Sunday, September 18, 2011

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Journal # 5

Notes:
1. First sentence has assonance of the letter 'e'
2. Narrator seems a little informal. "She had waited all her life or something" even a little unsure.
3. Janie has money and controls that money herself. Interesting
4. Sudden switch from 3rd person to 1st person.
5. Mentions 'waiting' a few times
6. Personification of the sun
7. Tea Cake is Janie's motivation

Point of View:
3rd and 1st Mix

Characters:
Janie: worrying about Tea Cake
Tea Cake: not there
Annie Tyler: dead person

Passage:
Janie's begging of God makes me thing: Oh man is she worried. After all, she was thinking about someone who died due to the bad outcome of the situation Janie finds herself in. Scary almost. Tone wise, narrator seems a little bit unsure. The word 'something' implying a lack of or withholding of knowledge.

Analysis:
When I read about Janie beggin' the Lawd to have mersay, I can't help but imagine her actually speaking those words out loud, arms raised to the sky. Like a preacher of sorts. Dialect is key in letting me develop that scene in my head.

I think the switch from formal-informal-formal says something about what Janie is feeling too. One minute, she's just thinking things through. Then she goes all 'help me!', I'm broken down, then she goes formal again. Done begging, now I'm going to silently worry.

Reason for Passage:
Janie cares about Tea Cake. Genuinely. I don't think she grieved this hard when Jody died! I think the fact that she works up just because he might be in trouble is proof of her devotion to him.

2 comments:

  1. Nice Job Josh. I like how you recognized that Tea Cake was Janies' motivation. After Tea Cake left it really seemed like Janie was in a predicament, and she was very lost without him. Nice use of literary terms.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm. I found it interesting in you opening passage, you talked about the narrator having a lack of, or withholding the some specific information. So I thought about that for a second and I came to the decision that it was a lack of information from the narrator because if you read the first part of the "something" sentence, you will notice the general feeling you get from "She had waited all her life for something...", that the narrator is trying to explain the whole story, but can't. Good Work!

    ReplyDelete