Their Eyes Were Watching God Passages to Analyze

For your passage:  Read the passage to the class. (Practice reading it out loud prior to your presentation!)  Discuss the context of the passage. (What is happening in the moments prior to your scene?)  What information is revealed in this passage? (Is this passage designed to set up other portions of the novel? Does it serve other narrative purposes?)  Discuss any relevant symbols, motifs, or other literary devices, as well as examples of diction and/or characterization methods in the passage.  How does this passage reinforce the larger thematic elements of the story?

 1.Chapter 1: The paragraph beginning “Ships at a distance…” and ending with “Then they act and do things accordingly.”  2.Chapter 1: The paragraph beginning “Pearl Stone opened her mouth…” and ending with “If she got anything to tell yuh, you’ll hear it.”  3.Chapter 1: The paragraph beginning “Most of dese zigaboos…” and ending with “So Janie spoke.”  4.Chapter 2: The paragraph beginning “She thought awhile…” and ending with “Then Janie felt a pain remorseless and sweet that left her limp and languid.”  5.Chapter 2: The paragraph beginning “She slapped the girl’s face violently…” and ending with “Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”  6.Chapter 2: The paragraph beginning “’Tain’t Logan Killicks Ah wants you to have…” and ending with “The old woman answered her with little soothing pats of the hand.”

 7.Chapter 2: The paragraph beginning “You know, honey…” and ending with “Ah been waitin’ a long time, Janie, but nothin’ Ah been through ain’t too much if you just take a stand on high ground lak Ah dreamed.”  8. Chapter 2: The paragraph beginning “But one day she didn’t come home…” and ending with “Put me down easy, Janie, Ah’m a cracked plate.”  9.Chapter 3: The paragraph beginning “But Nanny, Ah wants to want him sometimes…” and ending with “She began to cry.”  10.Chapter 3: The paragraph beginning “So Janie waited a bloom time…” and ending with “Janie’s first dream was dead, so she became a woman.”

 11.Chapter 4: The paragraph beginning “Janie got up with him the next morning…” and ending with “Even if Joe was not there waiting for her, the change was bound to do her good.”  12.Chapter 4: The paragraph beginning “The morning road air was like a new dress…” and ending with “Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”  13.Chapter 5: The paragraph beginning “And now we’ll listen to uh few words…” and ending with “He strode along invested with his new dignity, thought and planned out loud, unconscious of her thoughts.”

 14.Chapter 6: The paragraph beginning “Janie loved the conversation…” and ending with “They’s just some puny humans playin’ round de toes uh Time.”  15.Chapter 6: The paragraph beginning “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly…” and ending with “Take the matter of the yellow mule, for instance.”  16.Chapter 6: The paragraph beginning “Times and scenes like that…” and ending with “She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them.”

 17.Chapter 7: The paragraph beginning “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face…” and ending with “She got so she received all things with the stolidness of the earth which soaks up urine and perfume with the same indifference.”  18.Chapter 7: The paragraph beginning “One day she noticed that Joe didn’t sit down…” and ending with “There was some good-natured laughter at the expense of women.”  19.Chapter 7: The paragraph beginning “Then Joe Starks realized all the meanings…” and ending with “So he struck Janie with all his might and drove her from the store.”

 20.Chapter 8: The paragraph beginning “Dis stittin’ in de rulin’chair is been hard on Jody…” and ending with “Mah husband is gone from me.”  21. Chapter 9: The paragraph beginning “Janie starched and ironed her face…” and ending with “She would have the rest of her life to do as she pleased.”  22.Chapter 9: The paragraph beginning “Most of the day she was at the store…” and ending with “Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.”  23. Chapter 9: The paragraph beginning “Janie found out very soon that her widowhood…” and ending with “She felt like slapping some of them for sitting and grinning at her like a pack of chessy cats, trying to make out like they love her.”

 24. Chapter 9: The paragraph beginning “Six months of wearing black passed…” and ending with “He needed a drink of liquor now and then to keep up.”  25. Chapter 9: The paragraph beginning “When Janie emerged into her mourning white…” and ending with “To my way of thinkin’ mourning oughtn’t tuh last no longer’n the grief.”  26.Chapter 10: The paragraph beginning “He set it up and began to show her…” and ending with “That is he struggled, but not hard enough to wretch a lady’s fingers.”  27.Chapter 11: The paragraph beginning “All next day in the house and store…” and ending with “He was a glance from God.”

 28. Chapter 12: The paragraph beginning “It was after the picnic that the town…” and ending with “Day after day and week after week.”  29.Chapter 12: The paragraph beginning “‘Cause Tea Cake ain’t no Jody Starks…” and ending with “Ah felt like de world wuz cryin’ extry and Ah ain’t read de common news yet.”  30.Chapter 13: The paragraph beginning “Mrs. Tyler with her hair dyed…” and ending with “She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”

 31.Chapter 14: The paragraph beginning “Sometimes Janie would think of the old days…” to the end of the chapter.  32.Chapter 15: The paragraph beginning “Janie learned what it felt like to be jealous…” and ending with “Other people began to notice it too, and that put Janie more on a wonder.”  33.Chapter 16: The paragraph beginning “But Mrs. Turner’s shape and features…” and ending with “Her disfavorite subject was Negroes.”

 34.Chapter 16: The paragraph beginning “’T’ain’t de poorness, it’s de color and de features…” and ending with “It was so evident that Mrs. Turner took black folk as a personal affront to herself.”  35. Chapter 16: The paragraph beginning “Janie tried that…” and ending with “Real gods require blood.”  36. Chapter 16: The paragraph beginning “Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built…” and ending with “Once again she was complaining about all the carrying-on at the jook and Tea Cake snapped, “Aw, don’t make God look so foolish— findin’ fault wid everything He made.”

 37.Chapter 17: The paragraph beginning “Janie is whatever Ah wants to be…” and ending with “She don’t see how Janie can stand me.”  38.Chapter 18: The paragraph beginning “The wind came back…” and ending with “their eyes were watching God.”  39.Chapter 19: The paragraph beginning “Janie fooled around outside awhile…” and ending with “God would do less than He had in His heart.”  40.Chapter 20: The paragraph beginning “The day of the gun…” and ending with “She called in her soul to come and see.”