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Playlist Their Eyes Were Watching God: Shmoopversations 10 videos
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Their Eyes Were Watching God Part 7: The Porch 12599 Views
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Description:
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, the porch was the place to be. Watch the video to learn more about the porch as a symbol, and see if they ever installed a disco ball. Any place that’s the place to be needs a disco ball.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:06
Their Eyes Were Watching God
- 00:08
The Porch
- 00:09
a la Shmoop
- 00:11
Porches in Harlem are an interesting thing,
Full Transcript
- 00:14
because everything is so dense-packed.
- 00:16
It's very different from a porch in the Midwest on a farm,
- 00:19
where the next neighbor is two miles away
- 00:22
and many acres of corn away.
- 00:24
So a porch in Harlem is this weird
- 00:27
interactive venue
- 00:29
where you can converse in a normal voice with your neighbors
- 00:33
three flats on either side
- 00:35
and probably across the street.
- 00:36
Certainly at night when there's no traffic.
- 00:38
And things were quieter back then.
- 00:40
How does that work?
- 00:42
Choosing the porch as
- 00:44
the hub of her circle
- 00:46
was probably no accident.
- 00:47
It's not. The porch is like a symbol for community.
- 00:50
It's where people got together to talk about everything.
- 00:52
All of these interactions that we see throughout the book -
- 00:55
many or most of them happen on porches,
- 00:57
ike the hyperbole contest
- 00:59
and all the storytelling
- 01:00
and folk tales and all that.
- 01:02
Those happen on the porch, so it makes sense that Janie is also telling
- 01:06
her own story on a porch.
- 01:07
The porch really becomes a character in its own.
- 01:10
It's personified throughout the book.
- 01:12
It kind of takes actions.
- 01:14
Phoebe at one point says that she feels like
- 01:17
the porch is pelting her back with questions.
- 01:20
And when Joe
- 01:23
prohibits Janie from
- 01:25
talking on the porch at one point,
- 01:27
again suppressing her voice,
- 01:28
it's like she's being removed from society altogether.
- 01:31
It's not just that she's being removed from the porch.
- 01:34
It's that she's being removed from society.
- 01:35
So the porch really is a symbol
- 01:37
of a bigger society.
- 01:39
[ pen writing ]
- 01:41
What does the porch represent?
- 01:44
How is the porch treated
- 01:46
as a character?
- 01:51
Yeah, that's a porch as a character.
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