Their Eyes Were Watching God Quotes Analysis

After the death of her second husband, she meets a man named Tea Cake. Janie sets out find love between them but is very skeptical. “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life. Look how she had been able to talk with him right off “(Hurston 99). His presence makes Janie feel warm and comfortable inside. She feels like they a connection but she does not want to move to fast. “So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth and quenching the thirst of the day” (Hurston 99). After Janie meets Tea Cake, the sunset foreshadows a negative theme later in the novel. Janie and Tea Cake become close friends and eventually

Janie was no longer letting anything control her any longer. She was making her own decisions now by talking to Jordan and not listening to her grandmother, who told her to respect her husband. With the results of this, Janie ran from Killicks to marry Joe for numerous years while waiting for her hunger for love to be filled. However it never was with Joe. After the death of Joe, Janie soon found Tea Cake, who gave her the love she starved for: “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” (Hurston 107). Hurston gave Janie Tea Cake to show that she was no longer going to wait around and wait for love. She was now going to find it herself. Proving that she was no longer the naive girl who sat under a tree and dreamed all day.

Tea Cake is Janie’s prince in shining armor. He is her fairytale ending, at least for now. Tea Cake is the embodiment of true love. True love is expressed through respect, trust, and honesty. Tea Cake not only does these things, but he also bases his happiness off of Janie’s happiness, believes that Janie’s age is just a number, and eventually envelops Janie into his world. Tea Cake loves Janie so much that whenever she is happy, he is happy. This normally only occurs in cases of true love, because you need to be practically selfless in order to base your happiness solely on someone else's. When Tea Cake comes back to the store a second time to see Janie, he started humming and mimicking playing a guitar. He did not enter the building, but

Even before Joe’s death, Janie “was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew not how to mix them.”(75) Joe’s influences controlled Janie to the point where she lost her independence and hope. She no longer knew how to adapt to the change brought upon her. When she finally settles and begins to gain back that independence, the outward existence of society came back into play. “Uh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing. Dey needs aid and assistance.”(90) Except this time Janie acted upon her own judgment and fell for someone out of the ordinary. Tea Cake was a refreshing change for Janie, despite the society’s disapproval. “Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.”(128) This was what she had always dreamt of. When she was with Tea Cake, she no longer questioned inwardly, she simply rejected society’s opinions and acted upon her own desires.

Across the novel love was an issue Janie struggled to find. When Tea Cake came into the picture, Janie had stronger feelings for him then her past husbands presented in the book Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The pear tree, overalls, as well as the horizon display the strong bond between Janie and Tea Cake.

nothin', Pheoby. 'Tain't worth de trouble. You can tell 'em what Ah say if you wants to. Dat's just de same as me 'cause mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf" (6).

Tea Cake was Janie's third husband.  He was a simple person who returned kindness for kindness.  He saw women as equal human beings and told them that.  He was very passive in thought, but smart in his own ways.  His desire in life was to love and be loved.

Janie is attracted to Tea Cake because she is able to have a conversation with him and he listens to her. “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she had knowed him all her life. Look how she had been able to talk with him right off” (Hurston 99). Janie seems to already have feelings for this man she’s just met although she doesn’t admit it.

Tea Cake allowed Janie to involve herself in community activities while Starks tried to isolate Janie as much as possible. Janie and Tea Cake moved to the Everglades where there were “big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything” (127). The luscious, thriving nature symbolizes the new and growing profound love Janie and Tea Cake have for one another. Soon, Janie “got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake” (133) because “its mo’ nicer than settin’ round dese quarters” (133). Therefore, Janie now doesn’t mind partaking in manual labor because it’s out of her personal choice and love for Tea Cake whereas, before with Logan she was forced into it causing no enjoyment. Janie “learned what it felt like to be jealous” (136) with Tea Cake involving Nunkie and “cut [Tea Cake] short with a blow” (137). Instead of fighting back, “Tea Cake kept holding Janie’s wrists” (137), “hurled her to the floor” (137), and “kissed [Janie] until she arched her body to meet him” (138). The resistance Tea Cake displays to use physical contact upon Janie reveals Tea Cake’s patient character. Also, it adds onto the motif of love where Janie and Tea Cake have equally passionate feelings toward one another such that Janie is demonstrating jealously which was absent in her previous marriages. Moreover, with the threat of the oncoming hurricane and the turned down invite from one of the Bahman workers, Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship heightens. The soon appearance of the violent hurricane caused “crashing” (159), “hurdling” (159), and “questioning God” (159). The hurricane brings the theme of religion where God is mentioned throughout the text as a sense of hope and faith. However, Tea Cake and Janie realize they needed to escape “before worse things happened” (160) causing Janie to soon approach a near death experience. While fighting for her life by holding onto “the tail of the cow” (166) in the aggressive waters, Tea Cake “split the water” (166)

