A Feeling of Youth

The passage on page (87) is right after Janie went into the room that Jody was laying in due to his sickness. She was talking to him about their relationship and how it was “all not there anymore like it used to be. She tried to tell him that she never felt the love anymore. Jody was interrupting her and telling her to get out of the room. Jody died soon after this confrontation. In the passage Janie looks at herself in the mirror and realizes her age. She knows that she is no longer a young girl but she is a woman with experience. She looks at herself and her features and recognizes her beauty and new freedom with the death of Jody. She literally looks into a mirror, and then yells out the window that “Mah husband is gone from me”. The speaker in this part of the book is an “omniscient” speaker and is very reliable because this is an all knowing source and we can really get insight on how Janie really feels. The tone of this passage certainly differs from the tone of the rest of the chapter because instead of grief and “let down” this tone makes you understand that she is having an epiphany like a shocked and silent tone. This is because she realizes that Jody was lying to her and has been holding her spirit back. Now, looking at what this passage has in terms of repetition and figurative language, there is not much repetition but the passage is rich with figurative language. Many symbols are used, like the mirror,” She told the young girl to wait for her in the looking glass …she tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair”(87) This mirror represents freedom and her young fighting spirit she once had being reborn. Last, the diction is very raw and simple, words like “young” and “tore” shows a rebirth of youth and she feels this way, all because of the death of Jody, “the one she thought she loved”.