1) For my central photo, I chose to use Janie as the focus, concentrating on the growth of her character. Through most of the novel, Janie struggles with her views on marriage and how to make the right choices. She is conflicted between the ideas others have told her and how she feels. When Joe and Janie’s marriage begins to go sour, she starts to spend a lot of time by herself. The simile represents that she repeated this actions because she found it to be a release from her marriage that was falling apart.
“Then one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store [ … ] while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes. [ … ] it got so common she ceased to be surprised. It was like a drug” (77).
When Joe dies, Janie lets down her hair. When she could finally let down her hair, she was free. Jody bound her with his own restrictions on what she could and couldn't do. She was never completely free to be her own person. This represents a significant turning point in Janie’s character.
“She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair” (104).
Because of her rocky relationships with men in the past, Janie questions Tea Cake’s love for her. Janie asks him about this, and he tells her that no one could compete with her. He says, “You got de keys to de kingdom” (109). Metaphorically speaking, Tea Cake is opening up a whole new world for Janie. For once, she is equal to a man, and she is the one who has the ability to further their relationship. This statement is significant because it furthers the notion that Janie is changing and has more opportunities.
The photos pulls each of these elements in literally. I couldn’t decide which shot I liked better, so here is an alternate version of that photo:
2) As a young girl, Janie thinks about the future, and this descriptive scene marks the beginning of a new thought-process for her. The interaction between the bee and the flower epitomizes a give-and-take type of love. The scene represents an idealized world for Janie.
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation” (11).
3) “He looks like the love thoughts of women. He could be a bee to a blossom—a pear tree blossom in the spring” (106).
Shortly after Janie meets Tea Cake, she keeps thinking about him. This quote references back to Janie’s idea of love—a perfect interaction.
4) After Janie discovers her that Tea Cake has taken her two hundred dollars, she launches into a state of panic. Sprinkled with similes, this passage conveys the mood well. Hurston focuses on the openness there is inside and outside of the room. The images used seem to convey that Janie has the feeling of being a small speck out in the open, which is often associated with feelings of loneliness and helplessness. In turn, one is able to feel the fear and panic that Janie is feeling through this time.
“But, don’t care how firm your determination is, you can’t keep turning round in one place like a horse grinding sugar cane. So Janie took to sitting over the room. Sit and look. The room inside looked like the mouth of an alligator—gaped wide open to swallow something down. Outside the window Jacksonville looked like it needed a fence around it to keep it from running out on ether’s bosom. It was too big to be warm, let alone need somebody like her. All day and night she worried time like a bone” (118).
5) “Every day they were practising [sic]. Tea Cake made her shoot at little things just to give her good aim. Pistol and shot gun and rifle. It got so the others stood around and watched them…And the thing that got everybody was the way Janie caught on” (131).
The event of Tea Cake teaching Janie to show is symbolic for the change taking place in her. With Joe, she was used to being in the typical role of wife and homemaker. Tea Cake, however, completely breaks that pattern. He brings her along to his activities, showing that he is more open to the roles of women. Janie not only embraces his ideas, but thrives under the circumstances. Janie is not just saying “yes” to learning to shoot, but to trying new activities that she would not have been able to while married to Joe. She’s no longer tied down by previous expectations. (Don’t worry, this is just my brother’s air soft gun!)
6) “Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built an altar to the unattainable—Caucasian characteristics for all. [ … ] Behind her crude words was a belief that somehow she and others through worship could attain her paradise—a heaven of straighthaired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs” (145).
Mrs. Turner talks a lot about other people, but seems to reveal the most about herself. She is very shallow in that she can’t seem to see past the exterior of the person. Her “heaven” was that of perfection in being Caucasian. She didn’t seem to have many problems with who she was—just everybody else, with the exception of Janie. She tears down African Americans because of their inferiority, but doesn’t say much about herself. She is jealous of Janie, because that’s what she wants to be like. I don’t think that Janie ever took a whole lot of stock in her beauty or was overly proud of it, though. She found personality to be far more important, which is opposite of Mrs. Turner’s ideas. The low angle of this photo creates a sense of being raised up (she was actually standing on a bench, too) and shows her features.
7) “The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back in the bedroom again” (71).
This personification illustrates how the life had been sucked out of Janie and Joe’s marriage. My photo creates a literal representation of this idea.
8) Shortly after Joe’s death, Janie is reflecting on all that her grandmother taught her, and how it influenced her life. At first she is angry, but then her mindset starts to change. She realizes that she has become a better person because of it.
“She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another no how, and this mislove [sic] was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside of herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around” (90).
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