55 pages • 1 hour read
Zora Neale HurstonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
Janie and Tea Cake are still down on the muck when the Seminoles and the Bahamians head east, despite the fact that the picking season is not complete. Both groups warn Janie and Tea Cake that a hurricane is coming; Tea Cake discounts their warnings, but even the animals begin to flee.
Many of Tea Cake’s friends gather at his house to weather the storm, but when the winds come in, they grow fearful and realize that staying behind was a mistake. Tea Cake and Janie flee the house along with a friend when the winds grow stronger, and it becomes apparent that the dikes and dam works that hold back the Okeechobee will break. They barely survive their flight to higher ground; the friend who accompanies them, Motorboat, stays behind, too tired to keep running. During their flight, Tea Cake kills an aggressive dog that tries to attack Janie. The dog bites Tea Cake on the face. The couple reaches Palm Beach, where they spend most of their money to secure a tiny sleeping space. They reaffirm their love for each other.
Chapter 19 Summary
Tea Cake is forced to work burying bodies in Palm Beach when he is picked up as a vagrant (despite having money in his pocket). After he manages to escape, the couple returns to the Everglades. All seems well: Motorboat survived the remainder of the storm and Tea Cake quickly finds work. However, a month later, Tea Cake falls ill and cannot drink water. The doctor delivers bad news: Tea Cake likely has contracted rabies from the dog bite during the storm. Because treatment for rabies has to be given soon after the bite, Tea Cake will not survive.
The doctor tells Janie to keep Tea Cake comfortable and to sleep separately from him in case he bites her during a fit of rage. Tea Cake grows increasingly “paranoid,” accusing Janie of cheating on him and even poisoning him. When he begins to sleep with a loaded pistol under his pillow, Janie takes precautions, including putting a rifle within reach. She still believes that she can protect Tea Cake, despite signs that the rabies he contracted from the dog is irreversibly impacting his personality and mental health.
The worst finally happens: Tea Cake attempts to shoot Janie in a state of extreme paranoia—he believes that Janie plans to leave him for Mrs. Turner’s brother. Janie kills Tea Cake to save her own life. She is tried for murder by an all-white jury and judge. Although white women who come to gawk at the tragedy in the courtroom empathize with Janie, Tea Cake’s Black friends willingly testify against her. Janie explains that she loved Tea Cake and only killed him in self-defense. The jury finds Janie not guilty.
Although Janie feels hurt by the reaction of Tea Cake’s friends, she understands that their love for Tea Cake drove their hostility toward her. She spares no expense on Tea Cake’s funeral in West Palm Beach and invites all his friends to see him off. She feels so grief stricken that she wears her old overalls to the funeral because she is “too busy feeling grief to dress like grief” (189)—a marked contrast from when Joe Starks died.
Chapter 20 Summary
The narrative returns to the present. Janie has finished her story; Pheoby can tell all the town gossips any part of it because Janie no longer cares what they think—people who don’t have the ability to experience life spend all their time talking about people who do. People have to experience things for themselves, and those who have not are not worth listening to. Pheoby feels as if she “done growed 10 feet higher jus’ listenin’” to Janie’s story (192).
After Pheoby leaves, Janie goes up to her bedroom to think over her experiences and to mourn. As she reflects, she feels the spirit of Tea Cake come to her. Her memories are enough to make her feel like she is her own person. She no longer feels the need to venture down the road or look to other people to find herself. She is enough as she is.
Chapters 18-20 Analysis
Hurston packs a great deal into these last three chapters: the storm, the trial, and Janie’s return home. The novel’s conclusion wraps up the theme of Black Women’s Identity. When Janie’s story ends, she has come into her own as a person. Hurston’s description of this moment—Janie “pull[ing] in her horizon like a great fish net […] from around the waist of the world and drap[ing] it over her shoulder” (193)—makes the point that because she has experienced enough of the world to confidently proclaim her values, Janie now defines her own sense of self. She does not need a man to come along down the road to make sense of her experiences.
The ending brings Janie’s development full circle by going back to Nanny’s aim, which was to “to preach a great sermon about colored women sittin’ on high” (16). While Nanny defined “sittin’ on high” as having material status, and she pushed this dream on Janie, the “sermon” that Janie gives is a story about love and freedom. Her approach, which highlights the centrality of storytelling in Southern Black folk culture, liberates listeners, particularly Black women, from the social pressure to define themselves by the men in their lives. Hurston captures Pheoby’s reaction as a proxy for the reader; Janie’s story enlarges both Pheoby’s sense of herself and her expectations about the possibilities of love.
Although the novel mostly ignores the white world around the edges of Eatonville, the latter chapters show both racist and sexist limits imposed on African American women of the time. The all-white jury in the courtroom during Janie’s trial has the power of life and death as Janie pleads for them to understand why she killed Tea Cake in self-defense. Although the resentment of Tea Cake’s friends is mostly poorly expressed grief, they presciently observe that Tea Cake’s gender and dark skin, as well as Janie’s appearance—more closely approximating whiteness—play a role in Janie’s acquittal. Janie and Tea Cake’s conversation about needing white people to vouch for African Americans shows how Jim Crow laws and white supremacy curtailed the mobility and freedom of Black citizens.
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By Zora Neale Hurston
