Their Eyes Were Watching God Chart

U2L2

Part A: Characters

Select five characters in the novel. For each, provide a brief description and identify the
function they serve in the novel.

Character Description Function

Janie is the protagonist of the novel.

We follow Janie as she learns how to be
Janie is a beautiful woman, but
an individual and how to depend on
more than anything she is
herself. This is her story of finding her
Janie Mae incredibly independent and
own identity and a place where she can
Crawford intelligent. She wants to find her
feel truly free and happy. In her quest to
place in the world and refuses to
find love she finds herself more than
be labelled.
anything else, and this quest is the basis
of the story.

Jody is Janie’s second husband.

He is an incredibly ambitious
and greedy man who cares more
about status than morals. He
Jody
becomes very powerful after
Starks
moving to Eatonville, and this
power corrupts him and allows
the reader and Janie to see his
true colors.
Jody serves as a foil for Janie, as it is
through him she meets Tea Cake, her
only real love. She discovers through
him that power and ambition aren’t the
key to happiness. She truly discovers
her self-worth through his lack of
respect and understanding towards her.

Phoeby serves mostly as foil to Janie,

Pheoby is the person Janie is
as in the first chapter she initiates the
closest to in Eatonville. She is
conversation where Janie begins
Pheoby empathetic and caring and
recounting the story of her life that
Watson wishes to diffuse gossip about
makes up the novel. Phoeby Watson
Janie and defends her against
initiates the story by standing up for and
those bad mouthing her friend.
visiting Janie in the first chapter.

In and after Tea Cake and Janie’s

Tea cake is the man Janie had
relationship, Janie truly flourishes and
been looking for. Despite his
finds herself. She finds love in Tea
multiple short-comings in their
Tea Cake Cake where she couldn’t in her previous
relationship, he makes an effort
two marriages. She grows into someone
to understand and care for Janie.
who has her own individual identity
He is significantly younger than
through him. Tea Cake’s death and
 Janie but that aspect has hardly
any effect on their relationship.
Nanny is the person who raised
Janie, and she held the position
that she has to be married off to
Nanny
someone successful if she ever
Crawford
hopes to live a secure life. Her
attitude starkly contrasts that of
Janie.
Part B: Quotes and Passages
Select five chapters in the novel. Within each chapter, select a significant quotation or brief
passage. Explain the significance of the portion you chose; consider themes and purposes of
the book.
Chapter and Quote/Passage
“Oh to be a pear tree—any tree in bloom!
With kissing bees singing of the beginning
of the world! She was sixteen. She had
glossy leaves and bursting buds and she
wanted to struggle with life but it seemed
to elude her. Where were the singing bees
for her?” (Chapter 2)
“Leave the s’posin’ and everything else to
me. Ah’ll be down dis road uh little after
sunup tomorrow mornin’ to wait for you.
You come go wid me. Den all de rest of
yo’ natural life you kin live lak you
oughta.”
Janie’s action in shooting him shows
that she has gained independence and
would rather live without a man than
die at his hands. His purpose is to
awaken Janie to life as an individual,
rather than an accessory to a man.
As all other characters in this story are,
Nanny serves as a foil to Janie as an
example of what compliance looks like.
Nanny wants the best for Janie and
demands her to be married off as soon
as possible to secure a stable life for
Janie. While it is well-intentioned, it is
not the life Janie wanted. If it wasn’t for
Nanny it is possible Janie wouldn’t
have met all 3 of her husbands and go
through the growth we see in the novel.
Explanation
This is the passage that shows Janie’s
desire to find her place in the world. She
wants to find love and start relationships.
The pear tree is a metaphor for herself,
where she is the buds and the bees are the
men in her life. She wants to have a
“marriage” between her and someone
where they both live together and grow
together and produce something wonderful.
The tree begins her awakening in the first
chapter.
This quote is significant because it is the
first sign of Jody refusing to let Janie think
for herself. This is a kind of foreshadowing
to readers that the abuse will not stop with
her new relationship, but it will continue.
 (Chapter 4) She will not find her voice with Jody
because he won’t allow her to.

