Taking Back Control

The passage on page 87 in Their Eyes Were Watching God is Janie's realization of the life she had just lived with Jody and how the years passed her by. She realized that she was forced to meet the expectations Jody had of her over the many years she had spent with him. He constantly downgraded her, even going to the length to make her wear a kercheif to hide herself. Over the many years she spent with Jody, Jamie lost her voice, the one thing that had the potential to move mountains. Losing your voice through someone is the untimate sign of that person taking complete control of your life. Before Jody took his last breath, she took a look at the life she lived with him, and although she loved him very much, she didn't love the person she had to become to satisfy him. The line, "She tore off the kercheif from her head and let down her plentiful hair," is a metaphor for her taking back control over her life. The kercheif was a object used to confine Janie and by taking it off, she understood that taking it off meant letting go of the invisible chains Jody made. The way the author has Janie tell the world that Jody is dead is odd to me. Instead of sobbing uncontrolably like many widows would, she simply said, "Come heah people! Jody is dead. Mah husband is gone from me." The author makes the reader understand how put-down Janie was by this man by not having her yelling through her tears. It also showed what a strong person she was, having to deal with not only her mother and father's abandonment and her Nanny's death, but now her husband's death as well.
-Sydney B