In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie’s most significant growth happens after meeting Tea Cake. Janie experiences life through differents porches, but Tea Cake’s porch helps her get the freedom she has longed for. Tea Cake unlike Logan and Jody pushed Janie to achieve her dreams and to explore the world around her. This is seen in the novel when Jaine assert,“Jody classed me off. Ah didn’t.

After her two mediocre marriages, Janie feels lost and feels like there is no one out there to meet her expectations. Janie’s entire image of love changes when she meets Tea Cake. He is everything she ever wanted. He is the “pear tree marriage,” that Janie has been looking for in life. According to Mrs. Worrall, “Tea Cake makes Janie feel virginal.”

In chapters eleven through fifteen, Janie goes from not trusting Tea Cake to having complete trust in him. At first, Janie was cautious of Tea Cake because her friends warned her that he would marry her only for her money “you oughtn’t ‘low dat Tea Cake tuh be walkin’ tuh de house wid yuh”(102). The town’s people think that Janie should not waste her time with Tea Cake on account of him being poor. When Janie left Eatonville with Tea Cake she brought $200 with her in case she needed it “she found her two hundred dollars was gone”(118). At this point Janie feared that the town’s people had been right about Tea Cake. When Tea Cake returns home he explains that he when he saw her money he got really excited and went on a spending spree, and attended

One reason Janie is better off with Tea Cake is the fact that Tea Cake repeatedly teaches her to appreciate herself. “Tea Cake and Mrs. Mayor Starks! All the men that she could get, and fooling with somebody like Tea Cake (Hurston 110) !” This is a classic example of peer pressure; Janie handles it herself and avoids the larger crowd. She trusted her gut and went with Tea Cake anyway, thus showing appreciation to her wants and not others. Another example is how Tea Cake provides Janie with the sense that age doesn’t matter. “...He done showed me where it’s de thought dat makes de difference in ages. If people thinks de same they can make it all right (Hurston 115) .” “Ah betcha you don’t ever go tuh de lookin’ glass and enjoy yo’ eyes yo’self.... Before she went to bed she took a good look at her mouth, eyes and

Tea Cake was first mentioned in the first chapter of the book. With a name like his, he was implied to be very sweet, and, considering that Janie had married him with fond memories, he was bound to be a good character despite his mysterious disappearance. Once he formally appears in the story, the predictions seemed to hold true. A polite, handsome young man with a cheery smile and much talk of labor, he rubs off as very well-meaning and self-made. Considering he also got on the wrong train to the baseball game, he obviously did not mean to stop by the store, so he had no initial intention with Janie. However, what mainly netted good impression was how Tea Cake recognized Janie’s smartness and skill from just meeting her, and assumes that

Finally, it is unfortunate that Janie had to suffer over half of her life with men that were not good husbands, however, without them, she would have never learned from her mistakes and never met the love of her life, Tea Cake. While being married to Logan and Joe, she should have stood up for herself and never let these men dictate her life the way they did. Coincidentally, both of them failed at trusting Janie. They never let her be the woman she truly was. On the other hand, Tea Cake was trusting, loyal, and respectful. He loved her for who she was and never asked her to change. You should never let a man hold you down from being all that you can be.