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Denver's Growth

 Denver’s view of the people around her at the beginning of the book was clearly that of someone who hadn’t seen much of the world – she was sheltered both by Sethe’s turning the town away from the family, and also by her own decisions to stay within the yard. As we saw when Denver went to people in town to try to get a job to provide for Sethe and Beloved, the people had no ill will toward her at all and donated the family a lot of food. This instance probably contributed a lot to Denver rapidly growing more self-sufficient and conscious of what the world around her was like, since her world quickly expanded from just Sethe, Paul D, and Beloved. While Sethe was, understandably, guarded toward the outside world and Denver inherited that, seeing that there were ways to live outside of relying on her mother likely changed a lot for Denver. As well as that, seeing her mother (who, despite all of the problems between her and Denver, had always been successful in providing for her family)
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Janie hitting Tea Cake

In chapter 15 of Their Eyes Were Watching God , Janie gets jealous of Nunkie, another farm worker, for her flirtatious exchanges with Tea Cake. In retaliation, Janie tries to chase Nunkie (presumably to hurt her?) and when she escapes Janie goes home, away from Tea Cake and the rest of the workers. At home, when Tea Cake returns she hits him and they struggle for a long time until they make up by having sex. The next morning is when their issue is actually resolved, when Janie asks him if he loves or loved Nunkie and Tea Cake assures her that he doesn’t and didn’t. I’m conflicted about this chapter. On one hand, Janie’s violent response to Tea Cake is clearly not ok and shows that there are gaps in their relationship with communication. She doesn’t even try to talk before she hits him, and his only chance to explain was maybe intervening between her and Nunkie and physically making her stop walking away to talk to her. As well as that, even though the chapter ends amicably, there was
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Are Love Stories Ok

 It’s odd to me that the question of whether Their Eyes Were Watching God is a love story is a way to determine whether it can serve as an empowering novel and whether it can be about Janie as an individual. When Janie has been with three men, learning different things from each relationship, the man she falls in love with absolutely speaks to her character. If the novel had ended on Jodie dying, I doubt that people would be saying that the novel is not about Janie but rather about her relationship with Jodie, since it would still follow her struggles in life. Tea Cake and Janie having a successful relationship doesn’t change that core theme, as is especially shown in the novel ending with her alone – the final note is not about their connection, but about what Janie is left with after all of her experiences that the book showed. In class, the point that she saw memories of Tea Cake in her old house after he died was used as evidence for the story not being after her individual growth
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The End of the Novel is Odd

The scene in which the narrator must burn the contents of his briefcase in order to get out of the dark basement – finds enlightenment, perhaps you could say, is an interesting way to conclude that part of the book. As readers, we could all probably see that the objects building up in the narrator’s briefcase weren’t going to amount to nothing, especially with the deep symbolic significance of each of them, as well as the trouble the narrator had letting go of them. For a briefcase for which he ran into a burning building for no reason but that it had been with him through everything so far, the burning of (most of) its contents was a surprisingly quiet ending. There were no more speeches or declarations, just the narrator quietly, privately, letting go. It seemed as if the narrator’s detachment from the world as set up by his reflections on invisibility, was continuing.   Of course, as soon as the narrator discovers that Jack wrote the note telling the narrator that there were Bro
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Brotherhood's impact on Harlem

The Brotherhood’s racism is shown even in first few scenes featuring it, with Jack angrily commenting on how race is all that, he insinuates, black people, ever talk about. Without giving us time to breathe, another scene comes up, showing the crowd of Brotherhood members’ reaction to a tipsy man asking that the narrator sing for him and yelling racial stereotypes at him as other members lead him out of the room and try to quiet him. Moving past the fact that an openly racist member is in the organization at all, the main concern of everyone else in the room is shutting down the man and hiding his words from the narrator, rather than the fact that a member is racist. They simultaneously react in an extremely awkward and unproductive manner, while also trying to assure the narrator that this is a small insignificant case not worth any worry and that some members just aren’t quite caught up. A woman comes up to him, basically saying that she agrees with the drunk man’s opinions but expla
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Dreamlike Writing

Ellison has a way of making some scenes in his book, often the most symbolism-heavy ones, have a dream like, or rather, often nightmarish, quality. Dramatic scenes tip over into absurdity, and, as Mr. Mitchell phrased it, not too many steps from comedic depictions. Even though the violence in the book serves a completely serious and consequential purpose in the book, Ellison choses to take us further from hyper-realistic description and further from the characters' point of view.  The first scene with this quality was the Battle Royal chapter, where teeth were falling out and blood was pouring and bodies jerked as they were electrified. While many authors make violence and pain gruesome and and realistic by adding in more detail about smaller aspects of it, Ellison almost goes the opposite direction - he adds in tons of baseline descriptions of the events taking place, but only surface level physical feelings of the characters. Readers cringe in discomfort as the narrator swallows
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Wright using Women

            Joining the class late, I was only present for a discussion or two on Native Son , and was still in the process of finishing the book up as I watched classmates dissect the author’s intention. One of the topics that got a lot of takes stood out to me, and pretty drastically changed the way I read the rest of the book. A lot of people consider the author’s one-dimensional characters, especially the female characters, to be a flaw of the book and an oversight on the author’s part. People mentioned how Bessie’s death was used in the novel as a simple prop to the story, and how she and Biggers mother and sister got little character development, and I expected the novel to go a very different direction. I expected Bessie’s usage in the investigation to simply be described in the novel, and the opinions that classmates had about how unfair to her that was, to have been drawn from their own interpretations. But when I got to the page, Wright stated, “He had completely forgotten
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