Pheoby In Janie's Best Friend In Eatonville

2033 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The life of zora neale hurston

1. Pheoby is Janie’s best friend in Eatonville. Pheoby is the only person who is nice to Janie, and cares about Janie in town after she returns. Janie feels like she can trust Pheoby with her story, and when people ask Pheoby will tell them exactly what Janie told her. She won’t add her own details into the story, and she will not make up lies about what happened while Janie was gone. She will also not start any rumors and she won’t gossip about Janie’s story. Also, Pheoby will not judge Janie for leaving Eatonville, and killing Tea Cake. Most of the other women in town will want nothing to do with her because they would think that she is crazy for running off with someone and then killing them. She knows that Pheoby will not do that. After Janie finishes telling Pheoby about her life story, Pheoby is happy that Janie was able to go out and live a life that she missed out on when she has married to Jody. I think that Pheoby has a new-found respect for Janie because she was able to live the life she wanted filled with adventure, and that she was able to stand up for herself and fall in love. Pheoby even said, “" Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied wid mahself no mo'. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin' wid him after this. Nobody better not criticize yuh in mah hearin'." (Hurston 182-183).
2. The pear tree, the ocean, the horizon, the hurricane are how Janie views nature. Hurston uses spring as a sign of fertility, blossoming sexuality, and a new start. The pear tree represents Janie blossoming into womanhood. In Janie’s eyes the pear tree represents beauty and freedom because she is able to reflect on her life, and her future. No one is telling her what to do when she sits under t...

... middle of paper ...

...riumph.
13. Colloquialism is “a word or phrase that is used mostly in informal speech : a colloquial expression” (merriam-webster.com) An example of colloquialism would be, “I god, Ah don’t see how come yuh can’t. ‘Tain’t nothing atall tuh hinder yuh if yuh got uh thimble full uh sense. You got tuh. Ah got too much else on mah hands as Mayor. Dis town needs some light right now.” (Hurston 41). This quote not only shows the reader that this book is taking place in the deep south, but it also shows that Jody always wants Janie to agree with him, and not have her own opinions. Hurston uses different types of colloquialism to show where the characters come from but also to show how they compare there to the different social classes. Also she uses colloquialism to enrich each character, and give them their own way of talking, and their own way of expressing themselves.

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Symbolical Language in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Great Gatsby

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    The protagonist, Janie, in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, was sixteen years old when a series of natural events led to her to unlocking the secrets of her own sexuality. "Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back yard" introduces a location suitable for observing a miracle of reproduction in nature. The word "blossoming" indicates the narrator's comments are in the active present tense. The next few sentences, changing to past tense, reveal that this particular day--the third day--was much different than the first two. "That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened." The author poetically reveals progressive stages of pear tree flowers "blooming" along with their pollination by bees. This process so intensely intrigues Janie that her enhanced awareness triggers previously hidden sensual emotions and desires. Janie's continuous observation of the interplay among the plant and insect kingdom--mixed with her own intuitive feelings while lying on her back beneath the pear tree--leads her to a burst of in...

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Janie's Phoeby

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    Phoeby is Janie’s best friend, and the narrator of the story. Throughout the story Phoeby is a friend Janie can lean on, and defends her choices to the other

    Read More

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God Book Analysis

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    Janie’s adolescent reflects the main cause of her unhappiness. When Janie turns sixteen years old, she kisses Johnny Taylor over a gate. Zora Neale Hurston uses a gate to

    Read More

  • What Is Janie's Quest For Independence In Their Eyes Were Watching God

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    When Janie is with Tea Cake she feels complete in all aspects of life, and feels no need to depend on anyone else but him. When Tea Cake passes away we see Janie almost dependent soley upon herself, but she still confides in her best friend Pheoby when she returns

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Happiness In Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

    898 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the end, Janie finds what she has looked for ever since the blossom of the pear tree; happiness within yourself. Janie stops listening to everyone when it came to her relationships

    Read More

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God

    1372 Words  | 3 Pages

    Janie found what she was looking for. She searched all her life to find what was within herself, and one special person was all that was needed to bring it out in her. Even though her and Tea Cake’s relationship ended in a tragedy, she knew that he really loved her for who she was. She didn’t need to be with him for protection, or she didn’t need to be the leading lady of a town or a mayor’s wife, she just needed the right kind of love and affection to bring out what was best in her.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis: Their Eyes Were Watching God

    571 Words  | 2 Pages

    When Janie became the mayor’s wife things have change for her. In the beginning of chapter 7 Hurston describes Janie as being a ‘rut in the road’ ever since she has gotten that title of being the mayor’s wife. “ For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Somethings she stuck out into the future, imaging her life different from what is was, But mostly she lives between her hat and her heels , with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods-come and gone with the sun. She got nothing from Jody except what money could buy, and she was giving away what she didn’t value” (pg 76). This metaphor shows how the relationship between

    Read More

  • Janie's Marriages and Personal Growth in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie Crawford the main character goes through some big changes. Throughout this book Janie struggles to find her inner voice and purpose of love. She looks high and low for a sign of what love really is and she finds it as being the pear tree. The pear tree is very symbolic and ultimately shows Janie what love is and how it should be in a healthy relationship. This tree, with the bees pollinating the blossoms, helps Janie realize that love should be very mutual and each person needs to provide for the other equally. Janie tries to find this special kind of love through her three husbands, but she comes to realize it is going to be much harder then she expected. Each one of Janie’s husbands are a stepping stone for her finding her voice.

