"Dis sittin' in de rulin' chair is been hard on Jody," she muttered out loud. She was full of pity for the first time in years. Jody had been hard on her and others, but life had mishandled him too. Poor Joe! Maybe if she had known some other way to try, she might have made his face different. But what that other way could be, she had no idea. She thought back and forth about what had happened in the making of a voice out of a man. Then though about herself. Years ago, she had told her girl self to wait for her in the looking glass. It had been a long time since she had remembered. Perhaps she'd better look. She went over to the dresser and looked hard at her skin and features. The young girl was gone, but a handsome woman had taken her place. She tore off the kerchief from her head and let down her plentiful hair. The weight, the length, the glory was there. She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see, and opened up the window and cried, "Come heah people! Jody is dead. Mah husband is gone from me" (87).
In this paragraph Zora Neale Hurston is explaining how Janie reacted to Jody's death. Her sentences flow well but in the middle she says; "perhaps she'd better look." this sentence is short and to the point and makes the reader think about whether the young Janie will come back or if she is gone forever. The passage starts with Janie pitying Jody for having a hard time at his job and his sickness but by the end she is trying to cover up her feelings of happiness and freedom. Hurston is creating a tone of masked freedom. She uses the words "weight", "length" and "glory" when talking about Janie's hair. The words "weight" and "length" express the pressure Janie was under and "glory" is used to show that now that Joe is dead, Janie is finally free.
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