Okay so since we last left Janie she had just run away with Joe. Since then Joe started a town of black people, bought the land, erected a store and became Mayor. He continually surpresses Janie and won’t let her share her opinion or let her hair loose and such. Then Janie sees a mule being worked to death, Joe notices Janie’s sorrow and buys the mule to let him die grazing. The Mule dies. Then 20 years later, Janie’s getting near 40 and Joe is even older. He’s constantly harassing Janie about how she’s not young anymore and can’t be doing any of the few things that she enjoys (and is allowed to do), saying she’s getting too old to do them. So she get’s pissed and yells at him about how he’s not young either and why does he always talk about her abusively like that. Then he loses his pride because she had stated he was old and past his prime in front of the other guys. Then Joe gets sick and dies, but not before Janie goes in and give him a piece of her mind about how he stifled her. He then dies contortedly. Janie finally has the store and the house to herself and is allowed to do as she pleases. Then a couple months later this younger man named Tea Cake keeps showing up at the store. Janie starts to like him but is unsure of whether he’s just after her for her money like the suitors that have come before since Joe’s death. He is surprised to learn she dosn’t know how to play checkers, and teaches her how. Then He goes away and works alot to be able to pay to take her to a picnic and buy her stuff. After that the town starts talking, They get closer and Janie tells Pheoby that they’re going to get married, she’s going to sell the store and they’re going to run off somewhere.

 It seems like Janie is trying to find her own place in the world, and find out what she wants especially now that Joe’s out of the picture, but I can’t help feeling that she’s still naive and hasn’t completely figured stuff out yet because while she was cautious at first, she’s just accepted this stranger (Tea Cake) and suddenly gotten close to him and stuff. Tea Cake’s seems somewhat different though, He taught her to play checkers and hasn’t yet asked her for money, BUT suddenly she’s totally catering to him and changing herself for his needs. Like with wearing all this blue and that kind of thing…She’s losing herself trying to please someone else and he’s letting himself be pleased. She’s continually conforming to what he wants her to be and do, which ultimately may not be what or who she wants to be. He also suggested they go someplace else, even though Janie has already been established in the town she lives in. Also when she was talking to Pheoby, she said basically ”he’s picked out everything that he wants to see me in”(see her in at their wedding) but she didn’t say who’d be paying for it AND he picked everything out-everything that HE’D like to see her in…. I just hope she has a little caution because she’s really impulsive and I think her impusivity, while caused by a quest for happiness, is just going to continue to leave her unfulfilled.