Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


1. What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston's characters watching? What is the nature of that God and of their watching? Do any of them question God?

I had to add this question for discussion; because it is the title of the book and obviously they Hurston thinks it is the most important theme of the book. When this phrase is used in the book, Tea Cake and Janie are looking up into the hurricane. I think this means that Hurston wanted them to have a sense of an angry or unfeeling God. Also the characters could sense that God did as He pleased to them and they were at the will and whim of God. Hopefully, but the end of the book, Janie realized that God sent Tea Cake to her and his love was so great that it was enough to give her peace for the rest of her life.


2. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel's final sentences in this regard?

“He (Tea Cake) could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

I think this is a great way to end the book. I think that the horizon represented what Janie was looking for. Janie was always looking for something that was in the future. First, under the pear tree, she wanted to be kissed and she started talking about marriage, but then she got that and learned it wasn’t was great.

Later, Jody filled her head about visions of an all-black town and him as mayor, and Janie got that, but that also wasn’t so great in the end.
Finally, Janie got Tea Cake and the Everglades, which is not something I think she ever would have dreamed about, but Tea Cake showed her what she really wanted (even if she didn’t know). She learned that the “horizon” didn’t have to be something mystical in the future; she could pull it toward her because she finally found love.

Maybe the horizon is love.

3. How does Janie's journey--from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades--represent her, and the novel's increasing immersion in black culture and traditions? What elements of individual action and communal life characterize that immersion?

I am so glad that I found this question, because I didn’t pay attention to this trend as I was reading the book, but I now see how important this is.

In West Florida, first she lived in the white family’s backyard and even though Janie and her grandmother moved because the girls in her school were making fun of her for being too white, she still lived in a very white community. There wasn’t much talk in this part of the book with her interactions with other people or community life, probably because she wasn’t involved in any. Honestly white people aren’t as good as other ethnic groups about community living.

Next, Janie moves to Eatonville, where black people are trying to create their own town, but they are trying to create it to be like other American (or white) towns. Here the community living was based around the store. Janie was a passive observer of the community life. She learned that she loved it, but was unable to participate because of Jody’s restrictions. Community life was in a community place (the store), but their personal lives stayed in the home.

Finally, Janie moves to the Everglades. Now she can participate in the community life at last! Thanks to Tea Cake and his love (for her and community life), but now community life has moved right up to Janie and Tea Cake’s front porch. Everybody was hanging out at their house at night. Everybody knew everybody’s busy, communal or private. Like when that one girl was flirting with Tea Cake and Janie was mad about it, all their other friends knew about it. In this phase of the story the black people weren’t trying to be white, they were trying to be their selves.

I love how the story shows this progression. I really didn’t like Mrs. Turner. I thought it was sad for a black person to want to be white. I am glad that the book maybe shows that the more “black” Janie’s life was the happier she was.

4. In what ways does Janie conform to or diverge from the assumptions that underlie the men's attitudes toward women? How would you explain Hurston's depiction of violence toward women? Does the novel substantiate Janie's statement that "Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business"?

I think that Janie diverges from both Logan’s and Jody’s attitudes toward women. Logan thought that if he brought in the wood for a while that would win Janie’s heart, but it didn’t. Logan thought that she cared about the farm and it succeeding, but she didn’t; she cared about love. Also Logan didn’t think that Janie would ever have the courage to leave him and run off with someone else, but she did. Logan and Janie didn’t understand each other at all.

Jody thought that Janie would enjoy being put up on a pedestal; he thought that she was enjoying life with the prestige of being the mayor’s wife and being special. Yet, Janie wanted to be just like everybody else; she wanted to be ordinary and resented Jody for treating her as such. Jody also thought that she couldn’t or didn’t want to make speeches or talk for herself. This is also untrue. Janie just held her feeling instead and grew to resent Jody more and more all the time.

