Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Final summary for Their eyes are watching god

Starting in chapter 18, the Seminole Indians were leaving the everglades in groups each day.They knew the hurricane was coming. The animals even got the scent of something fishy so they fled also. Even some of the muck workers left. A good friend of Tea Cake and Janie's pleaded for them to go also, but Tea Cake refused. Janie stayed with him, rather than fleeing with their friends. For the people who stayed behind they worked picking beans during the day and gambling,singing, and dancing at night. As the storm worsened they begin to ponder about god and what will happen to them. Tea Cake and Janie leave but it was too late to have any rides, so they walked to a tall house for dry refuge. They and a friend fall asleep but Janie soon woke up to running water, they wake up and the friend decide not to go, so Tea Cake and Janie left and ended up in the water again. Tea Cake was tired and went to sleep. Janie tried to cover him, but instead she fell into the water. She got hold of a cows tail, but there was a "mad" dog on the cows back and tried to attack her, so Tea Cake killed the dog, not before getting bit on the cheekbone though.
They made it to safety and traveled to Palm Beach. Soon after Tea Cake went looking for buddies, and a job. Two white men happened upon him and made him bury the dead bodies, whites in coffins, blacks just thrown in the ditch and buried. He soon ran off and took Janie back to the everglades where their friends were waiting.They soon return to their old way of living, but soon after they do, Tea Cake is getting ill and not getting better, so Janie sends for a doctor, in which the doctor thinks the dog that bit him had rabies. He gave her some pills and told her that he had to send off for the serum to make Tea Cake better. Before that happens he has many rage attacks and Janie finds a pistol under his pillow when she made his bed one night. She "fixed" the gun and had her rifle ready just in case for safety reasons that is. The climax of that night was when he had a rage attack and wanted to know why she don't sleep in the same bed as him anymore!. She was glad she "fixed" the gun, because Tea Cake pointed the gun at her and pulled the trigger two times, but on his second shot, she shot him with the rifle out of self defense. She was saddened for what she had to do and she held him close to her and thanked him for giving her a chance to love him like she did. Janie was sent to jail and tried for murder. She proclaimed her innocence and was found not guilty. At the boarder house , she overheard men saying,"if she killed a white man, she would of been hung". She temporarily lived in the everglades after giving a funeral for Tea Cake. At the funeral she dressed in overalls, not in fancy clothes like she did for Joe Starks funeral. When she leaves the everglades she is lonely due to Tea Cake not with her anymore. Later we are back at the scene where she, Janie, is talking to Pheoby and Janie feels that Tea Cake is with her in spirit all the time, and that she has fulfilled her destiny due to her going to the horizon and back.
I feel that she is a well spoken, well lived, experienced and bright older woman that won't let nothing get past her, go over her head, or stop her from what she wants to do, because she has lived a long experienced life and she would go as far as she can to achieve and succeed in her future life what ever it may be.

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