Journal #8

Hurston uses the setting of chapter 18 to develop a theme surrounding the idea that people often do not fully appreciate what they have until they realize it could be taken away. The destructive hurricane that blows through the muck where Janie and Tea Cake live forces them to escape from their home in search of higher ground. Just before they leave their house, Tea Cake asks Janie if she wishes that she had stayed in her big house in town. She replies, " ' naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah'm wid mah husband in uh storm, dat's all' " (Hurston 159). Tea Cake then asks her, were she to die, would she be mad at him? Once again, she tells him she would not. This is such a relief to Tea Cake, who up until now did not know exactly the way Janie felt about him. " 'Well then, Janie, you meant whut you didn't say, 'cause Ah never knowed you wuz so satisfied wid me lak dat' " (Hurston 160). Because of the storm coming and the panic of getting out of the area as quickly as possible, Tea Cake and Janie take one last chance to tell each other their true feelings. In case they do not make it through the hurricane, they want to make sure the other knows they are loved. Because Hurston places this conversation in such an urgent setting, we get the sense that the storm is necessary to bring these two characters together like this. This theme follows of the idea "you don't know what you've got until it's gone". Like the common saying, Hurston is trying to make the reader understand that taking things for granted while we have them and appreciating them more when they are gone is a troubling aspect of human nature. Like Janie and Tea Cake, many of us do not take the time to convey our true feelings to one another until we realize there may never be a chance again, or the chance has already passed us by.