Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course ... he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall.
this quote means that Janie comes to an understanding of death that is not one of utter emptiness and sorrow, but – as her life has shown her – a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Tea Cake will always be alive for her as long as she can resurrect him with her fond memories and love. Janie, then, learns that love transcends even death.
Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and ... thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just some thing she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be.
this quote means that the first time Joe beats Janie, her ideal and illusion of him is shattered. She realizes that his goodness was all an illusion to her, that Joe in reality "never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams," instead, she had just convinced herself that he was the man she wanted because he was a better alternative to Logan. This is an example of what we learn about women on the first page of the novel (1.2): women imagine their lives the way they want to see them, dismissing hints and experiences that indicate that their life isn’t congruent with their dreams. It takes Joe hitting Janie for her to realize that she was deluding herself. Now her vision for her future with Joe is dark and unpleasant, instead of holding "blossomy openings dusting
No comments:
Post a Comment