Style Analysis Homework

Passage #1

    Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they

come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, nev-

er out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in

resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of

men.

    Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember,

and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the

truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

    So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from

burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the

pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the

bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.

    The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was

gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sit-

ting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and

talk.

Passage #2

    nothing she could do to discourage her completely. She felt honored

by Janie’s acquaintance and she quickly forgave and forgot snubs in

order to keep it. Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself

was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they

should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more

negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness. Like the

pecking-order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can

whip, and groveling submission to those you can’t. Once having set up

her idols and built altars to them it was inevitable that she would wor-

ship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency

and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All

gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering

without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through in-

discriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emo-

tion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods

are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

   

Passage #3

    The time was past for asking the white folks what to look for

through that door. Six eyes were questioning God.

    Through the screaming wind they heard things crashing and things

hurtling and dashing with unbelievable velocity. A baby rabbit, terror

ridden, squirmed through a hole in the floor and squatted off there in

the shadows against the wall, seeming to know that nobody wanted its

flesh at such a time. And the lake got madder and madder with only its

dikes between them and him.

    In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, “Ah reckon

you wish now you had of stayed in yo’ big house ’way from such as dis,

don’t yuh?”

    “Naw.”

    “Naw?”

    “Yeah, 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.”

Passage #4

    The pistol and the rifle rang out almost together. The pistol just

enough after the rifle to seem its echo. Tea Cake crumpled as his bullet

buried itself in the joist over Janie’s head. Janie saw the look on his

face and leaped forward as he crashed forward in her arms. She was

trying to hover him as he closed his teeth in the flesh of her forearm.

They came down heavily like that. Janie struggled to a sitting position

and pried the dead Tea Cake’s teeth from her arm.

    It was the meanest moment of eternity. A minute before she was

just a scared human being fighting for its life. Now she was her sacrifi-

cing self with Tea Cake’s head in her lap. She had wanted him to live

so much and he was dead. No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right

to weep. Janie held his head tightly to her breast and wept and

thanked him wordlessly for giving her the chance for loving service.

She had to hug him tight for soon he would be gone, and she had to

tell him for the last time. Then the grief of outer darkness descended.