OBJECTIVE:
To relate the feelings of love expressed for Tea Cake in the novel. The novel
Their Eyes Were Watching God
is the story of the love between Janie and Tea Cake. In her autobiography, Hurston states that she actually ran away from a lover she had in New York to Haiti, to write and to try to live without him. “I wrote
Their
Eyes
Were Watching God
in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it under internal pressure in seven weeks.” (DT 212)@2H:ACTIVITY:
Find ten references to Tea Cake including metaphorical descriptions and write them down.
Explaining how she felt when she left New York, Hurston says: “But I freely admit that everywhere I set my feet down, there were tracks of blood. Blood from the very middle of my heart. I did not write because if I had written and he answered my letter, everything would have broken down. So I pitched in to work hard on my research to smother my feelings. But the thing would not down. The plot was far from circumstances, but I tried to embalm all the tenderness of my passion for him in
Their Eyes Were Watching God
.” (DT 260)
