Their Eyes Were Watching God Close Reading Ch. 8

In this passage, Jody has just died and Janie has rediscovered her beauty and realizes the potential for her life in the future. This gives the passage a strange juxtaposition because normally when one's spouse dies, but her reaction was noticing the potential of her life now on. The release of her hair in this passage represents freedom from constraint, a theme in the novel. We see repetition with the motif of her hair in the passage and language with the imagery and tone used describing her hair: "The weight, the length, the glory was all there" (83).