tea Cake in the fields. Although Janie feared that Tea Cake would leave her earlier when he disappeared with her $200, this time her fear is channeled into jealousy. This jealousy causes Janie to provoke a fight with Tea Cake so that he will be forced to remind her of his love for her.
Again, Hurston incorporates the image of the tree into the novel. This time, however, the tree image deals with Janie's fear that she will lose Tea Cake to another woman. As Janie witnesses the two in the fields, she feels anxious and upset. Janie's concern about Nunkie and Tea Cake's relationship grows, and she reveals that "a little seed of fear was growing into a tree." Janie needs reassurance from Tea Cake that he loves only her, and he will never leave her.
Glossary
snappish cross or irritable, uncivil; sharp-tongued.
Don't keer how big uh lie get told, somebody kin b'lieve it Tea Cake believes that the size of a lie has nothing to do with whether some people will believe it.
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is the coming-of-age story of Janie Crawford, an African American woman growing up in Eatonville, Florida—one of the first incorporated African American towns in the United States. Hurston wrote the novel during a critical moment for African American writers.
Hurston writes that they waited to see how nature would determine their fate: “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” With this line, the characters recognize the lack of control they have over their own lives, and realize they can only be spared from the cruelty of nature if God sees ...
Published in 1937, Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is regarded as a groundbreaking piece of literature for its exploration of the self through the eyes of Janie Crawford, a romantic, resilient Black woman navigating three marriages in the early 20th century.
As the title indicates, God plays a huge role in the novel, but this God is not really the Judeo-Christian God. The book maintains an almost Gnostic perspective on the universe: God is not a single entity but a diffuse force.
Richard Wright, often considered Hurston's chief literary rival, wrongheadedly criticized her novel for not explicitly addressing the “race problem,” and for allegedly choosing sensuality over social commentary.
What lesson does Janie learn in Their Eyes Were Watching God? Janie learns that she has a voice and her dreams and desires are just as valid as those of the men around her. She learns that she can be happy with a partner or by herself.
The most prevalent themes in Their Eyes Were Watching God involve Janie's search for unconditional, true, and fulfilling love. She experiences different kinds of love throughout her life.
In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, there are many recurring images, one of the most important images is Janie's hair which represents her power strength, identity, her freedom, and life experience.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is told from the perspective of an omniscient third-person narrator, meaning the narrator has access to the inner lives of each character. Unlike Janie and the other characters, the narrator does not speak in the informal Southern dialect.
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