    Read More

  • Janie’s Learning Experiences in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    "Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches" (8). When Janie was a teenager, she used to sit under the pear tree and dream about being a tree in bloom. She longs for something more. When she is 16, she kisses Johnny Taylor to see if this is what she looks for. Nanny sees her kiss him, and says that Janie is now a woman. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie, the main character, is involved in three very different relationships. Zora Neale Hurston, the author, explains how Janie learns some valuable lessons about marriage, integrity, and love and happiness from her relationships with Logan Killicks, Joe Starks, and Tea Cake.

    Read More

  • Finding Her Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God

    2081 Words  | 5 Pages

    The first time Janie had noticed this was when he was appointed mayor by the town’s people and she was asked to give a few words on his behalf, but she did not answer, because before she could even accept or decline he had promptly cut her off, “ ‘Thank yuh fuh yo’ compliments, but mah wife don’t know nothin’ ’bout no speech-makin’/Janie made her face laugh after a short pause, but it wasn’t too easy/…the way Joe spoke out without giving her a chance to say anything on way or another that took the bloom off things” (43). This would happen many times during the course of their marriage. He told her that a woman of her class and caliber was not to hang around the low class citizens of Eatonville. In such cases when he would usher her off the front porch of the store when the men sat around talking and laughing, or when Matt Boner’s mule had died and he told her she could not attend its dragging-out, and when he demanded that she tie up her hair in head rags while working in the store, “This business of the head-rag irked her endlessly. But Jody was set on it. Her hair was NOT to show in the store” (55). He had cast Janie off from the rest of the community and put her on a pedestal, which made Janie feel as though she was trapped in an emotional prison. Over course of their marriage, he had silenced her so much that she found it better to not talk back when got this way. His voice continuously oppresses Janie and her voice. She retreats within herself, where still dreams of her bloom time, which had ended with Joe, “This moment lead Janie to ‘grows out of her identity, but out of her division into inside and outside. Knowing not mix them is knowing that articulate language requires the co-presence of two distinct poles, not their collapse into oneness’ ” (Clarke 608). The marriage carries on like this until; Joe lies sick and dying in his death bed.

    Read More

  • Their Eyes Were Watching God

    927 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the novel begins, Janie walks into her former hometown quietly and bravely. She is not the same woman who left; she is not afraid of judgment or envy. Full of “self-revelation”, she begins telling her tale to her best friend, Phoeby, by looking back at her former self with the kind of wistfulness everyone expresses when they remember a time of childlike naïveté. She tries to express her wonderment and innocence by describing a blossoming peach tree that she loved, and in doing so also reveals her blossoming sexuality. To deter Janie from any trouble she might find herself in, she was made to marry an older man named Logan Killicks at the age of 16. In her naïveté, she expected to feel love eventually for this man. Instead, however, his love for her fades and she beco...

    Read More

  • Janie and the Pear Tree in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    Janie and the Pear Tree in Their Eyes Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, the image of a pear tree reverberates throughout the novel. The pear tree is not only a representation of Janie's life - blossoming, death, metamorphosis, and rebirth - but also the spark of curiosity that sets Janie on her quest for self-discovery. Janie was essentially "rootless" at the beginning of her life, never having known her mother or father and having been raised by her grandmother, Nanny. Nanny even says to Janie, "Use colored folks are branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways" (Hurston, 16).

    Read More

  • Free Essays - Southern Black Vernacular in Their Eyes Were Watching God

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mrs. Hurston uses Southern Black dialect through out the book. This is appropriate because all of the dialog is between Blacks who grew up in the deep South. Some authors that write in a dialect totally confuse their readers. However, Mrs. Hurston’s writing does not confuse us at all. One particular example of this is on page 102. Tea Cake starts off saying, "‘Hello, Mis’ Janie, Ah hope Ah woke you up.’ ‘Yo sho did, Tea Cake. Come in and rest yo’ hat. Whut you doin’ out so soon dis mornin’?’" Janie replied. This dialog is easily to understand. The reader really gets the feeling of the speech because reading it is just like listening to it. Mrs. Neale also knows where to stop writing in dialect. All of the narration and description in the book are in plain English: she does not confuse us by putting narration in dialect, only the speech of characters is in dialect. This part of Zora Neale Hurston’s art adds to the story without confusing the reader.

    Read More

  • Relating the Title to the Novel and Novelist in "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

    707 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... middle of paper ... ... Through Janie's experiences and feelings regarding the love of her life, his death, and the hurricane, it is obvious that Hurston meant for the reader to relate self-realization to questioning God. Although God is not a dominant theme in the novel, it is likely that Hurston was mirroring the people she came into contact with throughout her endeavors as a folklorist.

    Read More

  • The Portrayal of Women in American Literature

    2124 Words  | 5 Pages

    ... Janie is free-spirited and unconcerned about what others think of her. When she returns to Eatonville after Tea Cake’s death, she shows no shame for what she has done or where she has been, because she is finally able to live the life she always wanted to lead. Hurston’s own struggles in life for individuality and an outlet for her suppressed spirit clearly contribute to the development of Janie’s character. Just as Hurston struggled for recognition, equality, and purpose in the literary world during the Harlem Renaissance, Janie’s struggle for the recognition, equality, and purpose in her relationships.

    Read More

More about Pheoby In Janie's Best Friend In Eatonville

Open Document