Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

They don’t know if life is a mess of corn-meal dumplings, and if love is a bed-quilt!”

Look lak she been livin’ through uh hundred years in January without one day of spring.

😂😂

She ain’t dead, ’cause Ah’d know it by mah feelings, but sometimes Ah wish she was at rest.

Better off dead

Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?

Love should be as natural in marriage as sun is to day but it’s not. Ideal perception of marriage. Janie hopes for this

Kind of portly like rich white folks. Strange trains, and people and places didn’t scare him neither.

Jody’s sophistication

Y’all ain’t got enough here to cuss a cat on without gittin’ yo’ mouf full of hair.”

Spicy 🌶️

“He ain’t got no mo’ land tuh give away. Yuh needs plenty money if yuh wants any mo’.”

Bingo

Most of them went along to show him the way and to be there when his bluff was called.

Envy

It troubled him to get used to the

world one way and then suddenly have it turn different.

Change

So she put on one of her bought dresses and went up the new-cut road all dressed in wine-colored red.

Signifies status. Bought, not homemade.

Mule had sense. Folks up dat way don’t eat biscuit bread but once uh week.”

Frugal or poor? Stingy or starved?

Out in the swamp they made great ceremony over the mule. They mocked everything human in death. Starks led off with a great eulogy on our departed citizen, our most distinguished citizen and the grief he left behind him, and the people loved the speech. It made him more solid than building the schoolhouse had done. He stood on the distended belly of the mule for a platform and made gestures. When he stepped down, they hoisted Sam up and he talked about the mule as a school teacher first. Then he set his hat like John Pearson and imitated his preaching. He spoke of the joys of mule-heaven to which the dear brother had departed this valley of sorrow; the mule-angels flying around; the miles of green corn and cool water, a pasture of pure bran with a river of molasses running through it; and most glorious of all, No Matt Bonner with plow lines and halters to come in and corrupt. Up there, mule-angels would have people to ride on and from his place beside the glittering throne, the dear departed brother would look down into hell and see the devil plowing Matt Bonner all day long in a hell-hot sun and laying the rawhide to his back. With that the sisters got mock-happy and shouted and had to be held up by the menfolks. Everybody enjoyed themselves to the highest and then finally

Mule funeral