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Janie begins her recollection/ Chapter 2
Janie starts out the chapter by describing how she viewed her life (view image)
The story switches from 3rd to 1st person
Janie talks about her childhood as when she was 16 and again compares her life to a blossoming tree.
-Janie encounters her first experience with physical and emotional love and wants that love. Janie expresses her newly discovered desire by kissing Johnny Taylor. -
Nanny in action/ Chapter 2
Nanny is introduced.
Nanny catches Janie kissing Johnny Taylor and calls Janie into the house
-Janie decribes this as "the end of her childhood" (12)
Nanny tells Janie she wants her married right away and not to "no trashy n*****, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin' yo' body to wipe his foots on" (13). -
Life of the Crawfords/ Chapter 2
Nanny talks to Janie about how important it is for her to marry off decent.
Nanny shares her and Leafy's (Janie's mother) not so nice past with men.
Nanny uses her past experiences as her reason for her wanting to marry off Janie to Logan Killicks. -
Mrs. Killicks/ Chapter 3
Logan and Janie are married.
Janie describes her new home as "a lonesome place like a stump in the middle of the woods where nobody hsd ever been" (22)
Janie goes in and "waits for love to begin". -
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Mr. and Mrs. Killicks
The time Janie and Logan were married. -
Girl Talk/ Chapter 3
Janie returns to visit her Nanny.
Nanny and Janie talk about love and Janie's new marriage with Logan.
Nanny dies a month later.
Following Nanny's death, Janie learned that marriage did not make love. -
Trouble in Paradise/ Chapter 4
Logan begins to change and tells Janie she is spoiled. He starts making her do hard, physical labor.
Janie doesn't love Logan and never will. -
The New Kid on the Block/ Chapter 4
Janie meets Joe (Jody) Starks.
Jody dazzles Janie with his good looks and wealth.
They started meeting every day and talked about how he would be a big ruler of things and she would be reaping in the benefits.
Janie and Logan have a big fight and Janie decides to run away.
Janie goes from Mrs. Killicks to Mrs. Starks. -
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Mr. and Mrs. Starks
The time Janie and Joe were married -
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Janie's New Life
Janie is the new clerk in the town store.
-After awhile, Janie describes her job as "a sick headache" (54). -
The Birth of a New Town/ Chapter 5
Janie and Jody go south to develop Jody's new town.
They arrive and Jody immeadiatly begins to make the town his own.
"The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe's positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down" (50) -
Janie's New Life/ Chapter 6
Janie is also forced to always wear her hair up in a head-rag because Jody says so.
-Jody is secretly extremely jealous. He dispises any man even looking at Janie
Janie realizes that Jody isn't the man she made him up to be.
Jody is over protective and constricting.
-He orders Janie around and expects her to worship him like everyone else in town. -
When Jody Cracks/ Chapter 7
Janie notices that Jody is really starting to show his age.
Jody also realizes this and takes out his frustration of Janie.
-He does this by "striking Janie with all his might and drove her from the store" (80). -
It's All Downhill for Jody/ Chapter 8
Jody starts to become to weak to work and becomes bed ridden.
Janie discovers that Jody's kidneys have stopped working and it's too late for any medical attention.
Janie tries to talk to Jody before it's too late and he dies that day. -
The Aftermath/ Chapter 9
Jody's funeral was "the finest thing Orange County had ever seen with Negro eyes" (88).
Janie has many men hitting on her now that Jody is gone. She goes through her 6 months of waering black with not one suitor getting to her house porch.
Janie reveal to Pheoby that she "'Tain't dat Ah worries over Joe's death" (93) becuase she "jus' loves dis freedom" (93). -
The Mysterious New Man/ Chapter 10
A new guy enters Janie's life and flirts with her by playing checkers on the store porch.
The new guy's name is Vergible Woods (Tea Cake).
Janie and Tea Cake hit it off and when Tea Cake walks her home, Janie thinks to herself, "Tea Cake wasn't strange. Seemed as if she had known him all her life" (99). -
Tea Cake/ Chapter 11
Janie thinks about Tea Cake.
-She descides to "treat him so cold if he ever did foot the place that he'd be sure not to come hanging around there again" (100).
Janie's plan doesn't quite work. She spent that whole evening and night with Tea Cake. They went fishin' all night and didn't come back until morning.
Janie continued to constantly daydream and wonder about Tea Cake.
Tea Cake surprises Janie and takes her to a picnic on a date. -
Janie Starts Fresh/ Chapter 12
Now that Janie is always with Tea Cake, people of the town start to notice.
Tea Cake broadens Janie's horizons by doing things like: hunting, fishing, going to see movies, going dancing, teaching Janie how to drive, and playing checkers.
Janie and Tea Cake run away together. -
Jacksonville/ Chapter 13
Janie and Tea Cake get married and run away to Jacksonville.
Tea Cake tells Janie "You done married one uh de best gamblers God ever made" (125).
He gets money for the two of them by going out and gambling in the evenings.
Tea Cake came in late one night due to getting stabbed aftera gambling game.
-Tea Cake made $322
Tea Cake and Janie decide to go away to the muck (the Everglades) to just "do nothin' down dere but make money and fun and foolishness" (128). -
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Mr. and Mrs. Woods
The time Tea Cake and Janie were married -
Life in the Muck/ Chapter 14
Tea Cake and Janie move down to the Everglades.
Tea Cake teaches Janie how to shoot a gun. After a little practice, Janie got to be a better shot than Tea Cake.
Tea Cake abd Janie's life was full of love, fun, and work. Janie would stay home all day and cook and clean, while Tea Cake went out and worked in the fields picking beans. -
Another Season at the Muck/ Chapters 15-17
Tea Cake and Janie stayed in the muck for another season.
Mrs. Turner is introduced and turns out to be a very racist black woman against blacks.
Tea Cake doesn't like Mrs. Turner and makes fun of her looks behind her back.
Mrs. Turner never affected Janie and Tea Cake's relationship.
Before long, Tea Cake and Janie started noticing the crowds pouring onto the muck again. -
The Hurricane/ Chapter 18
Everyone is moving to higher ground because of the hurricane that's coming.
-The Indians told the blacks about it. Most of the blacks thought it was crazy and did nothing.
The hurricane came and Janie and Tea Cake knew they had to leave.
As they were trying to flee, there was so much water that they were forced to swim. -
The Mad Dog/ Chapter 18-19
During the storm, Tea Cake saves Janie from getting attacked from a mad dog.
Tea Cake kills the dog, but gets bitten in his cheek. -
Tea Cake is Gone/ Chapter 19
Tea Cake becomes ill from the dog bite. Janie calls a doctor and he tells her that he is probably to late to fix Tea Cake.
Jaine does everything to save Tea Cake, but he ends up going crazy.
Janie is forced to shoot Tea Cake in self-defense. -
TEWWG Begins/ Chapter 1
TEWWG Trailer
Story starts as a frame narrative - Janie returns to the town of Eatonville
Upon returing, she becomes the talk of the town.
Janie's best friend Phoeby is introduced by defending Janie as she is gossiped about. -
The New Janie/ Chapter 20
Janie gets put on trial for her killing Tea Cake. The virdict is that she is innocent and is set free.
At the end of her story, Janie says to Pheoby, "Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore" (191).
Janie grows immensely through the story as a character and gains the wisdom and experience she needed to be the strong woman she came back to Eatonville as.
