Their Eyes Were Watching God

Today we viewed a movie called Their Eyes Were Watching God. This movie was a very dramatic and suspenseful love story. This movie took place around the 1920's in the Eatonville, which was the first colored incorporated city. Janie married a man named Joe, who was a very abusive and degrading man. She obeyed his every order, just like a maid, for twenty years. As he was dying, he told her that he wanted thunder and lightening to kill her. All she wanted was to love him, but he wanted her to bow down and obey him. When he died, everyone was crying and depressed; however, Janie was liberated! She began to enjoy her freedom of an abusive and degrading man. Soon, a man by the name of "Tea Cake"came about. Him and Janie liked each other and flirted often. The town wanted her to marry again; however, Amos Hicks thought he'd be the man in that position, but Janie disagreed. Tea Cake often complimented Janie, but she always called herself old and so forth. One night, when they were alone playing the piano, she was trying to get him out the house so she could go to bed, he said some words expressing how he wanted to love her, which really touched her heart, in my opinion because I believe it's what she wanted. She seemed happy with him, but other guys and ladies of the town didn't like their relationship. She left Eatonville and went to another place with Tea Cake. Janie's friend warned her about a woman who had run off with a man and he stole all her money and she returned broke down. She left anyway. One morning, Janie woke up and noticed that Tea Cake was no where around and that her wallet was on the bed opened and empty. He had stole her money and gambled it away, but in his reply to her anger was that he was wanting to make money to take her to Orlando or some place fancy and give her everything she wanted. They then moved away again. She finally felt like she was living her life and she was loved. A hurricane came, washed their home away, and when Janie was drowning and trying to get out the water, a dog was barking at her. Tea Cake came outta nowhere and killed the dog, but the dog also bit him, giving him rabies. He became very ill and psychotic, in my opinion because he often thought that she would leave him. While dying, he tried to shoot her, but she shot him first, and he died. She found out what it meant to be living. What did she mean by this? In my opinion, she meant she finally knew how to love and to know what it really meant to be loved, which meant living in her case because in her marriage to Joe, she was mostly subjected to being the "woman" of the house while Joe was the "man" of the house. Being with Tea Cake, she was able to be herself and to be loved for it.

""Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore. " - Zora Neale Hurston