All eyez on me (PG 60-140)

1)
(As soon as the cowd was out of sight they closed in circles. The near ones got nearer and the far ones got near. A circle, a swoop and a hop with spread-out wings. Close in, close in till some of the more hungry or daring perched on the carcass. They wanted to begin, but the Parson wasn't there, so a messenger was sent to the ruler in a tree where he sat.)

Page 61 is full of birds. Hurston does a good job showing the vultures in society that circle around the dead hog. There is a motif that is tied in with the birds; circles are very present here. Circles represent order usually, however, here it seems more to symbolize repetition, or a never ending cycle. Janie's relationships have been repeated, well the freedom she has in them has been. With her Nanny, she was controled. She was very sheltered, and got in trouble for kissing a boy over a fence. Then she was forced to marry. In her first marriage she was controled too. She was taken total care of for a while, but then Logan Killacks got tired of 'kissing foot' and started trying to get her to work. Same as Joe Starks, who always told Jaine to get to work in the store.

2)

"The feds is watchin', niggas plottin' to get me
will I survive, will I die, come on lets picture the possibilities
Giving me charges, lawyers making a grip
I told the judge I was raised wrong and thats why I blaze shit
Was hyper as a kid, alone, as a teenager, on the mobile
calling big shots on the scene major
Packing hundreds in my drawers, Fuck the law
Bitches I fuck with a passion, livin' rough and raw
Catchin' cases at a fast rate, balllin' in the fast lane
Hustle 'til the morning, never stopped until the cash came
I live my life as a Thug nigga
untill the day I die
Live my life as a Boss playa
cuz we be getting high"
-All Eyez On Me
Tupac Shakur

The vultures are to the mule what the society is to Janie. They circle around her,  peck at her head and eat away at her dieing body until not even the maggots can take any more, and puss pops, and the stench grows and grows building a perimiter around the lifeless being. At least, this is how Janie feels. She has a reputation to uphold, being married to the man in charge. She has to present herself the way other's want to see her, and it kills her inside. She has everybody watching her. Just like in Tupac's song "All Eyez On Me" Janie feels trapped, like she has no freedom. It tears at her core, and it's a constant thing too. She was "alone as a teenager" because it happened then too, and she was the only black kid; she felt different. So now, she knows she doesn't like the society because the society doesn't like her. Or, at least it doesn't like what she wants to be.

Janie talks about this Pear Tree constantly. It is a dream she has on how she wants to live her life/relationship. She wants to just sit and chill in the sun, with nature. There, things would be easy, and free. The society is getting more in touch with the rest of the world with all that Joe has done in the town of Eatonville, so they must be a little more structured. Janie doesn't like the structure. Like Makaveli, she packin' hundreds in her draws, and says fuck the law! She livin rough and raw, and that's okay!

3)

(What is it dat keeps uh man from gettin' burnt on uh red-hot stove-caution or nature?)

What would you say? Is it caution, or nature? Do men naturally keep away from the red-hot stove, or do they have to take caution when near one? I think they naturally keep cautious of it. If a red-hot stove can burn you, you might have to go check it out for yourself. When I was about four years old, I was camping and I got a little curious and touched the cut out of a burn barrel that was our fire pit. Needless to say, I got burnt. But now I know better: you don't go and straight up touch it, you hover your hand over it and if it's good, you can touch it really fast and it won't hurt!

See men for some reason like to know how things work, so with anything, a man is gonna check it out. When it's something like a red-hot stove, or something where you can get burnt, it's in our nature to find out how it reacts. Depending on if the man has any knowledge on the matter, he will be cautious. But the very first time, he may just jump right into it, he might just try to grab the fire and hold on to it for a while.

4)

(Aw naw they don't. They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one.)

This is in a fight scene with Janie and Joe. Janie is trying to stand up for herself and women alike, as Joe puts women down. Joe is just mad because he has done so much to make a name for himself, and Janie can't handle it. He wants her to feel like the queen and act like her too. Janie doesn't want all this power and responsibility. She makes constant  note that she doesn't want to be a woman, she wants to stay young, and innocent, and irrisponsible because doing things is hard. It's hard to be busy all the time, and her life has been hard all her life. She just wants something to be easy and smooth, for once in her life.

She has been trained to think that marrying is the way to do it; marriage is the way to find true love and happiness. However, that is not the case. Marriage, especially these quickly sprung marriages of Janie's, are hard. Janie has married two men, and didn't love either one. When that happens, it's like getting stuck in a ditch, and digging straight down, thinking it's going to get you out, and that everything is going to be okay. You just keep digging, and digging, and digging, and digging. Then you realize you haven't eaten for days because you've just been working so hard to make things good, when you finally look up, you see you're going the wrong way.

5)

(She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she know how not to mix them.)

Oh god, she's got the powa! Everybody run!

...Just kidding, Janie does sort of wield some strength with this. She does get some power. Now, she can be two people! She can put on her 'outside' when she want's to appear as the world wants her to, and she uses her 'inside' when she needs the world to see through her eyes. Everybody has an inside and and outside, it's just that some people don't know mix them at all. In fact very few people know how to mix them right. The power of word is comparable to the hammer of Thor, the beard of Zeus, and Great Oden's Raven combined, and Janie has found the translations. "Hot pot of coffee!" I shall say, after I spill a drop on me, of course meaning, "Thy occurring event hath stricken, and scortched at thyne eye! And I am to have no mercy in repay! Have at you!" Outside I say, "Hot pot of coffee!" but inside I say something else. There are two peronas there, and I am supposed to know which one to use at any given time. This is what Janie has learned.

6)

(Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me how surprised He was 'bout y'all turning out so smart after Him makin' yuh different; and how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think you do. It's so easy to make yo'self out God Almighty when you ain't got nothin' tuh strain against but women and chickens.)