I didn’t like the parts in the book that talked about men beating their wives. I tend to think, however, that this talk was realistic, especially among the black community during this time. I think that Hurston had a low opinion of men, she was very feministic, and she was trying to show how men thought they were better than women.

In the end of the novel, Janie was able to stand up to Jody, although on his deathbed, and she was able to stand up to the court and Tea Cake’s friends when Tea Cake was sick; finally she was able to walk back through Eatonville with her head up high. I think she could have only done these things because she received strength inside, mostly from coming to know that God could talk to her too.

To The Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My General Review:

Oh where to begin. I first I hated it, then I loved it, then I hated it and finally I liked it. It is a different style of writing, to be sure, being jerked about different character's thoughts as they change and move throughout the day and evening. It definably was an honest book and I think that might be the whole point. Are we completely honest in our words and actions, no. Our thoughts, though I know mine are not completely honest even, are closer to the truth. It must have been considered brave of Woolf to be honest about certain topics like, Lily and it is ok not be married, gasp! and shocking! I am sure! Like, Mrs. Ramsey, being sad about life, not completely in love with her husband. And the real truth behind Mr. Ramsey, he greatly liked self-esteem and constantly needed others. I think my favorite part was the truth behind James and Cam in the boat trip and their hatred for their father. But yet they couldn't even hold on to that pact/vow. As much as they hated their father, they still thrived and desired his praise and attention. I totally related to all of that.

Book Club Questions (for this book we didn't really have questions but were just asked general thoughts):

Thought about Lilly in general
I didn't like Lilly. I thought that she was mean and rude. I can't completely understand, but I can try to be understanding, about the fact that she never married and perhaps that's what made her bitter, at times, towards life.

But what I really didn't like about Lilly was how much "smack talk" she did about Mrs. Ramsay in her mind. Lilly didn't have to accept Mrs. R's invitation to stay with her for the summer on an island. Mrs. R liked Lilly and Lilly was supposed to be her friend. Why does Lilly hang out with her if she mostly just doesn't like her? And she definably didn't like Mr. R or Mr. Tansley. Why is she there?

I think she had mixed feelings and couldn't sort them out herself. In the beginning she said she would have fallen on Mrs. R's lap and said "I love all of this," meaning the children, the mother's and wife's life. Then, I think, she spends the rest of the book trying to accept her life by being critical of Mrs. R.

I don't want too sound harsh or unfeeling toward unmarried women, but does she have to be so rude to others about it?

Can we ever be happy just doing our "duty" and never "crossing the street to walk in the sunshine?”
It depends on who you ask I suppose, but since you asked me, I'd have to say yes!

I'd say that finding happiness in doing "duty" is part of life, part of the test. Would Heavenly Father ever ask us to do something that would be against our happiness? At times we may cynically want to scream YES! But He really wouldn't. Furthermore, “happily ever after” doesn't necessary come in this life (which is act II). I don't want to be too preach-y, but it is true.

People without the right perspective think too much about themselves. A lot of the feminist movement has to do with woman forsaking their "duties" in search of something else to make them happy. C.S. Lewis said: "All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

Why can't God make us happy? Why can't we accept that? Because it's hard. What about Gordon B. Hinckley's father’s quote, "Forget yourself and get to work." Whatever work (or duty) God has given you.

Is doing the "right" thing the same as being honest to our true desires?
If doing the “right” thing is your true desire. We are not meant to instantly be who we want ourselves to be, or to be who God wants us to be, which at some point, hopefully, is the same thing. But we are on earth to work on ourselves.

It is honest to want to do right, even if at the same time we don’t want to do the right at that moment. It takes time and practice to control our desires and appetites, but how are we to ever learn control if only to the right thing when we feel like it.

To heck with “honesty!” My house would be trash, I’d be a few hundred more pounds and my kids would be the town terrors, if I only meant to be honest with my “true desires.”

Mrs. Ramsay… was she happy?
I don't think that Mrs. R was very happy.

