Janie's Love in Their Eyes Were Watching God

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Tea Cake’s adapted animalistic qualities and ultimate violence toward Janie seem particularly disturbing since this is the first glimpse of true abuse the reader sees from Tea Cake. Tea Cake dies from the repercussions of a dog bite that gives him rabies, and Tea Cake actually begins to act dog-like, walking with a “queer loping gait, swinging his head from side to side and his jaws clenched in a funny way” (183).  Despite what would be considered by most to be a humiliating appearance, Janie continues to take care of and love him.  She is not embarrassed in the slightest, but instead decides that she will do anything for his well-being, telling the doctor, “Anything it cost, doctah, Ah don’t keer…” (177). Even after Tea Cake pulls out the gun and prepares to shoot Janie, she still exercises understanding and love, recognizing that the “fiend in him must kill and Janie was the only living thing he saw” (185).

All of the mean qualities that become a part of Tea Cake during the final days of his life are not truly a part of him, but rather a result of his sickness.  The “ferocious look in his eyes” (184), his “urge…to kill” (183), and the “great fear” that had “took hold of him” (178) were not a part of Tea Cake’s character.  As Janie herself put it as she saw a “changing look come in his face,” and “Tea Cake was gone” (181). 

Jody acts on similar qualities as he lies on his deathbed, but it is a stark contrast to the death of Tea Cake, since Jody’s comments and actions are predictable, and consistent with the way he has treated Janie throughout their marriage.  When Janie goes in to talk with Jody as he is dying, he gives her “a ferocious look.  A look with all the unthinkable coldness of outer space” (84).  And even though Janie still feels sympathy for Jody in his helpless state, she nonetheless firmly tells him what she thinks of him.  She insists that Jody “have yo’ way all yo’ life, trample and mash down and then die ruther than tuh let yo’self heah ‘bout it” (86).  She debases their marriage completely by telling Jody, “you ain’t de Jody ah run off de road wid.  You’se whut’s left after he died” (86). 

Janie realizes she has sacrificed her dreams all of these years by staying with Jody, and her immediate action after his death is to tear off “the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair” (87).  This is a stark juxtaposition to Janie’s relationship with Tea Cake, and the way she responds to his death.  After he is dead, she “wept and thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service” (184).  The final moments of Tea Cake and Jody are remarkably similar (they both verbally abuse Janie and act hatefully towards her) but I think it’s important to note Janie’s reaction to each of their lives in the aftermath, and whether she reacts in honor (Tea Cake) or protest (Jody).  I think this is the most significant telling of her love (or lack thereof) for each.