This is an important part in the development of the story, and to the expedition Janie is on to finding her own identity. Here Janie sticks up for herself, and for women as a whole. It reinforces the theme of strength of women and search for identity.

7)

(The more his back ached and his muscle dissolved into fat and the fat melted off his bones, the more fractious he became with Janie.)

There is a reason the man is Father Time and the woman is Mother Nature. Men's dreams are washed away by time. Hurston believes men make their dreams unaware there is a thing called time, and that it will catch up with them some time. Women hold life, and let it out into the world. They bring the Earth some fresh youth.

In this quote, Joe is getting old while Janie stays young and beautiful. Joe starts to get jealous of Janie because he starts to get fat and wrinkly. He is compared to Methusalem, the oldest person in the Bible. The oldest of the old. The Bible works with the Father Time reference because it splits time in two: Before Christ and After Christ.

8)

The Wingless Bird

The whole idea behind Janie being a wingless bird is being trapped, tied down and/or spiritually dying. A bird with no wings is like a truck with no transmission. It is trapped! It just sits there day after day, waiting for something to happen. Time doesn't even matter because there's nowhere it can go, nothing it can do. The bird and the truck are a beauty nothing can match, but their lives are empty. The bird's specialty is flight, and without wings, it's useless.

Janie feels like the bird. She has so much beauty and elegance to her, and she is being taken care of, but still she feels like she is trapped. She's just not in love with Joe. She was always told, "get married, then you'll be in love." That isn't exactly how it works though in real life.

9)

("'Tain't really no need of you dying, Jody, if you had of-de doctor-but it don't do no good bringin' dat up now. Dat's just whut Ah wants tuh say, Jody. You wouldn't listen. You done lived wid me for twenty years and you don't half know me atall. And you could have but you was so busy worshippin' de works of yo' own hands, and cuffin' folks around in their minds till you didn't see uh whole heap uh things yuh could have-")

In this script, Janie stands up for herself...well that's what we're supposed to pick up from this. Joe, her husband, is dying and she comes over and kicks him while he's down. What a b*+@#! I mean, technically, I guess it's good she got all this off her chest, but she did it to a dying man, she can't be that proud of it. It's like if somebody that bullied you for a while suddenly got cancer and you went to the hospital and started telling them off. Oh yeah, you're just so cool and tough! People wish they could be you! Cevieche curva!

10)

(The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair...tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...)

When somebody dies, Janie thinks about her hair. She looks in the mirror, collects herself and carries on. This ties into the beginning, where Hurston says women forget. This is Janie's proccess, her ritual. It is a step in moving forward for her. She must see into her own self and see what it looks like. She knows that how she presents herself is how the world will see her, so she puts on a show. She forms her face into how people want to see it. She is still controlled here then. This is a conflict between person vs. self and society here. She wins against herself if she wins against the society first.

11)

(She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity.)

Janie has spent her whole life hiding from herself so far. She can't express what she's feeling most of the time. This is an idea that represents the strength of women in the novel, where Janie is overcoming this cloak of pity. She is excited to live, and laugh and love, but she cannot do so until she is really in love, and not being controlled.

Her first two marriages didn't work out so well. She wasn't in love with Logan or Joe, they both supported her, kissing foot, but they both controlled her. She can't live, laugh and be in love with someone who is so controlling. This is why she doesn't love her nanny either. There is more mislove than love in her life.

12)

(For no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you)

In the words of AC/DC, "It's a long way to the top, if you want to rock and roll." You can never reach the horizon. You may be able to reach the spot it was at when you first saw it, but when you get there it has moved just as far away. So no matter how far you go, you're never moving. This idea of being trapped represents Janie's failed relationships, and the idea behind men and their dreams on ships. In both cases, time is endless.

Janie so far has been searching for love and happiness. Each new husband brings a totally different lifestyle to her, and each guy is a new horizon. She makes this dream when she meets them, but when they get married and she is walking towards the horizon, it keeps moving farther away. She has been struck with the treadmill effect. She is stuck, trapped in a bad life.

All men have their dreams on ships, sailing at a distance. They drift either to or away from the men. Those who have enough time get their dreams to drift in with the tide. For others, their ships are sailing the wrong way, always on the horizon, but the men can never leave. They must wait for their ship to come in. They don't have anything else to wait for.

13)

Tea Cake

Janie meets this guy Tea Cake when everybody is at the ball game. He shows her how to play checkers and they play a lot. Checkers, as apposed to Chess, is a less sophisticated game. This idea of lower class is represented through Tea Cake.

14)

(He looked like the love thoughts ov women. He could be a bee to a blossom-a pear tree blossom in the spring. He seemed to be crushing scent out of the world with his footsteps. Crushing aromatic herbs with ever step he took. Spices hung about him. He was a glance from God.)

So Janie tries to get Tea Cake out of her head. She pretty much tries to hate him. But there is a lot of emotion she has for this guy, and it's hard to just let it go. She is a woman, she forgets what she doesn't want to remember. This is what she is trying to do here, but she remembers him all day long. She totally loves him.

15)

Janie doesn't really want to love Tea Cake yet. She is putting it off as best as she can, while inversely Tea Cake is trying as hard as he can to love her. Tea Cake comes and goes, from Janie to work for Janie. Or at least he claims that's what he's doing. (He did not return that nigh nor the next and so she plunged into the abyss and descended to the ninth darkness where light has never been.) This is extremely dark. WTF Janie? She's got a conection to Tea Cake like Gollam does to The Ring. When it's gone...there is nothing!

While Tea Cake tells how much he loves her...

(Janie, Ah hope God may kill me, if Ah'm lyin'. Nobody else on earth kin hold uh candle tuh you, baby. You got de keys to de kingdom)