Question

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Tea Cake wants Janie to learn how to shoot a pistol, a shotgun, and a rifle. Why? What is Janie’s response? What is the tone of this section?

Answer 1

• One positive aspect of Janie's relationship with Tea Cake is that of his interest in her learning new things. For example, when Tea Cake considers going to hunt game, he asks Janie to join him. Janie, however, does not know how to shoot a gun and has never been taught.
• Tea Cake quickly shows his interest and concern for her learning how to shoot, "Oh, you needs tuh learn how. 'Tain't no need uh you not knowin' how tuh handle shootin' tools. Even if you didn't never find no game, it's always some trashy rascal dat needs uh good killin',".
• This back and forth interaction between Tea Cake and herself turns out to be healthy not only for their relationship, but for Janie as well. She finally begins to learn how to feel comfortable with herself and display that comfort with others.
• Everyday they were practicing. Tea Cake made her shoot at little things just to give her good aim. Pistol and shotgun and rifle. Janie is a rich women who according to social norms should not be shooting a gun at any point in her life time. But it was even more odd that Tea Cake would teach Janie how to shoot a weapon. Most men believed that women were not equal to men and that shooting was not meant for women.
• But it shows that Tea Cake treats Janie as an equal to himself. This very weird event of Janie having target practice drew in a large crowd of men, who wanted to watch the most interesting and beautiful woman they had ever seen. Janie is even initially confused by the going shooting and thinks that it is crazy. Yet this is why she loves Tea Cake, because he treats her as his friend and not as a lesser person.
• He continues to accord her respect and remains unthreatened by her empowerment. He teaches her to shoot a gun, another phallic object associated with masculine power, and remains undisturbed by the fact that she becomes more proficient than him. Unlike Jody, who forces Janie to conceal the masculine power that her hair embodies, Tea Cake encourages Janie’s strength.
• Janie now finds herself not guided and ordered by Tea Cake, and judged by her community, but finds her real self in the muck. Her most locked up behaviors finally let out in the only place we ever really think she calls home, the muck.  
• Although he clearly loves and needs her, he certainly possesses her more than she possesses him. Yet Janie doesn’t mind this inequality. This acceptance of inequality is related to the idea of gender differences postulated at the beginning of the novel.
• As becomes evident in subsequent chapters, Hurston implies that men have a fundamental need for possession that women lack. Because Tea Cake respects Janie so much, his occasional domination of her seems insignificant.
• In fact, it could be argued that Tea Cake’s domineering personality is what enables Janie to grow. He pulls her down to the Everglades without any input from her and it becomes the most fulfilling experience of her life.