“She couldn’t make him look just like any
other man to her. He looked like the love
thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a
blossom—a pear tree blossom in the
spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out
of the world with his footsteps. Crushing
aromatic herbs with every step he took.
Spices hung about him. He was a glance
from God.” (Chapter 12)
This quote draws back to the first one
listed in this chart from chapter two. This is
when Janie can’t ignore her blossoming
feelings and attraction toward Tea Cake.
He seemed to her like a blessing from God,
and the fact that she had finally found
someone who lived up to her extreme and
perfect model of nature and the pear tree
shows how much she cared for him.

This passage is one of the most insightful

ones in the novel. In desperate times this is
“The wind came back with triple fury, and
a reflection on human nature. All human
put out the light for the last time. They sat
conflict was set aside in an instant to fight
in company with the others in other
against nature. The nature which Janie had
shanties, their eyes straining against crude
once characterized as perfect harmony was
walls and their souls asking if He meant to
now threatening to swallow everything she
measure their puny might against His. They
loved. This also ties back to spirituality, as
seemed to be staring at the dark, but their
the hurricane is more than a conflict of
eyes were watching God.”
nature, but it is believed to be a conflict
(Chapter 18)
against god himself. Janie finds strength
with Tea Cake and they overcome the
storm together.

This quote represents Janie coming to

terms with all that has happened in her life.
She is at peace with the events as she has
“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon
found herself and her purpose. She knows
like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around
her identity as well as her strength. Janie
the waist of the world and draped it over
had been following her horizons and
her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes!
travelling in search of who she is, but by
She called in her soul to come and see.”
the end of chapter twenty she is discovered.
Through the hardships she faced and her
(Chapter 20)
husbands, she has grown and found her
place in the world.

Part C:
Select five specific rhetorical strategies Hurston uses in the novel. These may be strategies
which help to fully develop a character, event, theme, or symbol. For each, explain the
function and effect.

Rhetorical Strategy Function and Effect

The pear tree acts as the perfect model of

symbiotic relationship. It is the ideal model
to Janie as what a life of codependency and
attraction should be. This symbol is
brought up multiple times throughout the
Symbolism novel. She sees the pear tree and the bees
as perfect interaction and harmony, and she
spends her life looking for a relationship
that is similar to the relationship between
the bees and the pear tree. The purpose of
this symbolism is to help develop Janie.

There are many examples of allusion in

this novel. The most prominent examples
are the civil war and the effects it had. This
includes the abolishment of slavery. We
Allusion see slavery touch many of the characters in
the novel. Most prominently there is
Nanny, whose experiences as a slave
develop her drive and motivation to get
Janie married.

The narration is this novel is third person

omniscient. This means we are told Janie’s
story through a flashback, but it is not
strictly from her point of view, it just
focuses on her life. The purpose of this is
very deliberate in the idea that it is easier to
develop all elements of a fictional character
Point of View through a third-person medium. This is
because in a story such as this where the
interactions between Janie and her
husbands cause growth it is beneficial to
know how they too felt. This is something
Janie wouldn’t always be completely aware
of as much as an omniscient narrator would
be.

While there are many examples of

Metaphor
metaphor in this novel, the most prominent
 is the metaphor attached to mules. Mules
are seen as stubborn, unsightly and
working animals. They serve no purpose
but to work. Nanny compares African
American women to mules in chapter 2,
“He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger
woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah
can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be
different wid you.” She doesn’t want Janie
to end up being a mule for others, a
working animal abused by others. Janie
later takes pity on a mule later in the novel.
It was malnourished and she defends it. It
inevitably dies and she holds a funeral for
it. Jody is so embarrassed by this that the
conflict between them begins and Jody
begins to see that in some way she is a
mule to him, just as she was to Logan, as
she can’t express her ideas and has no
freedom.

There is plenty of imagery in the novel.

There is imagery in how Janie is described,
her beauty and traits make her unique and
Imagery
breath-taking. Her beauty is what makes
Jody take an interest in her, as to him she
was nothing more than a trophy.