By Aaron Anderson
"There Eyes Were Watching God" is a story about a girl named Janie, and her life that she lives in the south-eastern parts of the United States in the 1920's. The story begins telling a brief summary of what she did before the story starts when she is 16 years old. She grew up always being different from those around her, since she lived with "white folk" most of her childhood. At a young age, her grandmother encourages her to marry for security reasons, and she is trapped in a very unhappy marriage to a man named Logan. After a short life together, she leaves him for another man named Joe, who she found walking on the road and got talking to. Together they travel to Eatonville, a small town for "the black folk." There he is a "town hero" since he fixed up the place, brought in a store and a light post, and made several other improvements to the little town. Because of these things, he becomes the mayor. However, in this marriage, Janie feels "caged up" and unable to do what she wants freely because her husband is very protective of her. Eventually, Joe dies. Just a few months later, a man named Tea Cake shows up in town, and they eventually get married. They move off to the everglades in Florida where they live happily for several years. Picking beans, teaching Janie how to shoot, and playing cards was a typical day for Tea Cake, and both of them enjoyed it very much.
During a rain storm in the everglades, they have to run away to avoid the flood that was coming over the dyke. While running away, a dog attacked Janie while she was in the water. Tea Cake saved her from the dog, but he was bit in the process. Besides the apparent little cut from the dog, they made it away from the flood just fine. A few weeks later, Tea Cake began to get very sick and couldn't get out of bed very easily, and had a hard time swallowing anything. These are signs of being bitten by a rapid animal, and it was concluded that the dog that bit Tea Cake was indeed rabid. A doctor looked at him and said to Janie that he wasn't going to make it, and that it was too late to do anything for him medically. When Tea Cake isn't at his bed, Janie finds a gun under the pillow with three bullets in it. In her defense, she turns the cylinder of the gun so the gun will click three times before firing the bullets. Tea Cake later becomes mad and tries to shoot Janie, but due to Janie's preparation with the pistol, she shoots him first, killing him. People at first suspect that she was angry with him and killed him out of rage, but after seeing the burial she gave him, and knowing how she loved him for so many years, they conclude that it was out of self-defense that she killed her lover, not out of anger.
