Hurston writes that they waited to see how nature would determine their fate: “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.” With this line, the characters recognize the lack of control they have over their own lives, and realize they can only be spared from the cruelty of nature if God sees …

Mrs. Turner worships her gods because she feels inferior to people that are whiter than her. She needs a way to feel like she is better than her peers.

Behind her crude words was a belief that she and others could attain her paradise—a heaven of straight-haired, thin-lipped, high-nose boned white seraphs. The physical impossibilities in no way injured faith. The narrator here compares Mrs. Turner’s worship of whiteness and hatred of Blackness to a religion.

Mrs. Turner repeatedly suggests that Janie go out with her brother, who she says is much better than Tea Cake because of his intelligence and lighter skin. Despite her own identity as a black woman, Mrs.

Turner’s scale of worth for a person hinges fully on how white they appear to be…and because of this, she worships Janie almost as a goddess. Mrs. Turner actually takes pride and joy in suffering under white rule—she feels she deserves it as punishment for her blackness.

Turner propose to Janie? Why? She thought Janie had too fine features to be married to a man as black as Tea Cake. She wanted to introduce Janie to her brother.

Tea Cake tries to throw the two out and get on Mrs. Turner’s good side, but his efforts only lead to further havoc. The restaurant gets trashed, and Mrs. Turner gets trampled and injured.

Indeed, Janie not only endures in the end but exhibits the power to keep Tea Cake alive through her own vital memory, and her storytelling to Pheoby is not a dying act, as Bauer suggests, but a perpetuation of life.

Tea Cake contracted rabies when he was bitten by a rabid dog. This happened during the hurricane that destroyed Tea Cake and Janie’s home in the Everglades. In chapter 18 , Tea Cake and Janie are fighting the storm.

In Palm Beach, after the hurricane, Tea Cake ventures out to find work, but he is forced the help bury the dead by two white men. He finds a way to escape and bolts back to the house and Janie.

He was the one that finally opened Janie’s eyes to a world that she could come to love and respect. He was her hero, but he is not treated with a hero’s glorious death. Instead, he is reduced to insanity because of a rabies bite from a stray dog caught up in the hurricane. That in itself is why Tea Cake had to die.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tea Cake is called Tea Cake because people couldn’t easily say his real name, which is Vergible Woods. The nickname also reflects how sweet Janie finds him.

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston represents love as the sea. By reading this novel, the reader comes to the conclusion that our capability to love deviates with every person we come across. Love is in some ways an art, and it transforms as people transform.

There are seven different types of literary devices and they all can be found in “There Eyes Were Watching God”. The seven different devices are: Irony, Symbolism, Point of View, Metaphor, Simile, Sensory Imagery, and Foreshadowing.

Hurston uses many symbols and metaphors in Their Eyes Were Watching God to develop Janie’s story. One of the prevalent metaphors in the novel is the image of the horizon. As Janie climbs the pear tree to see what exists around her, she sees the horizon.