Eyes Journal 5 (Commentary Prep)

- I noticed that most of the passage is from the 3rd person narrator point of view, but a few lines in the second paragraph it switches to Janie's thoughts, you can tell by the dialect. Hurston uses this brief switch because it helps the mood become more desperate when you can really hear the desperation and pleading with Janie. The reader can empathize easier with Janie.  "And God, please suh, don't let him love nobody else but me....Ah been waitin', Jesus. Ah done waited uh long time."
- The tone of the passage is somber. In the first paragraph she says "...and took Annie Tyler away to die in peace. She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her." It's pretty somber when she says things like die in peace and waiting and killing her. Also later she says "Janie dozed off to sleep..." and "...It was always going to be dark to Janie if Tea Cake didn't soon come back." The mood of the piece is more sad and dreary as the reader empathizes with Janie, wondering where Tea Cake is. You can hear the dreary and depressed mood in phrases like "She dwindled down on the floor..." Dwindled means to "become smaller and smaller; shrink or waste away" (dictionary.com). You can picture Janie just wasting away as she becomes fearful that something bad happened to Tea Cake.
- There's a lot of imagery surrounding sleeping and beds and she also at the end mentions a rocking chair. I think these images contribute to the dreary mood.
-There's a few lines of figurative language while she's talking about the sun rising. She says the sun was "sending spies ahead of him to mark out the road through the dark". She's literally talking about the little first rays of light that are coming up before you can see the full sun. I think the choice of the word spies is interesting, it has an effect on the mood because it makes it more dark and somber. Also, spies has connotations of like secretive and she's wondering where Tea Cake is. Plus, the mention of the "road through the dark". Roads are a motif throughout the story and are a symbol for a journey. It also says he "peeped over the door sill of the world" which is a metaphor comparing the world to sort of a house. Also the word "peeping" connects to spies because it's sort of secretive. And she's personifying the sun as if "he" is a person. Then she says the sun "made a little foolishness with red. But pretty soon, he laid all that aside and went about his business dressed in white." I'm not sure why red is foolish? Or why she says he laid it all aside and went about his business dressed in white. What connotations are there for the colors white and red?
-There's a lot of longer sentences with description broken up with commas later on in the passage but in the beginning of the passage the sentences are shorter and more concise. I think this could be because in the beginning the narrator is just stating facts and Janie is up and she's begging and pleading so there's this atmosphere of desperation. But then she starts to "doze off to sleep" and that's when the sentences get longer and more description. So this creates sort of a "dream" effect, the longer sentences are more flowing and dream like because Janie is dozing off.