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How Does Tea Cake Affect Janie's Life

Decent Essays

Tea Cake is Janie’s soulmate and the first person to truly understand her. Tea Cake cared for and loved Janie, teaching her things and showing her a love she had never experienced before. Their relationship was intimate and loving, which Janie lacked in her first two marriages. While Janie grows and finds herself throughout the story, Tea Cake effects her the most. After meeting Tea Cake, Janie experiences the most growth and finds herself truly happy, thanks to the love he shows her. Ever since Janie was a young girl, she longed for love and intimacy. While lying under the pear tree, she would often think about her future and the love she would experience, “the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic …show more content…

Somebody wanted her to play. Somebody thought it natural for her to play” (Hurston 96.) When Tea Cake and Janie move to the Everglades, Tea Cake allows Janie to work, which Janie's first husband never allowed her to do. Tea Cake see’s Janie as equal and makes her feel loved and appreciated. Even after Tea Cake’s death, he still affects Janie and still has an impact on her. After Joe died, Janie had to pretend to grieve, when she was actually very happy. Joe’s death had no effect on her and she never thought about him after that. Janie mourns Tea Cake's death and spends a lot of money making his funeral special, “Tea Cake was the son of Evening Sun, and nothing was too good. The Undertaker did a handsome job and Tea Cake slept royally on his white silken couch among the roses she had bought” (Hurston 189.) Janie see’s Tea Cake after his death, “Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking” (Hurston 193.) Janie knows that Tea Cake will never truly be dead until she herself has passed. Tea Cake will live forever in Janie because he changed her life and saved her from the darkness. Before Tea Cake’s death, Janie told him, “Ah jus’ know dat God snatched me out de fire

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