I related most to Mrs. R, because I am a mother. I loved all the imagery of Mrs. R reading to James on the steps. It sounded just lovely. Even though it would not be nice the next day, I imagined the weather was that perfect summer evening weather with a slight breeze, perhaps. To me that would be a perfect moment in life.

I also relate with the quote about the sailor:

“…life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this
business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet
hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have
whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.” (86)

Sometimes life is hard. I hope that she was just having a particular hard time and her thoughts were not always so.

As a mother, I feel, it can be hard to try to find the happiness in the day to day, but if we work on finding that we are one step closer to becoming our perfect selves.

I was really disappointed in the last scene with Mrs. and Mr. R. What was the deal with her getting satisfaction from "winning" by not saying "I love you." I lost some respect for her there. But at the same time, I am sure it is hard to have a husband who is constantly asking for you to fulfill his self-esteem.

Thoughts on Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay’s relationship
I think Mr. R was too wrapped up in himself and in his work (which he just wanted to be famous) to really care about others. He was very egotistical, in my opinion. I don't think that he had in him to care for anyone else, not as who they are as a real person. He obviously had a low opinion of his wife's intellectual abilities and never listen to her to know what she really thought (I am referencing the scene when she was reading the poetry book and he thought she didn't understand what she was reading, rudeness!)To be sure, he thought she was a "looker."

I don't think that Mrs. R really loved Mr. R, but I think that was Mr. R's fault, mostly. (Am I being too feministic, is that a word??) I think Mrs. R wanted to love Mr. R but, as mentioned before, he didn't respect her or take time to know her. I think based on the walk they took before dinner, shows that she wanted to love him.

Toddler Time: I Can Eat Healthy Vegetables

Book: Growing Vegetable Soup By Lois Ehlert

Songs and Finger plays:

The Vegetable Song
Sung to: "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"
Carrots, Peas, and Broccoli,
Vegetables are good for me.
For my snack and in my lunch,
Veggie sticks are great to munch.
Carrots, Peas, and Broccoli,
Vegetables are good for me.

The Good Food Song
Tune: "Old MacDonald Had A Farm"
Vegetables are good for me, EE I EE I O
And so I eat them happily, EE I EE I O
(Children take turns naming vegetables that they like)
With a carrot, carrot here, and a carrot, carrot there
Here a carrot, there a carrot
Everywhere a carrot, carrot.
Vegetables are good for me, EE I EE I O.

See the carrots in the ground
(point hands and arms in a point to form a carrot and point to the ground.
I pull them hard without a sound
(pull them out)
I wash and clean them up and down.
(scrub up and down with your palms of your hands)
I love to eat them all year round.
(Pretend to eat carrots with mouth)
http://www.childfun.com/index.php/activity-themes/100-food/218-vegetable-activity-theme.html?start=4

Peter Piper Pumpkin Eater

Nursery Lesson: Daniel Refuses the King's Meat. (Daniel 1)

Games: Vegetable Matching Game (I own a copy of one, but you could make your own simply by printing off pictures of different vegetables.), Color Dice Game (I used a Rubik cube - solved- and also had pieces of paper one with each different color. The idea of the game is for each toddler to roll the dice and then find the colored paper that matches. This was a really simple game, but Davey loves it and asks to play it now all the time.),

Hot Potato (I had a little toy of Davey's that played the tune to different nursery rhymes, it was very easy just to have that next to me and use that as our stop and start music.)


Potato Races (I had Hannah and Davey run different races using potatoes, such as, holding the potato between their legs, or a cooperative one where they had to keep the potato between their heads.)

Shape Matching (Katy printed off four different sheets of shapes, she colored and cut two of the sheet out and used the other two for the toddlers to match the shapes on to.)

