In A Streetcar Named Desire, I began to develop a major hatred towards the character Blanche. I hate everything about her and yet I can’t help but feel sorry for her at the same time. Her are some things that I hate. She treats Stella like a maid and makes her do all sorts of things for her and Stella does it without even objecting. Another thing that she does to Stella is she makes her feel like she lives in a life of poverty and in a way makes fun of the life Stella lives. Blanche makes fun of where Stella and Stanley live, Stanley himself, and (in the beginning before Blanche finds out that Stella is pregnant) Stella appearance. I don’t understand how someone who is blood can treat a family member like that. I mean Blanche really lets Stella have it at times and Stella portrays herself as weak by letting Blanche do it. Blanche uses stereotypes to base all of her opinions on people. She calls Stanley common because of the way he looks and the way he acts. Miss Priss also uses his ethnicity to knock him down a few more pegs; she calls him a Pollock which is a terrible ethnic slur to use against someone who is Polish. I just feel like Blanche sees herself as being so above everyone else even though she is the same as them. Her past makes herself seem like a tramp it makes me wonder, what exactly did happen at the Flamingo? It is assumed that she was prostituting of some sort which I can definitely see. The way she acts towards men makes her seem like she thinks she can control men with the drop of a hat. I simply hate the way she thinks that she can have people do anything for her whenever she wants. The whole time I read A Streetcar Named Desire I grew to have such hatred towards Blanche.
On the other hand of this whole Blanche situation I kind of feel bad for her and I can’t believe that I just said that. But I really do feel compelled to feel sorry for her. If you think about everything that she has been through I mean she lost her job (for a disgusting reason), she lost all of her family (minus Stella), she has a drinking problem because of everything that happened, and she feeds off of attention that she doesn’t get. So after everything that has happened to her I feel bad, but only to a certain extent, I mean the girl does treat everyone like dirt on the bottom of her high heeled shoe.

Up to this point in the book we see that Janie doesn't have the best relationships with men. Her former husband Logan Killicks is now out of the picture and Joe Starks has just taken the stage. Joe is the head honcho in the Negro Town and Janie constantly lives in his shadow. He makes sure that Janie doesn't join in any conversations so that the men in town won't find out that she's a great gal. To me we see this type of shadow effect everywhere in political positions. The men who run for these positions are not really thinking about including their wives because they have to worry about the office they're running for and how they can get more votes. So unless women do something to make themselves stand out then they are never really recognized then anything but a pretty face in the background. Which in a way is how it should be, the person running for office whether it be man or woman shouldn't have to worry about their spouse being left out. It sounds terrible but in this case it is true. Joe Starks isn't trying to get his wife recognized also because she happens to be a very beatuiful woman who does actually make sensible comments to conversations. He doesn't want her to show her hair because he wants all of the attention on himself and not on his wife and her long-flowing, beautiful hair. Even with all of this bad treatment that Janie endures from her husband Jody she deals with everything that comes her way pretty well. She works in the store regardless of the fact that she is terrible at math. My favorite event in their entire marriage is when Janie calls out Jody in front of some people in town. I thought it was great that at the end she just exploded and pointed out all of Jody's imperfections instead of the other way around. I loved it! A man like that needed to be put in his place.
After Jody dies Janie kind of moves on and finds out who she really is deep down. She knows that she is a good person who deserves to find love and live a happy life. Tea Cake catches her eye and introduces her to new things and she loves that, what woman doesn't? So just when you think that things between them are perfect, a huge storm comes and washes them away. They are left to deal with living in horrible conditions and horrible situations. When Tea Cake stole her money I was furious I felt like I was in the book I kept thinking, how could he do this to her? After he seemed like the perfect guy he turns out to be this big jerk. My mind was changed when he came home and got all of the money back then he went back to the perfect guy (lol).
One thing that I thought the autho, Hurston, did a great job with was the foreshadowing. She lets the reader know that Tea Cake gets bit and they talk about those eyes that the dog had when he looked at Janie and I love how in the end those eyes coem up again. The ending had me on the edge of my seat I was like, Is she going to kill him? Is he going to kill her? Is anybody going to save her? I loved the entire book I though it had a great storyline and I absolutely loved the main character Janie.

In the book, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston we see the slave side of slavery instead of the usual southern white plantation owner side. The main character is Janie and her and her Nanny are living with a white family in West Florida. Nanny watches all of the children on the plantation and surprisingly the mother of these children allows Janie to play with the white children on the plantation. I find this weird because usually there is such separation between the two because the white parents don't want their children to be tainted by the black children. Another thing is that because Janie is with these white children all day everyday she thinks that she is white because she has never seen what she looked like before. Until the day she gets her picture taken with all the children and finally realizes that she is in fact black. Can you imagine if you weren't able to see yourself? Think about it you look in a mirror at least if not way more then once a day. So can you imagine if you were in Janie position.
When Janie was growing up she had no mother because her mother, Leafy ran away after she gave birth to her. I can see why the mother ran away from her child because she was raped by her school teacher and it must be hard to look at the child after all you have been through. So Nanny, Janie's grandmother has been taking care of Janie her entire life and I think that she hasn't been doing the best job. Janie has no idea about love. When she first kisses Johnny Taylor she doesn't know how to react, it's almost as though she is unable to love. We see this again when she marries Logan Killicks and she questions whether she would ever be able to love him. She only really ever feels love when she runs away with Tea Cake towards the ending of the story. I can see why she would be unable to feel love because just look at the relationships that she has been in so far. Logan never paid any attention to her he kind of treated her like a maid. Joe Starks treated her like dirt and acted as if she never had anything of meaning to say. So after all of these relationships I was really happy that she finally felt love for Tea Cake.
The Negro Town seems as though it's a utopian society. It kind of reminds me of the book The Giver because it has the same type of community. All the same type of people and only one of them holds the power to communicate with the outside world. Jody does this and the town realizes this. He gets all of this nice furniture and a nice house and the rest of the town is made up of shacks. I think that the town really noticed that Jody was holding out on them when Jody got the spittoon and the rest of the town was shocked and in awe thinking, Hmm...maybe there's more stuff outside of this town. I feel that Jody is taking his power too far, especially on Janie. He doesn't allow her to do anything and keeps her on the outskirts of ever conversation. Janie leads a tough life while she if with Jody.