The pear tree0% in

Nanny

The grandmother's cabin

The pear tree

In the yard behind her grandmother's cabin, sixteen-year-old Janie watches a pear tree in bloom and awakens to a longing for love that will drive her whole life. Her grandmother Nanny, terrified for her, marries her off to the older farmer Logan Killicks for security, and the pear-tree dream collides at once with a loveless duty.

The opening chapters

inferredJanie's girlhood with her grandmother and her first, arranged marriage are set in west Florida; drawn from the rural districts of the region and sited there.

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The mayor's wife25% in

Joe Starks

Eatonville

The mayor's wife

Janie leaves Logan for the ambitious Joe Starks, who carries her to Eatonville, the first incorporated Black town in America, and makes himself its mayor and storekeeper. But Joe's pride turns Janie into an ornament to be shown and silenced, and the promise of the new town curdles into twenty years of a gilded, lonely marriage.

The Eatonville chapters

explicitJanie runs off with Joe Starks to Eatonville, the real self-governing all-Black town near Orlando where Hurston herself grew up; sited there.

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The town's voice50% in

Janie

The store porch

The town's voice

The porch of Joe's store is Eatonville's stage, where the men swap tall tales and signify and Janie is forbidden to join in. Hurston fills the porch with the music of Black vernacular speech she treasured as a folklorist, and makes Janie's eventual claiming of her own voice there a turning point in her long road to freedom.

The store chapters

explicitJoe's store and its porch, the social heart of Eatonville where the townsfolk gather to talk, is central to the novel; sited in the town.

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Tea Cake75% in

Tea Cake

The Everglades muck

Tea Cake

With the younger, joyous Tea Cake, Janie goes down to the muck by Lake Okeechobee to pick beans among the migrant workers, and at last finds a love that treats her as an equal. In the fields and jook joints of the Glades, Hurston paints the freest, fullest happiness of Janie's life, the pear-tree dream come true at last.

The Everglades chapters

explicitAfter Joe's death Janie follows Tea Cake to the rich black soil of the Everglades 'muck' around Lake Okeechobee, the real migrant bean-farming country; sited there.

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The flood100% in

Tea Cake

The hurricane

The flood

The great 1928 hurricane bursts Lake Okeechobee over the muck in a wall of water, and in the flight Tea Cake is bitten saving Janie from a mad dog, and later, rabid, dies by her hand. Hurston ends with Janie returning to Eatonville alone but whole, having lived and lost the great love of her life, the horizon at last drawn in around her like a great fish-net.

The closing chapters

explicitThe catastrophic 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, which drowned thousands around the lake, tears through the muck and destroys Janie and Tea Cake's world; sited there.

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