Vegetable Scavenger Hunt (same as last week, except with vegetable pictures)

Crafts: A Rainbow of Vegetables (have the toddler color a piece of white paper with the different colors of the rainbow -ROYGBV - use old magazines or grocery store ads to find vegetables of every color, glue them on the paper), Potato Stamps (cut potatoes in half, whittle away different shapes into the potato and then the toddlers can dip them into paint and stamp away onto white paper),

Vegetable Soup (we used the recipe on the back of the book, once again the toddlers helped cut the vegetables and helped toss the pieces into the water. The toddlers didn't love the soup, but I loved it, way yummy and way healthy!)

Toddler Time: I Can Eat Healthy Fruits

As seen in a recent post on my other blog, I do a "preschool" with my toddler. I decided that a better name should be "Toddler Time" but Davey knows it as preschool, so I stick with that. I decided that I want to post what we did every week, here on this obscure blog.

I highly suggest that any one with toddlers have a "toddler time" a few times a week. The routine, the schedule, the fun, the enrichment are all beneficial for a toddler. How would a toddler learn to sit still if never given a chance to practice? And sitting still (if only for 5 minutes) is a great talent to have.

I am still trying to formulate into words what I feel about doing activities with toddlers. I know the benefits, but I am still trying to explain. The most important time for a mom to develop a child's mind is before 5, so they say.

It doesn't have to be a lot of work. It doesn't have to be a lot of time.

But here is what I did this week, if you'd like to use these ideas.

It doesn't have to be with another toddler, it can just be mommy and me time.

Soap Box done.

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This week for "toddler time" the theme was "I Can Eat Healthy Fruits."

Book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Songs:
To the tune of The Itsy Bitsy Spider:
The Fuzzy Little Caterpillar lay down on a leaf
Around wrapped the cocoon and he fell asleep
He dreamt he could fly
And when he woke up
the fuzzy little caterpillar was a butterfly

Fruit Salad by the Wiggles

Five Fruits and Vegetable a Day by Geof Johnson

Nursery Lesson: Lehi's dream (1 Nephi 8); tie a bunch of scarfs together and tie one of each end to a different chair, have the toddler pretend he is asleep, then walk them through the dream, as a special extra place a small piece of fruit on the chair at the end of the "rod of iron."

Games: sock basketball (empty laundry basket and a handful of socks, easy), fruit find (print off pictures of fruit and hid them in the living room and have the toddler find them)

Crafts: A Rainbow of Fruits (have the toddler color a piece of white paper with the different colors of the rainbow (ROYGBV) use old magazines or grocery store ads to find fruits of every color, glue them on the paper),

Fruit Faces,

Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips, we had the kids "help" cut up the fruit,



Fruit Pizza, use any recipe you like. I pre-cooked individual sized pizza crusts (sugar cookies) and pre-cut the fruit then let the toddler decide how to top their pizzas!

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

1. Of the three women in the book--Brigid, Effie Perine, and Iva Archer--are any fully realized, or are perhaps all three, as stereotypes, three sides of one woman? As a stereotype, what does each woman represent? What does Spade mean, and what does it say about Spade, when he tells Effie, "You're a damned good man, sister."

I don’t think that Spade was necessarily drawn into Brigid, I don’t think that he believed her or even trusted her. He admitted he knew that Brigid was just trying to seduce him to have him stop asking questions, but he figured he’d get some free lov’n in anyways. And I think we all know she didn’t love him; she just knew she could get whatever guy she wanted. Her stereotype must be women can use their bodies to get and do anything they want; that’s a woman’s job, to look good.

I am so confused about his relationship with Iva. I think he is just playing Iva and never really loved her and he is in trouble now that Miles is gone. I think Iva is just love sick for Spade and is quite pathetic about it. I think her stereotype is that women are desperate about men and need them to constantly reassure them, also, that women and super jealous and spiteful.

