Their Eyes Were Watching God-Journal 2

Journal #2 (Analytic): Pick a passage from your reading (between one paragraph and half a page). Copy the passage onto your blog and make a list of the decisions that Hurston made in writing that passage. What techniques, what patterns, what questions, what tone, what word choice, etc.

After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire. She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt and answer seeking her, but where? When? How? She found herself at the kitchen door and stumbled inside. In the air of the room were flies tumbling and singing, marrying and giving in marriage. When she reached the narrow hallway she was reminded that he grandmother was home with a sick headache. She was lying across the bed asleep so Janie tipped on out the front door. 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? Nothing on the place nor in her grandmother's house answered her. She searched as much of the world as she could from the top of the front steps and then went on down to the front gate and leaned over to gaze up and down the road. Looking, waiting, breathing short with impatience. Waiting for the world to be made. (pg 11)

• Second sentence makes allusion to god or some sort of religious experience, the "voice and vision" from which she received her revelations
• Use of ambiguity, unknown to the reader both what the answers are that Janie is finding, and what the question that those answers are answering.
• Short series of questions parallel an earlier passage ( pg 10)
• Repetition of the word and idea of marriage and the idea of marrying in both this passage and the previous one.
• Repetition of the idea of blossoming and growing- bloom, bursting buds.
• Personification of the bees and flies- kissing and being married.
• Janie is symbolized by a growing tree, just beginning to blossom.
• Contrast between the personification of animals and nature in both this passage and the previous ones, and Janie's characterization/description as a non-human tree.
• "Singing of bees" symbol of love or marriage.
• Passage ends with short, choppy sentences that create anxiety.
• Overall, the passage is calm and almost detached from Janie, feels more ethereal or spiritual