bookreporter.com/authors/au-tademy-lalita.asp.
Accessed May 18, 2006.
Beverly TateTea Cake (Vergible Woods)
In Chapter 10 of ZORA NEALE HURSTON’s THEIR
EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, Tea Cake saunters into
the store and Janie’s life. He banters with Janie as
though they have always known each other. They
make small talk before they do business; they com-
pete in a checkers game before she learns his name.
Perhaps most important, before he compliments
her looks, he compliments her brain: “Folks is
playin’ [checkers] wid sense and folks is playin’ it
without. But you got good meat on yo’ head. You’ll
learn” (96). Tea Cake reverses the expected role
and order of male-female relationship; he backs
into the relationship with Janie, assuming a depth
of connection that Janie surprisingly discovers she
shares: “Tea Cake wasn’t strange. Seemed as if she
had known him all her life” (99).
Consequently, Tea Cake, who is younger than
Janie, quickly becomes the antithesis of Janie’s
former husbands, Logan Killicks and Joe (Jody)
Starks, who were much older than Janie. Whereas
they wanted to think for Janie, Tea Cake encour-
ages Janie to think for herself. They praised her
youth and beauty; he adores her brains and com-
panionship. Logan and Jody thought of how Janie
could work for them; he thinks of how Janie can
play with him. They liked how she enhanced their
lives; he seeks to enhance hers. In her treatment
and characterization of Tea Cake, Hurston offers
a more intriguing depiction of a complex Afri-
can-American male as a man maturing, a man of
surprises. Until his death in chapter 19, Tea Cake
constantly evolves, emerging and transforming so
that his presence after his death appears to Janie to
be as powerful as during his life.
During their courting, Tea Cake lives and loves
in the present. He has no savings, no life plan, and
no dream to pursue. When Janie comes into his
life, though, he knows without question that, for
him, she “got de keys to de kingdom” (109). Early
in their marriage, Tea Cake makes a declaration to
Janie: Whatever he eats, she will eat. The money
they live on will be his, and where they can best
do this will be on the Everglades muck. Here, he
knows the score: Arrive early, get hired by the best
boss, secure convenient housing, and prepare to
laugh, play, and work hard. He accepts Janie as his
full partner. He wants her by his side during the
day in the fields and at night in their home.
During the hurricane that takes place near the
end of the novel, Tea Cake comes into full matu-
rity. When he sees that a rabid dog is about to at-
tack Janie, he sacrifices his life for hers. He takes
the rabid bite and, consequently, goes insane. Iron-
ically and sadly, in order to save her own life, Janie
has to kill him, in “the meanest moment of eter-
nity” (184). Despite this tragic end, Tea Cake man-
ages to live his entire life in laughter. His whole
life is lived in the present where he finds love, one
great enough to die for.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
New York: Perennial Classics, 1998.
Margaret WhittTervalon, Jervey (1958– )
Poet, screenwriter, editor, and fiction writer Jervey
Tervalon has received both popular and critical
praise for his work. Born in New Orleans, Loui-
siana, in 1958, the author moved with his family
to Los Angeles, where he was raised in the inner
city before moving to the small coastal city of
Santa Barbara for his college education. Receiving
his B.A. in 1980 from the University of Califor-
nia–Santa Barbara, Tervalon then returned to Los
Angeles to teach at Locke High School. The expe-
rience of being an educator in the disadvantaged
environment inspired Tervalon to write about the
people and events in his first novel, Understand
This (1994). In particular, he was touched by the
murder of one of his promising students.
Tervalon wrote that first novel while working
on his master’s degree in creative writing at the
University of California–Irvine. Understand This
won the 1994 New Voices Award from the Qual-488 Tea Cake