This is where, of course, I like Effie best. I think she really likes Spade, but she isn’t love sick about it. She has a good, strong head on. The situation reminds me of a lot of “chick flicks.” There is some guy who has an awesome girl “best friend,” but the guy just likes sleeping around with exciting, glamorous girls, but he always goes back to the best friend. I wish they could hook up and Spade could be faithful to her. I think that her stereotype is women can be independent and smart and resourceful. Effie might not seem like a powerful character to us 21st century gals (we might think she is letting herself be a doormat), but I think she was someone to look up to in 1930. She could be considered a real strong feminist type. She didn’t need to be glamorous or needy; she could take care of herself and still enjoy a good relationship with Spade.

2. A blatant stereotype is Joel Cairo: "This guy is queer" [p. 42], Effie informs Spade when the perfumed Cairo comes to the office. Is a homosexual character effective or necessary in the plot? Would he be as effective without sterotyping? Why do you think Hammett created him?

Ummm…. this went completely over my head. I didn’t pick up on the fact that he was supposed to be gay. Oops! I thought that when they kept referring to the smell of his hankies it was going to be important to solving the case later on. And I thought everybody had hankies back then (maybe not silk and colorful, but I thought that just referred to his expensive tastes). I thought when he kept whispering to that boy it was because he was trying to plan something with him, like a getaway. I guess I’m just too innocent for that stuff :)

I am not sure what the purpose was. I think it could have been entertaining, they were probably a lot crueler about guys back then. Also maybe being guy was something that was coming out more in society back then, so it was novel. Maybe it was just that Hammett was trying to make the story realistic or maybe he worked on a case with a gay guy and he was using that guy as a basis for this character. Who knows, I don’t think there is an obvious answer to why.

Hammett’s favorite character was probably Spade, which is probably obvious. Hammett probably saw Spade as his super ego: a really cool guy, who’s super tough, not afraid of danger and gets all the women. What guy wouldn’t want to be Sam?

3. When Spade returns to the office in the last scene, Effie does not greet him with her usual verve. What has happened to the breezily affectionate bond between them? What is Effie's relationship to Brigid? Will Effie forgive Spade, or do we not know enough about her to make predictions?

This was most confusing. I think maybe Effie wanted Spade to be true to his client. Brigid is the one that hired him so maybe he should be or her side no matter what. But maybe she was hurt that he hadn’t listened to her “intuition.” I think Hammett is making fun of how women trust their intuition. I think Effie will forgive him; she doesn’t seem like the grudge holding type.

4. Though it was written more than 75 years ago, The Maltese Falcon is still quite possibly the best-known crime mystery novel in the world. Penned by American writer Dashiell Hammett, it features one of the most famous and oft-imitated private eye of all time - the flinty-eyed, hard-boiled Sam Spade. The Times Literary Supplement says The Maltese Falcon is "the best detective story ever and an exceedingly well written novel." Do you agree or disagree? Did it live up to your expectations?

I am sorry to say that it didn’t live up to my expectations, but maybe they were too high. The copy of my book said that Hammett worked for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, so I was really excited, this guy knows what he is talking about: he lived it. Here are some reasons I was disappointed.

1. If you mail something after 5 pm on a Saturday is it really going to be in your mail box by 8 am on a Sunday? Seriously? Did the post office use to work on Sundays? Even so it still takes 1 day lag time in 2011 for a letter to travel in a city. This seemed a bit of a stretch, and so easily fixed, just change the days.

2. Captain Jacobi really got into a cab and found his way to Spade’s office before dying with 4 bullet holes. What about the cab driver, wouldn’t he have been all like ummm shouldn’t I drive you to the hospital?

3. What did Sam and his lawyer go and do that one time to cover something or fix something up? We were never told?

4. Why didn’t Miles and Iva get divorced, they would sometimes start to say something but then Spade would jump in and cut them off, so that we never knew. I figured that it meant that it was important to the story, but we never found out.

5. Why did Spade take the 1000 bill, but then hand it over to the police?

I do think, however, that this is an important novel and must be the basis of modern detective stories. Sam Spade is definitely the tough guy detective that takes risks and walks about acting like he knows what’s going on, when really he is clueless, but pulls it all together at the last second. I like that!