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.