Their Eyes Were Watching Guns

The title of the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is written out on page 160 when they are watching the hurricane’s approach. They are described as feeling “puny” (160) against Him. Janie and Tea Cake sit helplessly as they watch the storm building strength. This expectant powerlessness is a powerful theme of the novel, evident from the title. I noticed this dynamic repeated in the most dramatic scene of the novel. Tensions peak as Tea Cake is overwhelmed by his illness and takes up arms against Janie. Guns inherently hold lots of power, deciding between life and death. Janie watches it as it is aimed at her with no power over Tea Cake whose mind has been radically twisted. This is very similar to the scene anticipating the hurricane.

Additionally, in both cases, action is taken to secure safety with ultimate failure. Tea Cake and Janie are actually able to escape death during the hurricane by making their way to high ground. However, power of God manages to take down Tea Cake with the bite of a crazed dog. In the same way, Janie believes she has dodged a bullet when she takes out 3 of the shells from the pistol. However, as she looks on, he clicks through them all and fires the gun. She is forced to fire back to protect herself. This an important motif to that helps to define the story of Janie that dominates this novel.

Distilling a Poem

“The House of Falling Leaves” was presented by Elissa last week, and I was very intrigued. During the discussion I made a comment about all of the capitalized and I thought I should revisit it. I was intrigued by the seemingly random capitalization throughout the poem. After further inspection, I realized that I could pull out these words and get the following:

House Falling Leaves

Room

Time

Autumn

Time

Winter

Memory

This represents a distilled version of the poem that manages to maintain a lot of meaning. The first interpretation of this set of words is as a description of the life of a leaf as mentioned in the title. Time is the biggest factor for change for a leaf so this selection of words accurately describes the passing of the seasons and how the leaf eventually becomes a memory. This can be taken in a number of directions symbolically as is true for this whole poem. these words show a clear sense of inevitability due to the emphases on time and passing of seasons. That is intriguing when talking about the people separating or passing away into a memory. We want our life to be meaningful, but similar to Native Son, it all appears to be just as predictable as the passing seasons (shown here). The seasons metaphor is also similar to the discussion we had about Their Eyes Were Watching God and the passing of time for Jamie. We described the phases of her life in seasons as well. Jody could be the ‘he’ in this poem that passes from her as her life passes out of Autumn. It is every interesting to see these parallels emerge from these writers. There is so much more that could be said about the poem itself, but I wanted to take a moment to look at a conscious choice by the author to highlight some key words.

What do you see as their significance?

Invisible Sons and Native Men

We have done a lot in class to compare Native Son and Invisible Man. We have highlighted many differences in the attitudes and themes of the authors. These themes are summarized very well by the contrasting titles. Ellison, writing 12 years later, chooses a title that clearly mimics Wright’s for his response novel. The construction of adjective then person is visible in both, but the connotations for the words are much different.

The first word (“Invisible” and “Native”) represents a great deal of significance to the theme of the novel in both cases. Furthermore, it displays the final judgement and world views of a character in the end of the novel. In Native Son, “Native” is the basis for Max’s argument of the inevitability of Bigger’s crime. He talks about how Bigger is a crime himself due to the environment that he was brought up in. He is native to this society and it is what defines him. Alternatively, Ellison chooses to present a more complex world view with the narrator's realization of the concept of invisibility. This main theme of the novel is very hard to pin down and is never truly defined. That is why invisibility is the perfect term because invisibility is inherently mysterious. It shows a sense of free will associated with flying under the radar. The contrast of these terms in very interesting because their definitions do not show any relation at all, but in the context of the novel, they both carry strong connotations of relative freedom.

The second word supports the themes discussed of the first. “Son” shows Bigger’s existence as a direct result of his society and demonstrates a clear path of origin for the character. It also immediately defines him as a son of something bigger (no pun intended, although that could be deliberate symbolism) rather than an individual. “Man”, on the other hand, is a completely anonymous, which is how the narrator describes himself at the end. It is the term that would be used on a news headline where the identity of the person is not important. It is also much more individual than “Son” and is a successful contrast to Wright’s novel.

In conclusion, I read through both books without even noticing Ellison's homage to Native Son in the title. This represent the endless symbolism in Invisible Man that I have acknowledged that I will never fully grasp. The symbolism found in almost every line is what makes this book powerful for me and worth another read.